SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHE ASTERN UNITED STATES 571 



BOWS AND ARROWS 



Elvas describes the bows of the Floridiaiis as "very long," but 

 does not undertake to identify the wood of which they were made. 

 He is more detailed regarding the arrows, however. 



The arrows are made of certain reeds, like canes, very heavy, and so tough 

 that a sharpened cane passes through a shield. Some are pointed with a fish 

 bone, as sharp as an awl, and others with a certain stone like a diamond 

 point. (Robertson, 1933, p. 37.) 



Garcilaso thus describes the arrows belonging to a certain Cofita- 

 chequi chief : 



They were all made of reeds; some had heads made of the points of deers' 

 antlers finished to extreme perfection with four corners like the points of a 

 diamond; others had fish-bones for heads, marvelously fashioned for use as 

 arrows. There were others with heads of palm wood and of other strong 

 and durable timber that grows in that country. These arrow-heads had two 

 or three barbs as perfectly made in the wood as if they had been of iron 

 or steel. (Garcilaso, 1723, pp. 408-409.) 



One of the several pairs of human figures at the door of the temple 

 of Talomeco held bows and arrows, and one of the latter was pointed 

 with "the tip of a deer antler carved into four points," while "the 

 other arrow had a flint point for a head, the same shape and size 

 as an ordinary dagger" (Garcilaso, 1723, p. 425). In speaking of the 

 arrows in the armory nearby, Garcilaso seems to give us a clue as to 

 their shapes. 



For arrowheads they used points of wood, of the bones of land and sea animals, 

 and of flint, as we told in connection with the Indian noble who killed himself. 

 Besides these kinds of arrowheads made of copper, such as those which we put on 

 darts in Spain, there were others with harpoons, also made of copper, and in the 

 form of small chisels, lances, and Moorish darts, which looked as if they had been 

 made in Castile. They noted also that the arrows with flint tips had different 

 kinds of heads; some were in the form of a harpoon, others of small chisels, 

 others were rounded like a punch, and others had two edges like the tip of a 

 dagger. The Spaniards examined all these curiously and wondered that they 

 could fashion such things out of a material as resistant as flint, though in view 

 of what Mexican history says about the broadswords and other arms which the 

 Indians of that land made of flint, a part of this wonderment of ours will be lost. 

 The bows were handsomely made and enameled in various colors, which they did 

 with a certain cement that gives them such a luster that one can see himself in 

 them. . . . Not satisfied with this lustrous finish, they put on the bows many 

 circles of ordinary pearls and seed pearls placed at intervals, these circles or 

 rings beginning at the handles and going in order to the tips in such manner that 

 the first circles were of large pearls and made seven or eight turns, the second 

 were of smaller pearls and had fewer turns, and thus they went on decreasing 

 to the last ones, which were near the tips and were very small seed pearls. The 

 arrows also had circles of seed pearls at intervals, but not of [the larger] pearls, 

 there being seed pearls only. (Garcilaso, 1723, pp. 433--434.) 



A little later we have information regarding Florida arrows from the 

 French and English chroniclers. Eibault and Spark both say that the 



