21 1/8" Arrow with Metal Tip-As early as 1671, hunters and warriors began to make their own metal arrowheads out of scrap and sheet metal such as barrel hoops, broken pieces of Euro-American machinery, and brass kettles. As early as 1805, the Crow were regarded as expert makers of metal tools from scraps. John James Audubon, an American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter, noted how American Indians made their own metal points to hunt buffalo. “The different Indian tribes hunt the Buffalo in various ways: some pursue them on horseback and shoot them with arrows,” Audubon observed, “which they point with old bits of iron, or old knife blades.” For an American Indian to make his own metal arrowhead he needed only a few Euro-American tools such as a file, cold chisel, or a hacksaw. Once these tools were available, the metal point quickly replaced those made from stone or bone because of the form’s durability and workability. Unlike a lithic point, which was liable to shatter on impact, a metal point could be repaired and sharpened. It is little surprise, therefore, that tribes quickly adopted metal arrowheads.