IN Col. Lane Fox's Catalogue of his Anthropological Collection he quotes Schoolcraft as saying, “There is no instance amongst the North American Indians in which the war-club employed by them is made of a straight piece, or has not a curved head.” I send you a drawing (Fig. I) of a club in common use among the Numas, or Indians of the Great interior Basin, embracing Shoshones, Utes, Pueblos, &c., which will no doubt interest Col. Fox and others, not only on account of its extreme simplicity of form, but also of its method of use. It might be called appropriately a “face-masker,” being grasped with the bulb next to the little finger, and thrust into the countenance of the foe. Major Powell sent a number of these to the Smithsonian Institution. They are of one piece of wood, generally mezquite, either very rude or quite smoothly polished, and are worn attached to the wrist by a leather thong. They vary in length from eight inches to fourteen. These same tribes use a simpler “slung shot” than the one described in CoL Fox's Catalogue, p. 65 (Fig. 2), the stone ball hanging loosely from the handle in a bag of buckskin. The Moquis of this same region use the boomerang; two of these (Fig. 3) are in the Smithsonian and the greater part of the North American Continent the arrows are constructed either in a single piece or with a bone foreshaft; but in no case have I come across a foreshaft of hard wood.” Among the Numas of the Great Basin, reed arrows with hard wood foreshaft are very common (Fig. 4). In Northern Institution. I am not sure that it returns to the hand of the thrower.
Read full abstract
Nov 30, 1875
John Alexander Smith 
Open Access
