By means of a knife the bark was scraped off, and sometimes sufficient of the wood to reduce the diameter to the required size-ordinarily three-eighths of an inch. If no pieces of glass were at hand, a piece of sandstone was sometimes taken to further reduce the roughness of the shaft, and then fine sand was placed in a piece of blanket or buckskin and employed as sandpaper is used. In some instances flat pieces of bone with rounded notches on the edge, or even holes of the diameter required for the shaftment, were used for further smoothing and rounding. The stick was then cut to the required length, varying from 22 to 23 inches. A cut was then made with a small saw, or a knife blade filed into a saw, at one end of the shaft to receive the tang of the arrowhead, the FIG. 50-Apache iron point. incision being from one-half to three-fourths of an inch in depth. Then the other end of the shaftment was gradually tapered for about 3 inches, to within one-fourth of an inch of the end, which bulb or nock was left expanding, with a square parallel sided, or probably sometimes an angular notch at the end. The arrow tang was inserted and carefully wrapped with a thin, flat band of sinew (figure 50), which was then smoothed down with glue to insure adhesion. When dry, the creases, of which there were three, were made to extend from the sinew straight down the shaftment for 10 or 11 inches (plate XXXI, b). These creases were made with a sharp-pointed piece of iron-the end of a broken blade-or a piece of glass, and is believed to permit the discharge of blood from the wound. The feathers FIG. 51-Arrowshaft showing mode of feathering. having been prepared are next attached lengthwise, beginning where the creases cease and extending back to the nock. Only the top and bottom of the feathers are touched with glue, the intervening portion of the length of each being free and detached. Sinew fibers are then wrapped around the shaftment to hold down the ends of the featherseach end being about an inch long, from which the web has been removed-and the glue stick applied to fasten them. The feathers are equidistant around the shaftment (figure 51). There is another step in arrow-making, which is seldom taken in the manufacture of arrows in North America. To prevent the detached portions of the feathers from being forcibly or accidentally torn from the shaftment, a sinew thread, not thicker than a strand of silk, is tied horizontally around the feathers and shaftment midway between the glued ends. As a finishing touch, the creases are tinted with color bought of the trader, while additional marks are placed on that portion of the shaftment exposed between the feathers. The specimens of arrows before me, made by the Menomini, have each five spots of dark blue placed at intervals of an inch or so along each of the three sides. A blue band also is painted around the shaftment at the forward end of the feathered tips, while sometimes an additional band is found around the end which touches the nock. The various northwestern tribes of the Algonquian stock were careful in specifically decorating with colors their own individual arrows, by which means they were recognizable by others of the band of which the owner was a member. Duplications were common, but it is claimed that even then each person could readily recognize his own property. These property marks, being generally known, were sometimes the cause of serious trouble; for instance, when one Indian would steal the arrows of another for the purpose of destroying an enemy, the friends of the latter ultimately ascertained the identity of the owner of the arrows and avenged the death, the true criminal remaining unknown. Intertribal warfare is known to have occurred through such means between the Arapaho and Sioux, and between the Sioux and the confederated tribes at Fort Berthold, North Dakota; and the Apache and other tribes of the far southwest are reported to have obtained the arrows of neighboring Indians to use in attacks on outlying settlements of the whites, thus causing the raid to be attributed to another and possibly peaceable tribe. In his report on "North American bows, arrows, and quivers," Professor Otis T. Mason refers to the statement frequently made by frontiersmen that the plains Indians had two ways of mounting an arrowhead with relation to the notch at the nock. "If the plane of the arrowhead be horizontal when the arrow is in position for shooting—that is, at right angles to the notch-the missile is a war arrow, to go between the ribs of men. But if the plane of the head be vertical when the bow is drawn, the missile is a hunting-arrow for passing between the ribs of buffalo and other mammals.1 Colonel Richard I. Dodge, in speaking of the Comanche, has fallen into the same error. Captain John G. Bourke, of the United States Army, whose active experience in the southwest, especially among the Apache tribes of Arizona, entitles his opinion to high consideration, believes this to be a mistake, and remarks that he has seen all kinds of arrows in the same quiver. 3 1 Smithsonian Report for 1893, Washington, 1894, p. 661. 2 Wild Indians, Hartford, 1890, p. 419. 3 Quoted by Professor Mason, op. cit., p. 661. |