3714 THE YOKUTS. 
diameter. Whén not used the bow was unstrung, and the string tied around 
the left limb of the bow, and to prevent the slightest lesion of either the bow 
or the string the former had a section of fur from some animal’s tail, about 
four inches long, slipped on to it. 
Of arrows, the Indians living on the plains made some for themselves 
out of button-willow, straight twigs of the buckeye, and canes, but the most 
durable came from the mountains. There are two kinds, war-arrows and 
game-arrows; the former furnished with flint-heads, the latter not. The 
shaft of the war-arrow consists of a single piece, but that of the game-arrow 
is frequently composed of three pieces, furnished with sockets so adjusted 
as to fit into each other snugly. When the hunter, lurking behind the 
covert, sees the quarry approaching, he measures quickly with his eye the 
probable length of the shot he will have to make, and if it is a long one he 
couches his arrow with three pieces; but if a short one, with extraordinary 
quickness he twitches it apart, takes out the middle section, claps the two 
end sections together again, and fires. An arrow made of what we should 
pronounce the frailest of all woods, the tender shoot of a buckeye, and 
pointed with flint, has carried death to many a savage in battle. I have 
seen an Indian couch a game-arrow, which was pointed only with a section 
of arrow-wood, and drive it a full half-inch into the hardest oak! An old 
hunter says he has seen an Indian stand a hundred paces distant from a 
hare, slowly raise his long, polished bow, shoot a quick glance along the 
arrow, then send it whizzing through both his enormous ears, pinning him 
fast to a tree behind him. 
Some mention was made in Chapter XI of the manner in which flint 
arrow-heads are made. Mr. E. G. Waite, in a communication to the Over- 
land Monthly, gives the following description of the method employed both 
in Central California and among the Klamaths, as he witnessed it in an 
early day : 
“The rock of flint or obsidian, esteemed by the natives for arrow- 
pointing, is broken into flat pieces, after the manner usually described. 
When the pieces have reached a proper size for arrow-heads the mode of 
finishing it is in this wise: The palm of the left hand is covered with buck- 
skin held in its place by the thumb being thrust through a hole in it. The 
