Straightshaft using a flaker.
Straightshaft let him try, but Fleetfoot was not strong enough to press off hard flint flakes. So he listened to the story that Scarface told of the young man who first made a flaker.
Holding up a little bone flaker, Scarface turned to the men and said: “When I was a boy, no one pressed off flakes of flint. No one had a flaker. We hammered off flint flakes.
“One summer when there were plenty of salmon, the neighboring clans had a great feast. Nimble-finger came. I saw him. I heard him speak. The third day of the feast I saw him flake flint.”
A flaker.
As Scarface went on he told how Nimble-finger invented the flaker. He did it one day when he was making a bone handle for a knife. When he was scraping a bone with a flint scraper he happened to press off a flint flake.
Nimble-finger did not know how it happened. He tried again and again. At last he pressed off another flake; and this time he knew that he did it by pressing the point of the bone against one edge of the flint.