The Cheyenne Indians, Volume 1 by George Bird Grinnell

Author:George Bird Grinnell [Grinnell, George Bird]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8032-7683-3
Publisher: Bison Books
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Every sapling out of which the arrow is made has some defect, however faultless it may appear to be. The good arrow maker takes a great deal of pains to smooth out and straighten the imperfections by oiling and heating. But the wood, in time, will spring back because of its inherent defects, unless these grooves are cut in the shaft soon after the seasoning and straightening.

After the shaft had been brought down to the proper size and the grooves made in it, the shaft was thrust into and pushed through the circular hole in the rib standardizer with a twisting motion. This polished the shaft and at the same time left little fine ridges running about it which could be felt as the fingers were passed over them, but were almost too small to be seen.

The arrow’s flight depended largely on the feathers. If they were good and well put on, the arrow carried well. Turkey-feathers or buzzard-feathers were the best for arrows, because blood does not affect them. Feathers of hawks and eagles, if wet with blood, are injured by the wetting. However, the feathers of these birds were used for ceremonial arrows.

The Cheyennes tell of a time before the use of feathers on the arrow, when they were accustomed to shave up from the shaft of the arrow, all about the shaft, a number of fine shavings, which they left attached to it. These shavings, standing out from the shaft, acted as steadiers for the arrow’s flight. After they had learned to place feathers on their arrows and had begun to use feathered arrows in fighting with other tribes, they often found on the prairie arrows shot at them by their enemies, which had no feathers, but instead bore, each one, two little bunches of fine shavings whittled up from the shaft and left attached to it by one end. These shavings were cut and bent upward toward the arrowpoint in two places on the shaft, one close to the notch and the other farther toward the point. The use of such arrows may have been general among the prairie tribes until a comparatively recent date.

The late Joseph Kipp, born 1849, told me that as a small boy (say about the year i860) he used to see among the Mandans, near old Fort Clark, shaved-up arrows (like those described by the Cheyennes as used anciently) employed by little boys in their first hunting to kill small birds. Sometimes these boys’ arrows had three small twigs tied about two inches back from the sharpened, fire-hardened point, in such a manner as to form a triangle, which gave a larger striking surface. Some such arrows were shaved up at two or three points on their length, the obvious purpose being to make them fly steadily. From what we know of Cheyenne history, it seems evident that the arrows of the Cheyennes and of the Mandans might have had much in common.

While the earliest arrows used by the Cheyennes were without feathers, feathers came into use after a time, but at first only two, instead of three.

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