Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Indian Artifacts - Volume II

With our present heat wave, the chore level has slowed a bit. Grass is just sitting there and next winter's wood is in. With some vacant time yesterday, I went out in the shade and hammered out 3 or 4 points and roughed out a couple bifaces that I'll work down later. I'd forgotten how relaxing and mind emptying that endeavor can be. Skills were a bit rusty as was my patience. Will put up a pic or two when I accumulate a few more. Going out for a snail paced camping trip late this week and into the weekend, so I'll have time to bang away on a few rocks. Exhausted my supply of good obsidian, and I'm heading out shortly to gather a bucket full.

Have a good one, and do look down once in a while,

I have an Osage Orange (Bois D Arc) bow and a few arrows.

Spoke with a professor in San Angelo about a point I'd found. He indicted that "generally speaking," crude points were newer in age than really artistically made points. His reasoning was that in native American cultures, there might only be one or two really good knappers in a village and the rest of the village traded meat and goods for his points. Once steel became available from trade with whites, knapping sort of went by the wayside and the really crude looking points were cobbled together by hunters who weren't really good at it, but needed something to put at the end of an arrow in a hurry. He also suggested that often times really crude looking points were burial artifacts. They were rough shaped with the belief that the brave would need something quick in the afterlife. They didn't take the time to spruce up the points and knives they left for him.

Don't know if his theory is correct or not.

My thoughts are those that lived a relatively easy life had time to be a bit artistic. I.e plains locales, along the Columbia with abundant salmon, and here in Oregon those around Klamath Lake and the river. The Paiute tribe that lived out in Oregon's desert has to work hard for a living and didn't invest too much in the arts.

Nice work up there Butchlambert1. What's the shaft material?

I don't know. The fellow showed me a rock with a hole in it. He pushed the shaft through for the final shape. He was feom SE Okla., but I met him when he lived in Blossom, Texas.
I have quite a lot of beadwork from my Uncle Jonesy, We are Choctaw. Jonesy was a bead worker and fancy dancer.

About all that shows up in areas I have access to, after a good rain, are pottery shards and flint chips. Yesterday after a hard rain on a plowed field, I picked up the first whole point I've found in years. It is also the smallest point I've ever found. The picture shows it sitting on a penny.

That is tiny indeed, and it's not easy material to work at that scale.

I will have some time on a camping/fishing trip this weekend and hope to bang out a few obsidian points. Knocked out 4 or 5 last evening. A little frustrating though as I had about a 5 inch point 95% complete and snapped it in half. Fortunately, I'm not paid by the hour.

I've never made a point that small or even tried. I might have to see what it is like to work one that small.

Plains Indians used those small points quite a bit.

Harrell, Toyah, Garza, Perdiz points that small are pretty common.

Excellent workmanship in those.

People call them "bird points", but in reality, they hunted buffalo a men with them. Those are the true arrowheads.

Check out the one in the middle. Came out of a cliff shelter either on the Pedernales, or one of its adjoining creeks in Blanco county. ( Before the war).

I have enjoyed looking at the points that Huntsman22 posts and understand that they are likely the real "arrowhead". I guess the larger "arrowheads" that are found around here are much more likely to be blades or dart points. They are way too heavy and thick to be an actual arrowhead.
I have used a flint point hunting a few times and even with a modern bow the head needs to be very light to be at all practical. I shot this point through the chest of an 8 point white tail deer. The arrow penetrated completely and the arrowhead suffered no damage at all. I was amazed. It is only about 1/8th inch thick. While I made this arrowhead myself, it is about the size of the smallest point I had ever found prior to the point I showed above.

I have only searched for Indian arrowheads for a minute. We were hiking while coyote hunting. I looked down and said there should be an arrowhead here somewhere.

Correct!

The artifacts that myself and renegade50 no longer post pics of are late paleo to middle archaic to late-archaic periods. All darts, blade, atl-atl points. 3500bc- to 9000BC.

But some of the Big Sandy side-notch points and smaller Kirks c.n. are in the 'small' to 1" range. Those were slung not with a bow. They were used on eastern buffalo, elk, possibly ground sloth, deer, and other Halocene fauna. Mega-fauna were practically zero'd out by tail end of the post glacial p.

It's believed the bow wasnt adapted/discovered/adopted till about 800 AD.

My thoughts are that outside of ceremonial pieces from the Mississippian Era peoples, everyday flint fare from that period is simply ho-hum at best.

When people find out that I knap arrowheads, they always want to show me the one they just found. I appreciate seeing all the found points because I can learn something from every one, but most don't believe me when I tell them that what they found isn't an arrowhead. I see where mistakes were made that I have made thousands of times myself and where faults in the stone caused problems for the knapper that had to be frustrating.

Those guys were mostly making tools that just needed to be serviceable and I imagine that it didn't take them long to knock one out. Seems most people that show me a point ask if I can beat that point. I can, but that native american didn't know we were in a race and he didn't have the materials to work with that I have either. I'd hate to go toe to toe with one of those guys using his tools and materials. He would beat me like a rented mule.

Slumlord, I've watched your posts and the pictures you show of the points on the ground prior to picking them up are fascinating. I'd never think to take a picture, I'd just grab it! I don't know where in TN you hunt, but in some of the pictures the land looks a lot like the soil a cousin of mine has on his place near the Harpeth River just outside Franklin. He wouldn't know an artifact if he stepped on it and it stuck in his foot. I've been wanting to go up and see if I can find a some of the grey stone used in that area.

Kaywoodie

Did everything in your display come from Texas? Looks identical to the artifacts that I have found here in southwest Missouri. Nice display. GW

Mathsr
Gray stone?
Are we talking Dover Flint?

Yes sir, all from either Travis or Blanco co Texas.

Kaywoodie, that little sharp bastard in the middle adds a new meaning to the word pain. I'd hate to have that little bastard driven into my chest or back. powdr

I'm not sure what the name of it is. Seems to show up a lot in points found in TN by Slumlord. He had a few posts a while back about heat treating nodules found in TN and I think that is what it was. It's grey, smooth and almost wet looking. Looks very clean compared to the butterscotch flint I've seen from GA. If it is called Dover Flint, that will give me a starting point. Thanks!

Went out and picked up some raw materials last week and had some fabrication time on a camping/fishing trip over the weekend.

That is a Pepsi cap for scale. Cookie has not given me my weekly allowance yet, so there were no quarters to be had. Diameter on the cap is about 1 and 1/8"

Have a good one,