Indian arrow tips for flintlocks

[Eric Krewson]

Interesting that this topic came up; I was walking in one of the local public land areas a couple of days ago. This area has more flint in it than any place I have ever been, nodules as big as a car hood are in the creek, the bedrock of the creek is solid flint as well.

Naturally there are flint chips littering the hiking trails, in some places they are solid from the flint factories of NAs in the past.

I looked down on the and saw a flake that I thought would make a gun flint so I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I got home and noticed the edge had been sharpened, my flint chip was a knife. I have found dozens of similar ones, all perfectly shaped to fit ergonomically in one's hand.

 

[Nativearizonan]

I can't seem to go for a walk without finding a decent cast away stone skinning tool. Sometimes stone draw knife like shapes for working wood down, sometimes stone drills, grinding stones pieces (metates and manos). Most people recognize and pick up arrowheads, even though it is illegal, but they don't recognize all the other stone tools laying around. I leave them where I found them.

Lithic scatters are common place, where folks set around and chipped their rocks. Quarry sites are common as well, where good rocks are found, and they would bust them up and just take the best pieces with them.

I've never gotten a piece of Arizona local chert or obsidian to spark as good as the flints you buy. It's hard enough to get your flintlock to spark or start a fire without handicapping yourself even further. I buy flints instead of using local. In a survival situation, I would use local stone before I gave up, though, that is for certain.

 

[necchi]

I got home and noticed the edge had been sharpened, my flint chip was a knife

I'm sorry, but flint cleaves naturally to a sharp edge,, it doesn't have to be re-worked to achieve a cutting edge.
Take a large nodule of flint, hold it over your head and slam it down on another rock,, there will be many pieces that will have a sharp edge.
Yes that natural shape and sharp edge can of course be used as a tool
But a sharp edge on any piece of flint does not automatically make it an historical artifact that was used by ancient man.
What you most likely found was a rock.

 

[smoothshooter]

I never thought English flints were cheap.

The broken arrowheads are really not worth anything unless you have the rear part and it has some unusual type of barbs or something.

I have used broken arrowhead pieces off and on for years, and they work great.
They need to be of the type that is from the flint or chert family of rocks to make decent sparks. They can be white, blue, gray, or any combination of the above.

 

[smoothshooter]

As far as I know, all the flint / chert east of the Mississippi sparks great.
West of the Mississippi is hit or miss.

 

[smoothshooter]

I do that sometimes.
The flint and chert rocks are all around here, in many areas in niusance quantities.
I could pick up a 5 gallon bucket full of fist-sized ones in about 5 minutes ( or less ).

 

[smoothshooter]

Let the tribe find their own.
Will give them something to do, in some cases.

No way of telling which tribe made the points anyway.

 

[Jim S]

I would be more than willing to give them back to the tribe if there was one anywhere near here. I'm afraid the tribe that made them has died out a long long time ago. I live in eastern wisconsin, there are indian mounds near here but not much is known about who built them. These artifacts aren't hundreds of years old, they're thousands.

 

[Gene L]

I got home and noticed the edge had been sharpened, my flint chip was a knife

I'm sorry, but flint cleaves naturally to a sharp edge,, it doesn't have to be re-worked to achieve a cutting edge.
Take a large nodule of flint, hold it over your head and slam it down on another rock,, there will be many pieces that will have a sharp edge.
Yes that natural shape and sharp edge can of course be used as a tool
But a sharp edge on any piece of flint does not automatically make it an historical artifact that was used by ancient man.
What you most likely found was a rock.

I disagree...I think. Flint does cleave naturally, but the direction of the flake is downward and the flakes are seldom straight, they're curved. The piece in question seems to be straight and have the edges worked with smaller flakes perpendicular to the width. Looks like it was worked to my uneducated eye.

 

[coloradoclyde]

These artifacts aren't hundreds of years old, they're thousands.

Indeed...They are likely from the Hopewell cultures 200-500 B.C.....Either Havana or Trempealeau Hopewell.

I'd say they are priceless....Perhaps a local educational institution would want them.

 

[necchi]

Looks like it was worked to my uneducated eye.

Your right, it's a rare undocumented artifact. The chance discovery of that one item among so many others similar lends the find to be unique.

 

[Bruce M]

Sure looks like a worked edge to me.They don't come naturally serrated.MY best day ever I found 12 arrow heads complete in 2 hours.Field plowed that day early and a heavy rain helped uncover the dirt.Yes All not broken.I live were Onondaga Nation Indians lived.

 

[tenngun]

The world museums are full of hand axes. Pear shaped tools that seem difficult to use. Back in the 70s a couple of palontogist looked at chips all over the place.and got an idea.pick up s good sized hunk of flint and start knocking chips off. When the stone gets too small to work boom you have a hand ax. The chips make handy knifes that can be thrown away when dull. The hand axes turned out to be waste. Some times the tools we see ars infact the left overs. I have seen many things in museums Ilabled scrapers and axes I don't think could have been used as such, but they have sharp bifurcated edges

 

[Eric Krewson]

Another possible gunflint that I think I picked up out of my garden but I don't remember for sure. As a former relic hunter, my eyes pick up these things from a distance. Again, not not a possible gun flint but a knife, more defined than the last one. It is a flake, not a broken arrow head, with a flat edge on the back that perfectly accommodates one's index finger.

 

[Nativearizonan]

I got home and noticed the edge had been sharpened, my flint chip was a knife

I'm sorry, but flint cleaves naturally to a sharp edge,, it doesn't have to be re-worked to achieve a cutting edge.
Take a large nodule of flint, hold it over your head and slam it down on another rock,, there will be many pieces that will have a sharp edge.
Yes that natural shape and sharp edge can of course be used as a tool
But a sharp edge on any piece of flint does not automatically make it an historical artifact that was used by ancient man.
What you most likely found was a rock.

I beg to differ with you, that picture Eric posted shows a bifacially snapped edge. That is not a naturally occurring process.

You are, of course, right about sharp edges often occurring naturally, but what constitutes these "natural" processes and why do they tend to slam so many nodules hard enough to break them apart? Thousands of years of occupation by stone age man means that a lot of surface nodules have been fractured on purpose, but that is only natural.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Around here, most arrowheads are white quartzite and I don't think they'd work for gunflints.

Arkansas has several large quartz mines. I once made and sold jewelry made with this quartz. Being a flintlocker, I tried some quartz as a gunflint in my rifle. Very poor results, sparks were scarce if at all. Puzzling since quartz and flint rate the same on the hardness scales. BTW, I have never found an arrow head. Once, just once, I want to find one before I go to the happy hunting grounds in the sky.

 

[Eric Krewson]

NA I know the posted flake has been sharpened after the fact, that is my point. I hunted relics for years and am very familiar with what has been worked and what is a natural occurrence.

Shoot, I can even make an arrowhead shaped objects myself although I am not really proficient at it like some of my friends.

I was always too interested in making bows to invest the time it took to be a good knapper.

 

[Gene L]

Looks like it was worked to my uneducated eye.

Your right, it's a rare undocumented artifact. The chance discovery of that one item among so many others similar lends the find to be unique.

Of course, it's not a rare undocumented artifact, which I think you know but I appreciate your sarcasm.

I think it's worked which is apparent. The fact that Native Americans were around 12K years or so, the minimally worked artifacts are pretty common. Lots of them around.

I think the discovery was a "blade" used for dressing game or other purposes. And likely discarded once the task was accomplished. Easily made, not a cherished possession. Probably spear heads and arrow heads were held in higher esteem as they required a lot more work.

As I said before, almost all points are atl-atl points as archery in America was relatively new, about 500 BC. This is why the small arrow-heads are hard to find and atl-atl heads are common (fairly common) and spear heads are pretty rare.

 

[Nativearizonan]

NA I know the posted flake has been sharpened after the fact, that is my point. I hunted relics for years and am very familiar with what has been worked and what is a natural occurrence.

Shoot, I can even make an arrowhead shaped objects myself although I am not really proficient at it like some of my friends.

I was always too interested in making bows to invest the time it took to be a good knapper.

I should have made it more clear my post was directed at necchi. I think it was obvious you knew what you found.

Another thing about my post, I typed in knapped, but my spell checker changed it to snapped, and I posted it and went on about my way and just did see the error. I meant a bifacially knapped edge, instead of a bifacially snapped edge. Meaning of course that the edge had several small pressure flakes removed from both sides of the edge, to shape and/or sharpen it.

As I said on an earlier post, I find those things all the time around here, too.

 

[Nativearizonan]

As I said before, almost all points are atl-atl points as archery in America was relatively new, about 500 BC. This is why the small arrow-heads are hard to find and atl-atl heads are common (fairly common) and spear heads are pretty rare.

Around here the actual arrow heads are often called bird points and the atlatl heads are called arrow heads. Some of the "spear points" as well as some heavy points thought to be atlatl points could actually have been used as knife blades and attached to short handles and held like a modern knife. These have been found in archeological sights in arid areas where the handles had not rotted away.

For those who don't know which is an arrow point and which is an atlatl point, look at the thickness of the base of the point, where it attaches to the wooden shaft. Generally speaking, Arrow points will have a width of less than 1/2" where it attaches, between the notches, and atlatl points will have a width of 1/2" or more. If you have a point with an width of 3/4" or more between the notches, it is highly likely it was used as a knife or spear point. A 3/4" shaft would likely be too heavy for an atlatl just as a 1/2" shaft would be too heavy for a bow.