FLINT KNTVES. 59 



Flint knives. — Among the earliest wants, of savage man, and the most 

 necessary to his very existence, is a cutting implement. Nothing in the way 

 of clothing could well be made without some means of cutting the skins that 

 were used, and a carcass could scarcely be made available for food until first 

 disjointed and reduced to pieces of convenient size by the help of some kind 

 of cutting tool. Almost any splinter of stone may be used, but the savage 

 would be quick to discern a great difference in the value of chance splinters, 

 some being almost worthless, while others were all his needs required, and, 

 we now frequently find chance fragments of flinty stone that bear abundant 

 evidence that they were long used as knives; but the finding of such stones 

 at the moment a cutting implement was required was far too uncertain, and 

 based upon their more primitive experience as to the relative values of cer- 

 tain stones with reference to their retention of sharp edges, artificially 

 chipped flint knives were largely made, as we now know from their great 

 numbers in every locality where stone implements of any description are 

 found. 



The specimens, therefore, that are here brought together, although from 

 one locality, are of every variety of shape; and while some of them were, 

 undoubtedly, solely used as knives, others pass imperceptibly on the one 

 hand into typical arrowpoints, and on the other into scrapers. In endeav- 

 oring to distinguish between simple cutting tools and arrowpoints, it must 

 be borne in mind that while one well-chipped knife would meet the savage 

 man's requirements for a long time, he would need a great many arrow- 

 points either in hunting or warfare, and this, I think, renders it very probable 

 that by far the larger part of all small chipped flints, if acutely pointed, were 

 used as arrowheads. The circumstances, too, under which these several 

 forms are met with in the Eastern States certainly favor this view; the 

 rude, or knife-shaped arrowpoints being scattered over the whole country, 

 while typical knives, i, e., chipped flints not practicable to be used as arrow- 

 points, are met with usually in situations that from other circumstances are 

 easily recognized as the sites of aboriginal villages. 



Plate IV represents a beautiful series of flint knives,* the blades of 

 which are available as heads of arrows and spears. Either entire or broken, 



"Fig, 8 is one with an iron blade, for comparison, 



