Gatlin2 thus describes the Apache mode of making flint arrowpoints:
Like most of the tribes west of and in the Rocky Mountains they manufacture the blades of their spears and points for their arrows of flints, and also of obsidian, which is scattered over those volcanic regions west of the mountains; and, like other tribes, they guard as a profound secret the mode by which the flints and obsidian are broken into the shapes they require. * * *
Every tribe has its factory in which these arrowheads are made, and in those only certain adepts are able or allowed to make them for the use of the tribe. Erratic bowlders of flint are collected (and sometimes brought an immense distance) and broken with a sort of sledge hammer made of a rounded pebble of hornstone set in a twisted withe, holding the stone and forming a handle. * * * The master workman, seated on the ground, lays one of these flakes on the palm of his left hand, holding it firmly down with two or more lingers of the same hand, and with his right hand, between the thumb and two forefingers, places his chisel (or punch) on the point that is to be broken off; and a cooperator (a striker) sitting in front of him, with a mallet of very hard wood, strikes the chisel (or punch) on the upper end, flaking the flint off on the under side, below each projecting point that is struck. The flint is then turned and chipped in the same manner from the opposite side; and so turned and chipped until the required shape and dimensions are obtained, all fractures being made on the palm of the hand.
In selecting a flake for the arrowhead a nice judgment must be used, or the attempt will fail. A flake with two opposite parallel, or nearly parallel, planes is found, and of the thickness required for the center of the arrowpoint. The first chipping reaches near to the center of these planes, but without quite breaking it away, and each chipping is shorter and shorter, until the shape and the edge of the arrowpoint are formed.
The yielding elasticity of the palm of the hand enables the chip to come off without breaking the body of the flint, which would be the case if they were broken on a hard substance. These people have no metallic instruments to work with, and the instrument (punch) which they use I was told was a piece of bone; but on examining it I found it to be a substance much harder, made of the tooth (incisor) of the sperm whale or sea lion, which are often stranded on the coast of the Pacific. This punch is about 6 or 7 inches in length and 1 inch in diameter, with one rounded side and two plane sides, therefore presenting one acute and two obtuse angles to suit the points to be broken.
This operation is very curious, both the holder and the striker singing, and the strokes of the mallet given exactly in time with the music, and with a sharp and rebounding blow, in which, the Indians tell us, is the great medicine (or mystery) of the operation.
To Catlin’s description Mr. Stevens1 makes the following approving criticism:
What Catlin has said with regard to a rebounding blow is perfectly true; it is impossible to flake flint with a dull, heavy, smashing blow; it is the measured and rebounding blow—a shock rather than a blow—which, given with judgment, enables the material to take its own line of cleavage, and produces what is so well known as the conchoidal fracture, resulting from human skill, that distinguishes the mere splinter of flint from the flint flake; and it is the repetition of this operation twenty or thirty times around the edges of those flint implements found in the drift that stamps them as proofs of human handiwork.
Admiral Sir E. Belcher2 gives an account of the manufacture of flint arrowpoints by the western Eskimo tribes at and north of Icy Cape, as follows:
But to the process which they pursue in effecting the fine, regular, serrated edges of their flint arrowheads.
Possibly, had I not witnessed the operation and had been at the time one of the first Europeans with whom they ever had communication, the idea would have remained undisputed that they owed their formation to the stroke of the hammer. Being a working amateur mechanic myself, and having practiced in a very similar manner on glass with a penny piece in 1815, I was not at all surprised at witnessing the modus operandi. Selecting a log of wood in which a spoon-shaped cavity was cut, they placed the splinter to be worked over it, and by pressing gently along the margin vertically, first on one side and then on the other, as one would set a saw, they splintered off alternate fragments until the object thus properly outlined presented the spear or arrowhead form, with two cutting serrated edges.
But let us revert to this instrument for the use of which the untaught would never imagine a purpose, and which, I suspect, was not witnessed or deemed worthy of notice by any other individual of the expedition.
First, this instrument has a graceful outline. The handle is of fine fossil ivory. That would be too soft to deal with the flint or chert in the manner required. But they discovered that the point of the deer horn is harder and also more stubborn; therefore, in a slit, like lead in our pencils, they introduced a slip of this substance and secured it by a strong thong, put on wet, but which on drying became very rigid. Here we can not fail to trace ingenuity, ability, and a view to ornament. It is the point of the deer horn which, refusing to yield, drives off the fine conchoidal splinters from the chert. [See figs. 68–74].
I can not here omit remarking that the very same process is pursued by the Indians of Mexican origin in California with the obsidian points for their arrows; and also in the North and South Pacific—at Sandwich Islands (21° north), and Tahiti (18° south)—39 degrees or 2,340 miles asunder—similar indentations or chippings are carried out in forming their axes from basaltic lava, but probably performed in the latter instances with stone hammers. I myself witnessed at the convent of Monterey the captured Indians forming their arrowheads out of obsidian similarly to the mode practiced by the Eskimos.
Schoolcraft3 thus describes the mode of making flint arrowpoints by the North American Indians:
The skill displayed in this art, as it is by the tribes of the entire continent, has excited admiration. The material employed is generally some form of hornstone, sometimes passing into flint. This mineral is often called chert by the English mineralogists. No specimens have, however, been observed where the substance is gunflint. This hornstone is less hard than common quartz, and can readily be broken by contact with the latter. Experience has taught the Indian that some varieties of hornstone are less easily and regularly fractured than others, and that the tendency to a conchoidal fracture is to be relied on in the softer varieties. It has also shown him that the weathered or surface fragments are harder and less manageable than those quarried from the rocks and mountains.
To break them, he seats himself on the ground, and holds the lump on one of his thighs, interposing some hard substance below it. When the blow is given, there is a sufficient yielding in the piece to be fractured not to endanger its being shivered into fragments. Many are, however, lost. After the lump has been broken transversely it requires great skill and patience to chip the edges. Such is the art required in this business, both in selecting and fracturing the stones, that it is found to be the employment of particular men, generally old men, who are laid aside from hunting, to make arrow and spear heads.
The modern manufacture of obsidian arrowpoints by the Indians of California is thus described by an eyewitness:1
The Indian seated himself on the floor and, laying the stone anvil upon his knee, with one blow of his agate chisel he separated the obsidian pebble into two parts; then giving a blow to the fractured side he split off a slab a quarter of an inch in thickness. Holding the piece against his anvil with the thumb and fìnger of his left hand, he commenced a series of continuous blows, every one of which chipped off fragments of the brittle substance. It gradually seemed to acquire shape. After finishing the base of the arrowhead (the whole being little over an inch in length) he began by striking gentle blows, every one of which I expected would break it into pieces. Yet such was his adroit application, his skill, and dexterity, that in little over an hour he produced a perfect obsidian arrowhead.
I then requested him to carve one from the remains of a broken bottle, which, after two failures, he succeeded in doing. He gave as a reason for his ill success that he did not understand the grain of the glass. No sculptor ever handled a chisel with greater precision, or more carefully measured the weight and effect of every blow, than did this ingenious Indian; for even among them arrow making is a distinct profession, in which few attain excellence. In a moment all I had read of the hardening of copper for the working of flint axes, etc., vanished before the simplest mechanical process.
Mr. T. R. Peale of the scientific corps of the United States Exploring Expedition, witnessed the making of arrowpoints among the Shasta and northern California Indians. He says that the flakes were struck off from the mass of jasper, agate, or chalcedony, by a blow with a round-faced stone, and that the edges were chipped by the application of a notch in a piece of horn, as a glazier chips glass. The notches in the horn tool were of different size and depths, in order to suit the work to be done.2
Every American collector, as well as archæologist, has read John Smith’s description of the making of arrowpoints by the Virginia Indians.3
His arrowhead he quickly maketh with a little bone, which he ever weareth at his bracer, of a splint of a stone or glasse in the form of a heart, and these they glew to the end of their arrowes.
Torquemada1 says:
They had, and still have, workmen who make knives of a certain black stone or flint, which it is a most wonderful and admirable thing to see them make out of the stone; and the ingenuity which invented this art is much to be praised. They are made and got out of the stone (if one can explain it) in this manner: One of these Indian workmen sits down upon the ground and takes a piece of this black stone, which is like jet, and hard as flint, and is a stone which might be called precious, more beautiful and brilliant than alabaster or jasper, so much so that of it are made tablets and mirrors. The piece they take is about 8 inches long, or rather more, and as thick as one’s leg or rather less, and cylindrical. They have a stick as large as the shaft of a lance, and 3 cubits, or rather more, in length, and at the end of it they fasten firmly another piece of wood 8 inches long, to give more weight to this part, then pressing their naked feet together, they hold the stones as with a pair of pincers or the vise of a carpenter’s bench. They take the stick (which is cut off smooth at the end) with both hands, and set it well home against the edge of the front of the stone, which also is cut smooth in that part; and then they press it against their breast, and with the force of the pressure there flies off a knife, with its point and edge on each side, as neatly as if one were to make them of a turnip with a sharp knife, or of iron in the fire. Then they sharpen it on a stone, using a hone to give it a very fine edge; and in a very short time these workmen will make more than 20 knives in the aforesaid manner. They come out of the same shape as our barbers’ lancets, except that they have a rib up the middle, and have a slight graceful curve toward the point. They will cut and shave the hair the first time they are used, at the first cut nearly as well as a steel razor, but they lose their edge at the second cut; and so to finish shaving one’s beard or hair, one after another has to be used; though indeed they are cheap, and spoiling them is of no consequence. Many Spaniards, both regular and secular clergy, have been shaved with them, especially at the beginning of the colonization of these realms, when there was no such abundance as now of the necessary instruments and people who gain their livelihood by practicing this occupation. But I conclude by saying that it is an admirable thing to see them made, and no small argument for the capacity of the men who found out such an invention.
Tylor2 says:
Hernandez gives a similar account of the process. He compares the wooden instrument used to a crossbow. It was evidently a T-shaped implement, and the workman held the crosspiece with his two hands against his breast, while the end of the straight stick rested on the stone. He furthermore gives a description of the making of the well known maquahuitl, or Aztec war club, which was armed on both sides with a row of obsidian knives, or teeth, stuck into holes with a kind of gum. With this instrument, he says, a man could be cut in half at a blow—an absurd statement which has been repeated by more modern writers.