194112-DesertMagazin.. - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

Holding the flake tightly in my left
hand I pressed the bone against its edge at
a certain angle—and pushed. Flick! Off
sprang a little flake like a fish scale. Then
I pressed off another and another, removing
a little more flint here, a little less
there. Then I turned the flake over and
worked from the other side. In 10 minutes
I had a little leaf-shaped arrowhead.
My friend was fascinated.
"That's fine, as far as it goes," he admitted.
"But don't ye reckon the durn
thing needs a neck on it?"
"Just watch me." I picked up a thinner
splinter of bone and ground the tip on a
bit of sandstone until it suited me. Then
taking my arrowhead I started in to press
off still finer flakes, first on one side of
the base, then the other. In a few minutes
I had made a stem; the completed product
differing not at all from the ancient
arrowheads spread out on my paper. I
presented it to my visitor.
The old man studied it as it lay in the
palm of his hand. Finally he turned to me.
"A feller cain't git too old to larn
something new!" he chuckled. "How
about lettin' me have that hammer-rock
and that bone o' yourn, also a hunk o' that
flint-rock? I aim to show my folks somethin'!"
After he had left I took out my pocket
knife and picked a lot of tiny flint flakes
out of my left hand, then I had to look for
the iodine bottle. When I have time to
prepare, I always protect my hand with a
bit of buckskin and put a wooden handle
on my bone flaking-tool—things which
the Indian flint-worker usually did.
Of course there were variations in detail;
but those two main processes, which
the archaeologist calls "percussion," or
the use of the hammer; and "pressure," or
the use of the flaking tool, were about the
same from the Eskimo of Alaska to the
Ona Indians near the south tip of South
America.
Every Indian I have seen making arrowheads—and
there are still some who know
the art—employ the same methods; although
today they may use a rusty nail instead
of a bone-flaking tool. Written accounts
of eye-witnesses, beginning with
Captain John Smith of Virginia, tell the
identical story.
Smith wrote: "His arrow head he
quickly maketh with a little bone, which
he ever weareth at his bracer, of any splint
of stone, or glasse in the forme of a hart;
and these they glew to the end of their
arrowes." This was in the year 1609!
Even white men who have learned flint
working—and a few can rival the Indian
—use the processes I have described; although
sometimes with different tools and
the use of a vise to hold large pieces.
These large pieces offered problems to
the ancient flint-worker as well. In the first
place flakes or chunks large enough for a
good sized knife-blade or spear head are
too thick to be worked by simple pressure
First line—four stages in the making of an arrowhead.
Second line—Three common types of point.
Bone awl used as a flaker in the making of points.
Flint implements in Southwest Museum. Top, left to right—bird point; an ordinary
arrowhead. Lower roiv, left to right—Atlatl dart point; spearhead; knife blade.
DECEMBER, 1941 11