by Matthew Fulton

Created on: May 07, 2010

For centuries, the tribes indigenous to North America hunted wild game in methods that they had access to technologically. These methods ranged from the very primitive and wasteful to the incredibly efficient. A look at the history of Native American hunting techniques can show us an incredible evolution of technology by people who relied on hunting for a majority of their existence.

From the moment the first Americans crossed the land bridge into America from present-day Eastern Russia, large game were prized by these people for their meat, skins, and bone. Large mammals like the mammoth were vital for these hunter-gatherer nomads.

The hunting practices were dangerous and sometimes very wasteful. The more dangerous practice was to use the spear-throwing device known as an atlatl. The atlatl is a very simple device consisting of a wooden shaft with a cup or spur on the end designed to hold the end of a long, thin spear known as a dart.

The atlatl gives the thrower extra leverage when propelling the dart forward, causing the dart to bend. This bend allows energy to be stored in the dart which is released at the end of the throw. This results in a throw that is much more powerful and can be much further than what can be accomplished by the human body alone.

By attaching large, heavy stone arrowheads to the end of the darts, ancient hunters count take down one of the massive animals that roamed the plains. Undoubtedly though, this tactic was obviously very dangerous, as hunters stood a good chance of being killed by one of these beasts.

A safer, yet far more wasteful tactic was to start a wildfire in the plains and drive animals like the mammoth into deep ravines. The hunters would start large, circular fires which would move toward a herd of mammoth or bison. The animals would then run frantically away from the fire in giant stampedes, which resulted in them all running straight to their deaths when they fell into a ravine.

This was incredibly wasteful as the hunters were only able to use the meat and other useful materials from the top layer of animals, as they could only eat so much and could not preserve meat for very long. This technique is credited for helping lead to the demise of the mammoth, with hundreds to thousands of animals being killed in single stampedes.

As technology advanced, the short bow began to gradually replace the atlatl. Sinew from bison and deer was used to make the bow strings, and feathers were used to make the fletching for the arrows,

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