The Story of an Arrowhead

Abstract

S OME threescore years ago, a group of youngsters in Springfield, Massachusetts, were avidly collecting what were then termed relics, the stone implements of the American natives, which they gleaned from plowed fields in their vicinity. To them, whatever was pointed was an arrowhead, although they came to distinguish between the barbed and the barbless types, recognizing them as hunting points and war points, respectively. Later they learned to classify many of the so-called arrowheads as knives, scrapers, and awls. In that era, it was not possible to learn all the answers from printed books, so that these young men were forced to experiment by rule of thumb. They fitted stone arrowheads to shafts and were amazed at the short range of flight. If aimed at an object, the arrow quickly dropped to the ground because of its weight. Only at very close range was a direct hit possible. They could but wonder whether the Indian had some technique unknown to them that gave greater precision and distance to his arrow. The answer to this question, fortunately, was at hand, for thanks to the activities of the historical societies, there was available to them the literature of the seventeenth century, with journals, reports, and letters of early visitors to America. They read that in 1638 Captain John Underhill had spoken of