Weapons and Warfare Home

Arrowheads were made from various kinds of stone but flint
was considered the best. Not only because it was so hard,
but also because flint is easier to chip into "flakes" with
sharp edges than most other hard rocks.A favorite tool for chipping arrowheads into shape was the
deer antler. A piece of rock was first broken into smaller
pieces by using a hammer stone, then the most likely pieces
shaped into arrowheads by chipping away with a smaller
hammer stone and with deer antlers.Spear points were made in the same way; they were just
larger in size and shaped a bit differently. Some spears
were made entirely of hard wood; the points sharpened by
hand and then hardened in a fire.
Stone weapons, tomahawks and battle hammers were made from
rocks of the correct overall shape by sharpening one edge
and grinding a binding groove around the stone using other,
harder stones. The groove was made so that the stone could
be tied to a handle with rawhide. Other hammers and
axe-type weapons also were used; sometimes a knot in a
root or branch with a convenient handle made a good battle
axe.The Cherokee used blowguns mainly for taking small game but
occasionally used them in warfare. Blowguns ranged from
three to nine feet in length. The darts were made of hard
woods. The back end of the dart was fitted with thistledown
to form a seal and help center the dart in the blowgun. A
sharp breath blown into the barrel behind the dart would
send it traveling at a great speed. With practice, these
blowguns could be very accurate.

Darts used in warfare were generally poisoned. Venomous
snakes were sometimes made to strike a piece of spoiled
meat, then the dart points were pushed into the meat to
absorb the venom. Certain plant juices and extracts known
to be poisonous were also used as coatings for the darts.

Information provided by the Cherokee Nation Cultural
Resource Center.

War clubs were the preferred combat weapon because Indian warriors could raise their social status by killing enemies in single combat. They were widely depicted in Mississippian Period art in association with images and symbols of warfare. In historic Creek and Cherokee myths they were associated with the Lightning or Thunder deity, sometimes in the form of a falcon.

Chiefs and warriors possessed ceremonial forms of war clubs that incorporated symbols of the Sun and Thunder deities and served as markers of their ceremonial status. These were made entirely from stone that had been chipped or ground into the desired shape, or alternatively, were tomahawks that had copper heads affixed to wooden handles.