38 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



be recorded and illustrated. These are often the links which serve 

 to connect widely separated sites. The knowledge already gained 

 of the primitive articles used by the Iroquois, three centuries ago, 

 has become of great and increasing value, and will hereafter aid in 

 solving many problems. Different nations and ages had differing 

 fashions, and the characteristic articles used and left behind, will 

 throw much light on the early people of New York. To collect these 

 articles for careful comparison, to illustrate them so faithfully that 

 distant students may have the most significant facts before them, is 

 something worthy of the attention of a state which has already done 

 so much in the cause of science. 



SPEARS < 



As with arrows, so is it difficult to place an exact line between 

 knives and spears. Indeed the primitive spear may often have been 

 but a knife fastened to the end of a long pole, as men in more recent 

 times have armed themselves, when lacking suitable weapons. Even 

 arrow-heads may have been put to the same use in time of need. 

 Spears and knives may both have been leaf-shaped, stemmed or 

 notched, and may not differ in the least in outline. Often the thick- 

 ness and sharpness are the only distinctive features. As regards size, 

 this does not affect knives, but usually small points are called arrows, 

 and the large ones spears. 



Dr C. C. Abbott made a division of spears and lances, while 

 L. H. Morgan, in his League of the Iroquois, omits spears from his 

 description of their weapons. In his subsequent account, in the 

 Regents report for 1852, he says that they did not use them, and 

 although he simply asserted this it was not without some reason. 

 Spears do not generally appear in early pictures, nor are they usually 

 mentioned in accounts of early indian armor. As far as the pictures 

 go, this is of little importance. They were sometimes, perhaps usu- 

 ally, drawn by European artists from descriptions given them, and 

 they availed themselves of the privileges of art. Champlain expressly 

 said that the Mohawk chiefs, whom he killed in 1609, wore arrow- 

 proof armor, but in the picture they are as naked as all their followers. 

 Capt. John Smith said of the Virginia indians, ' They of Accawmack 



