Expert: Ralph Salier - 3/21/2006

Question
Vertually all of the indian tribes used flint for arrowheads and spearpoints, where did they get it.
 As a young boy growing up in West Virginia I walked the creek banks and river banks looking for flint arrowheads and never found an arrowhead or a single piece of flint. So if it was so available to the indians where did they get it. Thank you.

Answer
Hi Robert,  I'm not surprized that you did not find points along the creeks and rivers.  These would have been washed down river unless you had the luck of finding a village site eroding out of the bank.  Flint and chert were found in many places.  If there is any carboniferous (coal) or lime stone, cherts and flints can be found in these deposits.  In West Virginia, there are some lime stone deposits and pleanty of coal seams.  The flint and cherts in the area come from the deposit of silicates and in the case of coal, often were coal fossils are found.  But chert, flint and obsidian were widly traded from as far away as Colorado and the Uary mountians of North Carolina.  In Coal country you could also find slat and shale points which were literally carved or formed out of slate and shales.  There are also pipe stone depoists especially around Pipe Stone St. park and in these areas, a very fine grade of flint is found in this area as well.  On the west side of the lake at Pipe Stone, I found several points and some pottery from the middle woodland period.  These were right on the beach.