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BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[BULL. 60 



hands, showing the position of the implements, appears in figure 17G. 

 The flaker held in the right hand is a bone point of usual type, and 

 the implement held in the left is the blade of a hafted flint knife of 

 the kind still in use at that time among the canyon tribes. 



Major Powell's reference to the arrow maker's demonstration of 

 the process is as follows : 



In a littl(> valley north of the Uinta Mountains a tribe of Shoshoni Indians were 



found still manufacturin,ir stone arrowheads, stone knives, and 

 [Powell's Account] stono spears. Althon.i,di a few (if them were armed with .e;uns 



purchased at far-distant trading stores, a jireater number of 

 the men and boys were armed with bows and arrows. In the valley which they 

 occupied chalcedony is found in the form ]Mii)ularly called moss-asate. In ISOD 



the writer often saw these Indians manufacturing stone arrow- 

 [ Shoshoni Arrow j^eads and stone knives. These were made from masses of 



moss-asate weathering out of the sandy shales of the district. 

 The implements were made by breaking the masses with rude stone hannners, 

 and selecting favorably shaped fragments to be further fashioned by the use of 



Fig. 170. Relative position of the implements in the hands of the Paiute Indian, 



figure 175. 



little stone hammers. A fragment held in one hand, protected by a piece of 

 untanned elk skin, was wrought with a luunmer held in the other hand. Having 

 somewhat improved the original fragment in this manner, a workman would 

 proceed to give his implement the final shape by using a deerhorn tool from 

 8 to 12 inches in length and worked down from its original size by grinding, 

 so that its diameter was about five-eighths of an inch. Holding the specimen 

 in one hand, with the implement in the other, he would work the little stone 

 into the desired shape by sudden pressure on its edge with the horn tool and 

 in this manner breaking off small flakes. The arrowheads thus made were 

 small, slender, and synunetric, while the stone knives were given keen but 

 somewhat serrated edges. I visited this tribe of Indians many tinii's and lived 

 among them many months and found their camps strewn with the chips, 

 among which were many discarded failures, all having the characteristics of 

 those finds which in the eastern portion of the United States had been called 

 " paleolithic." ^ 



1 Powell, Stone Art in America, pp. 1-2. 



