Flint - A hard, dull colored variety of quartz.  True flint is found in Arkansas and Texas.  The colors are dark gray or dull brown to nearly black.  However, Indians used similar stones which could be shaped by flaking, and which have been called by the general name of flint.

There is a chert, found in Illinois and Missouri, which differs from true flint by being lighter in color.  Another is hornstone, found in the Ohio Valley, so called because it has a peculiar hornlike characteristic of toughness.  jasper, another hard stone, which is red, yellow, and brown, is found in Pennsylvania.  Other flint like stones are agate, which is white and gray and sometimes delicately tinted, and onyx, which is a banded variety of agate.

All these stones have been termed flint and were used by the Indian in making his flaked tools, knives, and arrowheads and spearheads.  They were shaped by the flaking process.  Some Indians used other hard stones as hammers and chipped the flint into shape, while many flaked it by pressing the edge with a piece of hard bone, or antler, shaped like an awl.  In this latter method the flint was laid on a pad of buckskin and the bone point pressed against the edge to be flaked with a quick downward movement.

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