“There are many places along the banks of the Ohio River and its tributaries that are not subject to the annual overflow, but are still below the occasional great floods, where the flaking process has been extensively carried on, and where cores and waste chips are abundant. At one of these places, on the Kentucky side of the river, I found a number of chert blocks, as when first brought from the quarry, from which no regular flakes had been split; some had a single corner broken off as a starting-point. On the sharp, right-angled edge of several, I found the indentations left by small flakes, having been knocked off evidently by blows, as described by Catlin, as a preparation for seating the flaking-tool. Most of the localities referred to are now under cultivation, but before being cleared of timber and subjected to the plow, no surface relics were found; but on the caving and wearing away of the riverbanks, as the light earth washed away, many spear- and arrow-heads and other stone relics were left on shore. After the land had been cleared and the plow had loosened the soil, one of the great floods that occur at intervals of some fifteen or twenty years would wash away the loose soil, leaving the great flint workshops exposed. It is from the stores of material left, the cores or nuclei thrown aside, caches of finished and unfinished implements and flakes, the tools and wastage, vast accumulations of splints, etc., that we can, on critical examination, draw tolerably correct ideas of the mode of working pursued.
Fig. 46. (S. 4–5.) Knife made from a large flake from a long block of flint. Material: yellow chert. Dr. A. G. Clyne, Paragould, Arkansas.
“Experience has taught the operator the best shape of edge to apply the pressure to accomplish his object, and it has also taught him how to reach it in the simplest possible way. A spoon-shaped hollow on the top of a flattened log, or even a gutter or groove cut in it, furnishes the means of holding the flake firmly, the raised or high side placed in the hollow, the flat side up; with the ends of the fingers of his left hand pressed on it he holds it firmly, while with his right hand a downward pressure is given by the flaking-tool which breaks off chips with a fracture of about forty-five degrees from the flat surface, leaving the edge in the best possible shape for future work, and that is the condition of these cache flakes as they are found.
“In old times, before the invention and introduction of planing and shaping machines to work metals, the first and most important lesson taught to the machinist’s apprentice was the use of the hand-hammer and cold-chisel. When an outer shell was to be removed from a metal casting and its surface left in condition to be finished by file or scraper, the smoothness and regularity of that surface was essential, not only for economy in working, but accuracy of the file finish. The apprentice was taught to hold his cold-chisel and so direct the strokes of his hammer that when a chip was started the chisel should hold to it, and not be allowed to cut too deep or slip and fly out, leaving a shape that is difficult to start a fresh cut without leaving ridges or cutting deeper, in either case causing additional labor for the finisher.
“To a practical mechanic the examination of such a flint workshop as I have described—its waste chips to the partly worked flakes, the roughed-out blocks, and the finished implements—reveals a line of workmanship so clear that it can be followed to the production of the same results.
Fig. 47. (S. 1–3.) Group of knives. From the collection of D. H. Kern, Allentown, Pennsylvania. Material: argillite and jasper. As to the use of flint knives, an interesting description is given by Pedro De Castaneda, who accompanied Coronado in 1541 to Quivira (Kansas); he states: “They cut the hide open at the back and pulled it off at the joints, using a flint as large as a finger, tied in a little stick, with as much ease as if working with a good iron tool. They gave it an edge with their own teeth. The quickness with which they do this is something worth seeing and noting.”
“The handling of the tool and flake to form an arrow-point is as much an act requiring exactness and precision as the handling of the cold-chisel and hammer is to the machinist. The first chip thrown off is analogous to the first starting-work of the cold-chisel; it is the text that must be adhered to the end of the chapter. Holding the flake in such position that, commencing at what is intended for the point of the intended work, the pressure with the flaking-point is brought to bear close to the edge of the forty-five degrees angle and at right angles to it; the result is a flake thrown off inclining towards the stem end of the arrow-point. The seat left by this chip when thrown off is concave on the edge of the flake, the advance corner of which is the seating-point for the tool to throw off the next chip, which does not entirely obliterate the concave of the first, and the following chip leaves a serrated edge, the chips or flakes being generally parallel, which is the object of a good workman to make them. When the flat side by chipping has been reduced to nearly the required form, its edges are in the best possible shape for chipping the opposite or high side, then by alternate working from side to side the point is finished, either leaving it with serrated edges or by after delicate work throwing off the points, leaving a smooth, sharp edge. The indentations at the base either for barbs or for thongs to secure the point to its shaft are made by direct down pressure of a sharp point working alternately from side to side, the arrow-point being held firmly on its flat face. From the narrowness of the cuts in some of the specimens, and the thickness of the stone where they terminate, I have inclined to the belief that at the period they were made, the aborigines had something stronger than bone to operate with, as I have never been able to imitate some of their deep, heavy cuts with it; but I have succeeded by using a copper point, which possesses all the properties of the bone, in holding to its work without slipping and has the strength for direct thrust required. A soft iron or a thoroughly annealed steel point answers even a better purpose. As yet no copper has been found on this flaking-ground, though a few copper beads and remnants of what appear to have been ornaments have been taken from the mounds on the ridges of the Saline, which I think is evidence that they had that metal at the earliest time work was done on this flaking-bank.