Government workers caught knapping

Second of two parts

Part of learning context is also to get a hands-on feel for things. Archaeologist Jeff Flenniken, who lead the week's training, is a former Washington State University professor and one of the world's leading experts on flintknapping, which is to say he knows everything there is to know about what happens when you pound rocks together, especially chipping flinty rocks to make arrowheads, spear points, and other hunting tools. This is some of the earliest man-made evidence we have of the Northwest's first inhabitants because little else has survived intact.

Flenniken demonstrated the flintknapper's art one evening by taking a large hunk of volcanic, glass-like obsidian and pounding it with a round river stone into smaller and smaller chunks of what would eventually become a Clovis-style spear point, the kind of deadly weapon that brought down mastadons and other game. Flenniken is a big man with a gray Fu Manchu mustache, an Arkansas address, and passion when he talks about prehistoric man and his abilities. He's traveled the world, from Brazil to the Australian outback, to study ancient and modern flintknapping techniques. (To "knap," according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is to strike something with a short, hard blow, exactly what flintmakers do). He can make the chips fly and an arrowhead appear in no time.

Watching him work, I was struck by several things. One is that prehistoric man knew what he was doing in making a deadly, effective weapon that could bring down a supersized elk, bear, or maybe one of those 450-pound beavers that used to live in these parts. Another is that the the raw materials they are made from formed the basis of an extensive economy. Obsidian may have been one of our region's earliest exports. Flenniken says that Oregon stone has been found in Indian arrowheads, thousands of years old, dug up in Delaware.

This was high-tech stuff: Stone spear points were light, easy to make once you know the technique, have the right materials, and are portable, re-useable, and much better than a club. They cut flesh like butter. In some ways, they're still state-of-the-art. Flenniken showed us photomicrographs of a steel scalpel and the edge of a handmade obsidian blade. Under magnification, the scalpel looked like a bumpy dirt road compared to the straight superhighway of the stone edge. So confident are flintknappers that obsidian tools are superior to modern operating room equipment, that Flenniken has made obsidian tools for use by surgeons. One flintknapper made cutting instruments for his own chest surgery.

Flenniken is eager to dispel our notion that prehistoric man coming via land or possibly sea routes from Asia to North America was some kind of primitive Ogg the Cave Man in cheap furs. He points out that it has only been in the last couple of decades that synthetic modern materials have matched the furs and skins that kept ancient Arctic residents warm and dry. And the ancient Aleuts and Eskimos knew better how to build a safe, functional fireplace than Ben Franklin and his famous stove.

Our instructors also took us into a field to let us learn to use the atlatl, a wooden device that acts like a sling for throwing spears and darts. Their invention preceded the bow and arrow, but they remained in use into post-Columbian times. The name comes from the Aztecs, who could pierce the armor of a conquistador with an atlatl-propelled projectile.

This piece of stone-weighted wood allows anyone to throw a fastball like former Seattle Mariners pitcher Randy Johnson by extending your arm into a deadly, whiplike catapult. What's also cool is that an atlatl allows you to throw farther and with more force than with your arm alone. As we stood in the field taking turns trying to hit a target with aluminum atlatl-tossed spears, I could not predict a person's ability by build, strength, or gender. Some big, strong guys managed to fling their spears only a few feet from their own feet while some short women launched theirs well beyond the targets. Like pitching, fly casting, or a golf swing, it's in the technique, not brute force.

If our target had been a bison, however, and we the hungry hunters, our happy band would have starved. Only one or two people hit the stationary target. A moving critter would likely have scattered or gored us all after the first shot. Prehistoric bison horns could take out a Metro bus.

I was humbled further when Vivian Harrison, also known as Stuyat, of the Yakama Nation led a class in making tule mats. Tules are bullrushes, found in swamps or wetlands, and they formed an all-purpose material much like cedar bark for the coast Indians. Large mats were woven and tied in overlapping pieces to branches to make tents and tipi-like structures. Our class' task was to simply make a small coaster using short tule reeds, sticks of willow, and a needle and thread (yes, the natives had excellent needles). The materials were provided, so we were saved the inconvenience of wading bootless into swamps to cut the proper reeds, preparing them, and making our own tools.