544 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 187 



set with sharp stones more likely to have been of flint than anything 

 else (Smith, John, Tyler ed., 1907, p. 14). It is rather remarkable 

 that the only description of anything similar is in Garcilaso's account 

 of the images about the door of the temple of Talimeco. Two of 

 these are said to have been armed with "copper axes, the edges of 

 which are of flint" (Garcilaso, 1723, pp. 130-137). Axes and swords 

 are not precisely the same, but the two weapons have suggestive 

 parallels in the arming of their edges. 



No early writer has left us a description of flint chipping as prac- 

 ticed by the Gulf tribes. Writing in the eighteenth century, Adair 

 says: 



The Indians, by reason of onr supplying them so cheap with every sort of 

 goods, have forgotten the chief part of their ancient mechanical skill, so as 

 not to be able now, at least for some years, to live independent of us. (Adair, 

 1775, p. 424.) 



And the flint industry was one of the first of these to disappear, 

 flint being unable to compete with iron for any of the uses to which 

 it was put, except in the one particular of kindling fire and this, 

 curiously enough, was one of the things that came in with the whites 

 instead of giving way before them. Our lack of knowledge of flint 

 chipping as carried on here is therefore little surprising, but there is 

 no indication that it differed appreciably from the technique farther 

 north, where it has been studied under better auspices. 



Lance and spear points and drills were also made of flint, as well 

 as knives. The Alabama called the old-time knife tco'kfi ima'ksale 

 (rabbit flint) because it was made of this stone. Knives were also 

 made of a certain kind of cane split into sections of suitable size. 

 Adair (1775, p. 410) states that in his time the Indians resorted to 

 cane knives in flaying wild animals when they were out hunting 

 and had had the misfortune to lose their steel knives. 



AXES 



Adair says that the stone axes of the Chickasaw 



in form commonly resembled a smith's chisel. Each weighed from one to two, 

 or three pounds weight — They were made of a flinty kind of stone : I have seen 

 several, which chanced to escape being buried with their owners, and were 

 carefully preserved by the old people, as respectable remains of antiquity. 

 They twisted two or three tough hiccory slips, of about two feet long, round 

 the notched head of the axe; and by this simple and obvious invention, they 

 deadened the trees by cutting through the bark, and burned them, when they 

 either fell by decay, or became thoroughly dry. (Adair, 1775, p. 405.) 



To make planks they merely indented the section of a tree at one 

 end and then split it "with a maul and hard wooden wedges" (Adair, 

 1775, p. 419). 



A Natchez informant told me that he had seen a stone axe hafted 

 upon a split stick which was fastened about a groove in the axe. 



