$2 Field and Forest Rambles. 



following method, and even laughed to scorn the idea of such 

 very finely chipped edges as of fig. 2 having been done by 

 pieces of bone, and it was no use attempting to persuade them. 

 Nevertheless the probabilities are, that as at the present day, 

 among the Pitt River Indians of California, the same custom 

 was more or less prevalent among the eastern races. Of the 

 former, Lieutenant E. G. Beckwith, of the U. S. Army,* 

 says : — 



" One of them seated himself near me, and made from a 

 fragment of quartz, with a simple piece of round bone, one 

 end of which was semi-spherical, with a small crease in it (as 

 if worn by a thread) the sixteenth of an inch in depth, an 

 arrow-head, which was very sharp and piercing, and such as 

 they use on all their arrows. The skill and rapidity with 

 which it was made, without a blow, but by simply breaking 

 the sharp edges with the creased bone by the strength of his 

 hands — for the crease merely served to prevent the instrument 

 from slipping, affording no leverage — was remarkable." 



Although flint seems to have been always preferred when 

 readily procurable, inasmuch as the most perfectly shaped 

 and artistic weapons, at all events, that I have seen, were 

 made therefrom; nevertheless there were many hatchets of 

 soft friable sandstone, with a shallow groove near the heel, 

 the wedge-shaped extremity indicating some use distinctly 

 different from that of a hatchet ; perhaps they were war 

 implements, or used in felling deer in deep snow : the latter 

 custom, as will be shown in the sequel, is still in vogue and 

 extensively pursued by both natives and Europeans, in spite 

 of an Act of Parliament prohibiting the barbarous practice. 

 Talking of the Sioux Indians of the Upper Missouri and 

 Minnesota Rivers, Dr. Muller-f" remarks: "Arrows of the 



* ''Report of Explorations for a Route for the Pacific Railroad," vol. ii., 

 p. 43 of 2nd Report. 



t Page 6i, " Report of Surgical Cases treated in the Army of the United 

 States from 1865 to 1871." Washington. 



