Native Tools

Made from what Mother Earth gave us!

Stone Tools

Stone was the one hard and easily found material the Indians had. So they used it to make tools. Most stone tools were shaped by chipping. But, many were shaped by grinding them with abrasive stone or sand.

The chipped stone is usually chert or flint of one type or another. Chert is a stone with glass-like qualities. When chipped it leaves a smooth surface. It also leaves a very sharp edge. Flakes from good quality chert are as sharp as the sharpest razor. Not all chert is the same. It varies in color and quality.

Preforms.

A preform is an unfinished tool - a blank set up to make something out of. People often confuse a preform with a finished tool. They can tell it is worked stone. And a preform can make a pretty good chopper if needed. We find two kinds of preforms. One type is discarded preforms. While chipping out the preform, the Indian found a flaw inside the stone that made it unworkable to make a tool and so threw it away. The other kind is a sort of blank. Indians would make a number of blank preforms at the source of the stone and take the unfinished preforms back to camp distant from a source of good stone. Preforms are lighter and easier to carry that raw stone. They could then be used to make whatever tool was needed at the camp.

Flakes.
Flakes are the most basic and most often used tool. Easily made by whacking a flake off a chunk of flint, used and then usually discarded they are common and usually overlooked when found. You can tell a used flake from an unused flake by looking for microflaking. When a flake is used, tiny flakes are knocked off leaving a series of tiny serrations. You can feel the microflaked edge more easily than you can see it. Often the opposite edge, where the fingers and hand would have pushed on it, has been ground down and dulled. Flakes can be in almost any shape, but they are usually blade shaped.

Knives.    More Knives

Knives are often mistaken for points. They often do look like large points. Knives come in all shapes and sizes. Indians used them pretty much the way we use modern steel knives - but stone knives are much more fragile. They break easily. Knives sometimes have notches on them to attach a wood handle.


Points.    Look at more points.

Points go on the tips of arrows and darts. Small points like these are from arrows. Large points are usually from atlatl darts. Really large points are usually knives and not points at all. The bow and arrow did not arrive in Texas until around a.d.400. So arrow points are newer and larger atlatl points are older. Contrary to popular belief, Indians did not use many spears. Trying to kill a large dangerous animal such as a buffalo was too dangerous with a spear. You have to get too close to the animal. So larger spear sized points are not points at all they are usually knives.

Choppers.
Choppers are another easily made tool. A flint cobble would have flakes knocked off of one end to create a cutting edge. The other end usually fits nicely in the hand. The cutting edge is often battered with crushed edges. Choppers were often quickly made and discarded after use. Choppers come in all shapes and sizes.

Drill ands Awls
Drills and awls were used to make holes in things. They are usually about the same size as points. Often drills are made from old points. Indians would use them to make holes in wood, shell, or any softer material. Awls were used to make holes in leather. Often the same tool was used as a drill and a awl. Sometimes awls were made from bone and looked more like big needles.

Saws (Also called "denticulates")
Saws were used to saw soft materials such as wood. This saw is basically a knife with teeth. Denticulate means "toothed". Archeologists use this term to describe any tool with teeth on the edge. This "saw" would have probably made a pretty good scraper for certain tasks. While saws are usually blade shaped, they can be almost any shape. Some are nicely worked like this one, others are cruder with simple teeth quickly worked onto the edge of a flake. The teeth on stone saws are fragile like glass, so stone saws do not work very well as the teeth break off easily.

Ground Stone Axes
These axes were made by grinding and not chipping. You can see how they were "hafted" into a wooden handle. They are not very sharp. Cutting wood with them must have been a lot of work.

What is a tool? A tool is something people use to help them accomplish their work. A basket is a tool for a woman gathering plants. A handy rock can be a hammer. A bow and arrows are tools used by a hunter or a warrior. Someone making a bow would use a stone scraper to shave and shape the wood. A woman preparing an animal skin might use the same scraper to remove the fat and flesh from the inside part of the skin and a sharp flake of flint to cut it with. A pottery maker used polished pebbles to shape and smooth their pots. A woman making clothing would use a stone knife to cut leather with, an bone awl to make holes in the leather and a bone needle to pull sinew thread thru the holes made by the awl. The Indians had as many kinds of tools as they had jobs to do that needed tools.

When we think of Indian tools it is stone tools that first come to mind. There is a simple reason for this. It is the stone tools that have survived buried in the dirt. The wood, bone, leather and fiber tools disappeared, dissolved back into the soil over the years. In collections it is also the stone parts of tools that survived the years. In old private collections the leather, wood and fibers often dried out and cracked till the tool was falling apart and unattractive. So people kept the stone parts and threw the rest away over the years.

Indians made many kinds of tools out of many kinds of materials. They made digging sticks that were simply a long strong stick with a point. They had hoes made from animal bones and from shells attached to wood handles. Axes were made often made from ground and polished stone instead of the chipped stone we usually think of. Hooks for fishing were often made from slivers of shells.

Many tools were made up of several materials combined. A arrow had a stone or bone point, a wood or cane shaft and feathers, all held together with some kind of cord and often with some kind of glue.

Indian tools were usually made from the materials that were available where the Indians lived. Indians who lived in woods where trees and wood was available made more tools from wood. Indians who lived in the desert made more stone tools and made do without wooden handles. Where workable stone was scarce Indians used bone instead. A good example is the Eskimos who lived where there was neither stone or wood. They used animal bones to make almost all their tools.

Often it took one tool or set of tools to make other tools. So we find a wide variety of Indian tools once we think about what tools Indians would need.

Each culture and each kind of work within a culture uses its own unique tool kit. This is how archeologist can tell long lost cultures apart. Different Indian cultures at different times each made its own kind of dart points. Archeologists can also use tool kits to tell about the activities in an archeological site. A hunting camp will have tools to butcher animals and process the animal's parts. A farming village will have pottery and hoes.

Other Kinds of Tools

This Indian woman is using a corn mill. A corn mill is used to grind, or crush in this case, corn into a flour. This mill is really a mortar and pestle. The pestle is the stick with the big ends she is holding. The mortar is a hollow tree stump. She is using the pestle to pound on dry corn kernels inside the mortar. These are wooden tools used to process food. To read a funny Indian story about a corn mill go to the Caddo Indian page.

The first picture above is a great mortar and pestle example. The mortar is a hole in a piece of limestone rock. The pestle is the rock the man holds. This one was used to milk a plant for medicine. I think the pestle here is way too small, but you get the idea. I would guess the real pestle was a stick the size of a baseball bat. It was used like the one the woman in the other picture is using. But, the Indians did use stone pestles too.

Music by Micheal Jacobs:Cherokee singer/songwriter