SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 575 



the ends of the cane arrows might sometimes have been hardened by 

 putting them in the fire, but he did not know personally of its hav- 

 ing been done. For shafts they sometimes used hickory and some- 

 times young shoots of the red dogwood obtained in the bottoms in 

 Oklahoma. Two or three feathers, most often those of young tur- 

 keys, though the kind mattered little, were fastened to the shaft by 

 means of a glue obtained from deer antlers. 



An Alabama informant said that his people made arrow shafts of 

 cane or of wood from several different kinds of bushes and trees, one 

 of which was the black haw. The points were sometimes hardened 

 in the fire and sometimes made of pieces of iron or tin. He did not 

 know what arrow points were made of before they had metals of 

 European origin. The shafts were feathered either in two places, 

 on opposite sides of the shaft, or else in three places, at equal in- 

 tervals around its circumference. No poison was used (author's 

 notes). 



William Bartram noted that the Florida Creeks pointed their 

 arrows with the scales of the "great brown spotted gar" (Bartram, 

 1792, p. 174), perhaps the sharp fish bones which Elvas and Spark 

 had noted so many years before. Use of shell in the manufacture 

 of arrow points has been assumed by some writers, but I find no 

 reference in the literature as applying to Florida. 



Our descriptions of the arrows in use on the lower Mississippi are 

 not very good. Du Pratz states that the Natchez made them of the 

 wood from a tree called by the name of the arrow "which is very 

 hard." He adds, "The points are put into the fire to harden," but 

 this was not the only type of arrow point in use, for those intended 

 for bison or deer were provided with great splinters of bone adjusted 

 in the split end of the arrow shaft, the cleft and the casing being 

 bound with splints of feathers and the whole soaked in fish glue. 

 War arrows were ordinarily armed with the scales of the garfish 

 fixed in place in the same manner, while arrows intended for large 

 fish such as the carp, sucker, or catfish, were merely provided with 

 a bone pointed at both ends "so that the first pierces and makes an 

 entrance for the arrow, and the other end, which stands out from the 

 wood, prevents the arrow from falling out of the fish's body." This 

 arrow was also attached by a cord to a wooden float which prevented 

 the fish from diving to the bottom or becoming lost. Besides the use 

 or arrowwood, shafts were made of cane (Le Page du Pratz, 1758, 

 vol. 2, pp. 167-168; Swanton, 1911, pp. 58-59). The feathers were 

 fastened in place by fish glue, or as noted above, of a glue made 

 from deer horn. Glue was also obtained from bison hoofs (Morfi, 

 1935, p. 67). 



There are some few suggestions that arrows may occasionally have 

 been poisoned. Du Pratz states that a certain creeper was known 



