Note 242 — GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS; DISPLAYING

In the American Pioneer, of Cincinnati, I, 143, Barker gives an interesting account of the Chickasaws fishing in Duck River in Middle Tennessee (1805). He observed the Indians in their canoes pursuing large fishes which swarmed in that beautiful stream in the domain claimed by them; and taking great numbers by the use of long cane spears. Cane grew there in profusion. The spears “were sixteen or eighteen feet in length, sharpened with a knife into a lancet shape at one end, and were thrown with great dexterity twenty or thirty feet; seldom failing to pierce a fish through at every throw. This was doubtless an invention of great antiquity, and practiced by their fathers ages before the use of iron was known amongst them.”