s was the chief employment of many of the men of middle
life. Each arrow by the same maker was precisely like every other
arrow he made. Each arrowmaker tried hard to make good arrows. It
was a fine thing to be known as a maker of good arrows.

The shoots for the arrow shafts were brought into the lodge, peeled,
smoothed roughly, tied up in bundles, and hung up to dry. After they
were dried, the bundles were taken down and each shaft was smoothed
and reduced to a proper thickness by the use of a grooved piece of
sand-stone, which acted on the arrow like sandpaper. After they were
of the right thickness, they were straightened by bending with the
hands, and sometimes with the teeth, and were then passed through a
circular hole drilled in a rib, or in a mountain sheep's horn, which
acted in part as a gauge of the size and also as a smoother, for if
in passing through the hole the arrow fitted tightly, the shaft
received a good polish. The three grooves which always were found in
the Blackfeet arrows were made by pushing the shaft through a round
hole drilled in a rib, which, however, had one or more projections
left on the inside. These projections pressed into the soft wood and
made the grooves, which were in every arrow. The feathers were three
in number. They were put on with a glue, made by boiling scraps of
dried rawhide, and were held in place by wrappings of sinew. The
heads of the arrows were made of stone or bone or horn. The flint
points were often highly worked and very beautiful, being broken
from larger flints by sharp blows of a stone hammer, and after they
had been shaped the edges were worked sharp by flaking with an
implement of bone or horn. The points made of horn or bone were
ground sharp by rubbing on a stone. A notch was cut in the end of
the arrow shaft and the shank of the arrow point set in that. The
arrow heads were firmly fixed to the shaft by glue and by sinew
wrapping.

Although the Blackfeet lived almost altogether on the flesh of birds
or animals, yet they had some vegetable food. This was chiefly
berries--of which in summer the women collected great quantities and
dried them for winter use--and roots, the gathering of which at the
proper season of the year occupied much of the time of women and
young girls. These roots were unearthed by a long, sharp-pointed
stick, called a root digger. Some of the roots were eaten as soon as
collected, while others were dried and stored for use in winter