For half a million years of human history we have used stone tools. When the last steel knife or bomb casing has rusted away, the stone knives, axes and scrapers of our recent and ancient ancestors will still be lying intact, where they were put down or lost long ago.

The Mohicans, before European contact, had an impressive inventory of blades and projectile points made by the universal methods of flaking, grinding and polishing. The tools [not] depicted here were discovered during the lifelong research into Mohican prehistory of Richard Crittendon, recently retired postmaster of Otis. The adze blade, made of tough “Chester emery stone,” was pecked into rough shape by many light blows of a hammer stone and then ground and polished, probably with sandstone, into its finished form as beautiful as a Brancusi sculpture. Such polished tools are called “Neolithic” or “New Stone,” and are the earliest tools that will cut wood, making possible the clearing of forests and wooden utensils from bowls to boats and houses. The grinding and polishing takes weeks of hard work for a single tool but the rewards are worth it.

Flaked tools are quickly made. A skilled flint knapper can produce an arrowhead in five minutes. With a round hammer stone flakes are struck from a nodule of flint, quarts, chert or related silcacious rock. Almost every blow produces a flat oval “blank” ready to be refined by pressure flaking into a knife, scraper, drill point or projectile point. The flaking tool is usually a tine from a deer’s antler ground to a fine strong point. With the application of the right force and precise knowledge, small flake, sharp as broken glass, fly off in rapid succession. The knapper’s hands usually need the protection of tough leather guards or they can be badly cut.

Mr. Crittendon finds the artifacts he studies at campsites by our local rivers and ponds. The adze was near Big Pond in Otis, and the smaller arrowhead was on the old Knox Trail where it crosses the Farmington River.

— David P. McAllester (1916‐2006), a one‐sixty‐fourth Narragansett, was a Navaho scholar and professor of anthropology and music at Wesleyan University. Living in Monterey, Mass., he wrote Indian Notes for the monthly Monterey News from 1981 to 1994. This essay originally appeared in the newsletter December 1983.