40 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



first attracted attention by their size — the disproportion will appear 

 still greater. At the time of colonization and earlier, the indian's 

 bow and arrows almost alone attracted attention. If the larger points 

 are all spear-heads, his predecessors must have been as conspicuous 

 for these. The difficulty might be solved by supposing the bow to 

 have been a very recent invention in America. It is rather probable, 

 as said before, that we have placed too low a limit on arrows, while 

 forgetting how much of forest and river archery was at very short 

 range. 



This significant disproportion will appear in almost any good 

 collection. In the classified list prepared by Mr A. E. Douglass, he 

 has 261 New York spears and 963 arrows; from the country at large 

 2172 spears and 8396 arrows, or less than one fourth, and this would 

 be a fair proportion elsewhere. Now in New York no spear-heads 

 appear on Iroquoian sites, which supply many small stone arrow- 

 heads, so that the New York proportion of early spears and arrows 

 will be yet more equal. Supposing the bow and spear were at first 

 used together, we would conclude that the arrow-heads should vastly 

 exceed the spears; but under the present classification they do not. 

 It is evident that this subject needs reconsideration. 



While speaking of this it may be well to say a few words farther 

 upon indian arms, which here included both less and more than is 

 popularly known. 



As has been said, early accounts make no direct mention of the 

 spear, although there seem allusions to it. That used in fishing was 

 altogether of a different kind. The bow was not the short one, so 

 efficient in the hands of horsemen, but rivaled the long bows of 

 England, while the arrows often exceeded the cloth yard shaft. Capt. 

 John Smith said of the Sasquehanocks, that such great and well pro- 

 portioned men were seldom seen, and that they had bows, arrows 

 and clubs in proportion. Their arrows were five quarters of a yard 

 in length, and in the picture of one of their chiefs, his bow reaches 

 above his head. These were of the Iroquoian family, and in Cham- 

 plain's pictures of encounters with the Iroquois proper, the long bow 

 is everywhere seen. We may, therefore, conclude that this bow, still 

 made by their descendants, was that commonly used in our forests 

 in early days. 



