Recreating Tools of the First People

Steve Allely, Master Flintknapper, discussing his replicas with Marrianne Fetty, a member of the Friends of the Sisters Library Arts Committee. (Photo by Jim Anderson)

Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by my old friend Jim Anderson, naturalist and columnist for The Nugget Newspaper in Sisters, Oregon. His subject, Steve Allely, is a remarkably talented flintknapper, whose meticulous recreations of Indian artifacts from the very ancient to the Fur Trade era can be found in many museums. Like many folks who are interested in native America, Steve is also a Celtophile, who taught himself to play the bagpipes.

Walking into the Sisters Library will take you on a trip back to when sprawling Pleistocene lakes drowned faulted basins, and the First People roamed the surrounding hills gathering materials to make tools, food to feed their families, and enjoying their time on earth.

Those early people lived in rock shelters and caves that faced huge lakes throughout Central Oregon. They gathered edible plants growing in the soil near them and hunted waterfowl, deer, elk and bighorn sheep, using local stone and plant material to manufacture tools and weapons.

As you look in the display cases you will see the beautiful workmanship of those early people duplicated by Sisters artist, flintknapper and bagpiper Steve Allely.
Allely produces beautifully-formed obsidian and chert points manufactured in exactly the same way the early people did, in perfect copies of arrow shafts and throwing sticks.

Steve Allely is a living legend amongst flintknappers in the Pacific Northwest and throughout North America. His flintknapping art has appeared in numerous editions of the Art of the Ancients Calendar. A true master, Steve is perhaps best known for his Ishi Points, going so far as to not only reproduce the style but the size and material favored by Ishi and using the same type of tools Ishi used.

Ishi, who died March 25, 1916, was the last member of the Yahi people of California. He is widely acclaimed as the “last wild Indian” in America, living most of his life completely outside modern culture. In 1911, at 50 years of age, he emerged near the present-day foothills of Lassen Peak.

Allely was the host of the 2010 Glass Buttes Knap-in. He was very easy to locate — all anyone had to do was look for the crowd of knappers taking lessons. He was always willing to give advice and free instruction, whether to the crowd or one-on-one.

In addition to his exquisite knapping art, Steve is a master at reproducing Native American marital artifacts — bows, arrows, knives, etc. His ability to produce extremely accurate details comes from years of studying North American native tools and weapons. He’s an acknowledged expert in this field and has lectured in several foreign countries, including Korea.

Allely has been doing this type of work since he was in the eighth grade in over in Springfield. His interest in the North American Indian culture was first awakened by his grandfather, who found artifacts on their family farm in Iowa.

“Yes,” Allely recalls, “I’ve been doing this kind of work for over 48 years, and each piece I recreate gives me a little more insight on the lives and times of the First People.”

However, in his effort to keep as close to the original work as possible Allely finds himself in somewhat of a bind. The Antiquities Act and Migratory Bird Act prohibit him from using any feathers found in a dig, and/or feathers from today’s birds for making arrows. While the First People used red-tailed hawk wing and tail feathers to fletch their arrows, Allely can’t do that.

However, looking at the fletching on the magnificent copies he’s created you can’t tell he used substitutes.

“I found the perfect solution by using peacock wing feathers,” Allely said, “I used turpentine to create patterns I needed to duplicate red-tail hawk feathers.”

Perhaps the most extraordinary duplicates Allely has created are the sagebrush sandals that were found in Munkenmeier Cave (known as Fort Rock Cave today) in Northern Lake County. In 1938, Archeologist Luther Cressman of the University of Oregon conducted a dig in the cave. Below the Mazama Ash (that covered all of Central Oregon when Crater Lake caldera was created some 7,000 years ago) his crew found ancient tools, and “arrow heads”, and among them a pair of sagebrush sandals, dated from a time period of 10,500 to 9,300 years ago, making them the oldest footwear ever discovered.

Cressman was born in Pennsylvania and began studying sociology and received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1928. He took a position as professor of sociology In 1929, at the U of O, and the Department of Anthropology was founded by him six years later. The sandals were in perfect condition, appearing they had been manufactured the day before. The use of the sandals was either overlooked and/or misunderstood, and they became known as the first “running shoes.”

Allely thinks they were worn in winter when it was necessary to go outside the caves and overhangs The People lived in. He thinks there may have also been leather boots as part of the winter footwear, but they may not have fared as well as the dry sagebrush sandals buried under the Mazama ash.

Nike picked up on the concept of ancient running shoes and asked Allely to make a pair. At that time the sandals were in the U of O Natural History Museum in Eugene. Allely, knowing the curator of the museum, a helpful collaborator helping to bring knowledge of the tools of the Early People to present day Oregonians, allowed Steve to see the sandals. Viewing the sandals was a high moment in his life. He examined the way the old people put the warp and weft into making the sandals and made hundreds of sketches. Then, after collecting sagebrush bark and weaving it into the material needed to recreate the sandals, he did the recreation job masterfully.

“I was so happy with the sandals, and — wanting to impress Nike with the work — I found a Nike shoe box and delivered them in it,” Allely says, with a big grin of satisfaction. “It would have been tasteless to do it any other way.”

He has recreated other sandals that are now on display in museums around the U.S.

The recreation of the Early People’s tools on display in the library is perfect in every detail, from the tiny “bird points,” to the juniper bows, and arrows made from sticks of mock-orange (Maclura pomifera) that still grows all over the West today.