Native American Indians

Introduction

Native American hunters have long been credited with possessing the most acute tracking skills and different work tools. Their ability to observe signs on the earth, in the air, and in the movements of animals and birds has astounded many observers. There is no reason to assume that Native American seafarers were any different. Time by time Native American Indians and their tribes has invented various tools for their hunting and gathering (Carl, p.240). Just as, earthbound hunters would observe the movement of celestial bodies to predict changes in weather, animal behavior, and crop growth, so too would Native Americans living on coasts, along rivers, and on arctic ice navigate by observing and predicting their environment. Ancient Americans also possessed some tools that helped them approximate location of cardinal points when celestial bodies could not be seen. In the following term paper, there are two famous and ancient American Tribes mentioned who have invented various workable tools.

Paleo Indians

The first Indians, the true discoverers of the Americas, had only wooden and stone tools and no metal. The period in human evolution before the invention of metal tools is known as the Stone Age, or the Paleolithic Age. The earliest Indians are called Paleo Indians, or Lithic Indians (Burch, p.125).

The Paleo Indians lived for the most part in caves, under overhangs, and in brushwood lean tos. They wore hide and fur clothing. They used fire to keep warm, to cook, protect themselves from animals while sleeping, and to hunt. By lighting fires on the grasslands, the hunters could drive herds of animals over cliffs and into swamps and bogs, where they could be killed. The ancient Indians had various methods for lighting fires: striking a spark with certain stones, such as flint, or by rubbing wood together. Fire drills, made from two sticks and a strip of rawhide, enabled the rapid spinning of wood against wood to generate enough friction to ignite wood powder or other vegetable material.

The craftsmanship of the Paleo Indians was essential to their big game hunting way of life. The prehistoric Indians had techniques for making spearheads razor sharp. The first Paleo Indians did not have stone pointed spears. They probably used fire to harden the tips of wooden spears, but this theory is unproven because the wooden spears decayed long ago. The earliest Indians did, however, have roughly shaped stone and bone tools for scraping and chopping. Later Paleo Indians developed methods of shaping certain types of stone especially flint, chert, and obsidian into sharp points and edges. In percussion flaking, they removed chips and sharpened the point by striking it with a stone. In pressure flaking, they pressed antler or bone tools against the point to shape and sharpen it.

Some time during the Paleolithic Age, Folsom, Native Americans began first using spear throwing devices called atlatls. These were wooden sticks about two feet long with animal hide hoops to provide a firm grasp, a stone weight for balance, and a hook to hold the spear ...