Mr. Dudley A. Martin of Pennsylvania has mounted a large, flint implement in a handle which I show in Fig. 176. Two specimens, one from Iowa and one from Kansas, from our Andover collection, are shown in Fig. 174, and one from Kentucky in Fig. 173.
An unusually well-chipped, notched, flint axe is shown in Fig. 177. It was found by Mr. W. H. Davis near the mouth of the Muskingum River in Ohio. The types of flint celts vary.
I show five ordinary ones from Mr. Mitchell’s collection, Ripon, Wisconsin, in Fig. 178, and the ten various forms of celts from the Andover collection in Fig. 180.
Fig. 174. (S. 2–3.) Collection of Phillips Academy, Andover. One from Iowa, the other from Kansas. The edges are worn smooth and they both show considerable use. They are covered with patina and appear very old.
Fig. 175. (S. 1–1.) Double-bitted war-axe, chipped out, but never polished. Dull chalcedony, tipped at each cutting edge with red. Flecked in the middle with gray spots. Luther A. Norland collection, La Jara, Colorado.
Fig. 176. (S. 2–5.) Supposed method of hafting the notched flint implements. Such objects would make formidable weapons for use in close quarters. Collection of Dudley A. Martin, Duboistown, Pennsylvania.
There is a lesson to be drawn from the preponderance of these flint celts and axes over those of granite or limestone. Where flint is more common—as in the Ozarks—than other materials, aboriginal man modified his form of hatchet in accordance with the material at hand. It would be too hard for him to groove a flint axe. He, therefore, notched the sides of the rough blade or turtleback, and lashed it in the handle. If the blade got dull he scaled off a few flakes and restored the cutting edge. Flint axes made convenient and formidable implements and weapons. There was an abundance of surface flint in Indian Territory and Kansas, as well as quarry material. And the flint celt became widespread from a point about two hundred miles east of the Mississippi in Tennessee and Kentucky to southern Iowa and southern Indian Territory, three hundred miles west of the Mississippi. Outside of this belt flint celts are rare. Yet in widespread areas where flint abounds, celts and kindred implements of flint are not found. The range of the flint celts is from the rough implements to the highly developed spud-shaped polished flint celts found in Tennessee graves.