674 How our Ancestors in the Stone Age, Etc. (November, 
flakes from the large piece of obsidian and chip one of them into 
the arrowhead. A younger man, equally expert, would probably 
have done the work in half an hour. When I came to the pur- 
chase of the arrowhead and flake, I found they would cost seventy- 
five cents, payable in shells, Dentalium entalis, which he esteemed 
more highly than their value in money. The worth of the flake 
and arrowhead was not based upon the time or labor employed, 
but upon the value of the obsidian, as he offered for a dollar’s 
worth of shells to give me ten arrowheads of the same shape and 
size made from the bottoms of glass ale bottles. 
The celts, knives, chisels and scrapers of the stone age are all 
much simpler and more easy of manufacture than these semi- 
barbed arrowheads. 
I doubt if stone hammers were used in their manufacture other 
than to split off the flakes from a large piece of flint or obsidian, 
and when thus used the blow was communicated through the 
split deer horn or a piece of hard wood in the manner I have 
described. The blow from a stone hammer direct on the flint or 
obsidian would be very uncertain in its results even in the most 
skillful and practiced hands. With the split deer horn the thick- 
ness of the flake and probable length could be determined with 
tolerable accuracy. Probably large chips could be broken from 
the edge of a flake by a slot in the end of a deer horn as is now 
practiced by the natives of Alaska with a walrus tusk, used as I 
have seen window glass broken with a key, but an aroun is 
too small and delicate for either operation. 
I cannot but believe that our prehistoric ancestors in ilie stone 
age used the same processes as were followed by Consolulu, and 
that in describing what he did I have told how the remote ances- 
tor of 
“ The ancient arrow maker 
Made his arrowheads of sandstone 
Arrowheads of chalcedony 
Arrowheads of flint and jasper 
Smooth and sharpened at the edges 
Hard and polished keen and costly.” 
