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A Summer in Time:
Teacher's Guide [PDF] |
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Time Line of Native American Technology in Michigan
 Sometimes it seems that Indians always used the bow and arrow. Not true!
Early Native Americans had to invent these useful tools. Between 12,800 and 8000 BC
they chipped fluted points and attached them to hand-thrown spears for
hunting. Throughout the years they improved the techniques used to make their
points.
By 10,000 to 8000 BC, they had also invented the "atlatl," a
spear-thrower that provided greater force and distance. During the Woodland Era,
1000 BC to AD 1650, they developed the bow, which provided a new way to use
small, refined points.
 It is impossible
to assign definite dates to Native American inventions, but
the time line below shows some of the technology used in Michigan before Europeans
arrived. When Europeans arrived, Indians began trading furs for certain European
manufactured tools they found useful.
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Paleo-Indian
12,000 to 8000 BC
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Fluted points
Spears
Stone tools: knives, scrapers,
gravers, wedges
Bone tools: needles, awls
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Archaic
8000 to 1000 BC
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New kinds of spear points, long
darts
Atlatl adds force and distance to
thrown spears
Fishing: spears and fishhooks
Woodworking tools: axe, celt, adze
Copper mined and made into tools
such as spears and knives
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Woodland
1000 BC to AD 1650
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Early Woodland
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Gardeners plant squash and
sunflowers, using tools of stone, wood and bone; pottery
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Middle Woodland
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Fishing: deep-water net fisheries,
barbed harpoons
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Late
Woodland
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Bow and arrow; new crops: corn and beans
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Other Native American inventions
include snowshoes; toboggans; birchbark and dugout canoes; birchbark
storage containers; baskets; reed mats for flooring; beads of copper,
shell and bone; drums, rattles and flutes; stone and ceramic smoking
pipes; and cradleboards.
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