HOLSIES] 



ABORIGINAL AMEEICAN ANTIQUITIES PAET I 



299 



descriptions just Iioay the stone under treatment was held. Caleb 

 Lyon some 70 j^ears airo witnessed the making of an obsidian arrow- 

 head by fi skilled workman of the Shasta tribe of California. His 

 reference to the work is as follows: 



Tlie Sluista Indian seated himself on the tloor, and, placing tlie stone anvil 

 upon liis Ivnee, which was of compact talcose slate, with one blow of his agate 

 chis(>l he separated the obsidian pebble into two parts; then giving another 

 blow to the fractured side he split off a slab a fourth of an inch in thickness. 

 Holding; the piece against the anvil with the thumb and finger of his left hand, 

 he conunenced a series of continuous blows, every one of which chipped off 

 fragments of the brittle substance. It gradually assumed the required slmpe. 

 After finishing the base of the arrowhead (the whole being only a little over 

 an inch in length), he began striking gentler blows, every one of which I 

 expected would break it into pieces. Yet such was their adroit application, 

 his skill and dexterity, that in little over an hour he produced a perfect 



Fig. 162. Shaping a blade at rest by fracture with a hammerstone. 



obsidian arrowhead. I then requested him to carve me one from the remains 

 of a broken port bottle, which (after two failures) he succeeded in doing. He 

 gave as a reason for his ill success, he did not understand the grain of the 

 glass. No sculptor ever handled a chisel with greater precision, or more 

 carefully measured the weight and effect of every blow, than this ingenious 

 Indian; for, even among them, arrow making is a distinct trade or i)rofes- 

 sion, which many attempt, but in which few attain excellence. He luiderstood 

 the capacity of the material he wrought, and, before striking the first blow, 

 by surveying the pebble, he could judge of its availability as well as the 

 sculptor judges of the perfection of a block oi Parian.' 



Variants of this rest method are recorded by a number of authors. 

 Snyder witnessed the work as done by a Digger Indian. Holding a 

 quartz splinter flatwise on a smooth bowlder anvil stone with his 

 left hand (fig. 162) he gently tapped the stone first on one edge, then 



• Lyiin, Letter of ISOO. 



