What wood would the native American use to make an arrow?

Answer 1

Like every other item that was made, natives used whatever was available locally. There was no Port Orford Cedar (the modern wood of choice for arrows) in most parts of the Americas, so many other types of wood were used. Some arrow shafts were of the shoots (new growth) of a tree, others were split from larger pieces of timber.

Many of the Plains tribes favoured dogwood, for two reasons: (1) it is fairly easy to straighten when first cut and as it slowly dries, but once completely dry it is very hard and strong; and (2) it has a red bark with white wood beneath - two colours considered sacred by most native Americans.

A few examples of other woods used for arrows by various tribes were:

Powhatan......................split hickory

Delaware.......................split hickory

Naskapi.........................split conifer

Iroquois.........................hickory, yaupon, witch hazel, viburnum

Seminole........................wild rose

Catawba.......................sourwood and cane

Chickasaw......................phragmites reed with hardwood inserts

Caddo.............................dogwood

Fox..................................split hickory

Ojibwe.............................split conifer or hardwood

Blackfoot.........................red osier dogwood or wild rose

Lakota.............................wild rose, chokecherry

Cheyenne........................dogwood

Apache.............................phragmites cane with hardwood foreshaft

Yahi, Hupa, Shasta............witch hazel, dogwood, viburnum

Shoshone, Paiute..............chokecherry, serviceberry

Not only did the type of wood used indicate a geographical area for the arrow, but each tribe used a specific arrangement of fletching (type of feather, length of feather, height of feather, method of attachment, special shapes and combinations). Bald and golden eagles, 10 types of hawk, 2 types of buzzard, turkeys, cranes, geese and owls all provided feathers for fletching arrows. The way the nock was cut (the groove in the end of the shaft for the string) also helped to identify a particular tribe.

Answer 2

Depends on location. Flint, obsidian, chert are some types of stones used.

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Additional information: Native Americans only used wood, stone and bone to make arrowheads until Europeans began to provide them with sheet metal, tools and even ready-made metal points. By the late 18th and early 19th centuries most Plains tribes (for example) were only using metal arrow points and they had absolutely no idea who had made the many stone points found lying about on the Plains - the Crow tribe firmly believed the stone points had been made by a mythical race of dwarfs!

Some woodlands tribes such as the Iroquois appear to have quickly abandoned the bow as a weapon in favour of guns obtained from Europeans, so they ceased making stone points at an early date.

At the important site of Cahokia (about 650 to 1500 AD) many very beautiful small points of Burlington chert and Kaolin chert have been discovered, along with some fine bone points.

Answer 3

Cedar (PORT ORTFORD)