I think it is more that you lose a lot of arrowheads feeding a population for 4,000 years.

Not lousy hunters, lousy archers. Written in jest but does kinda make me wonder. I wouldn't expect them to pull the arrow out of a fresh kill and leave it. If not, that makes me think they missed what they were aiming for and left the arrow where it landed. Just a thought.

I have been told by folks that know more than me that the points ( arrowheads etc.) found in the Appalachian range are from prehistoric bands of native Americans. I'm' sure they were not lousy hunters. A prehistoric body of a child ( oldest in NC) was found about a mile from our house in the 80's under a rock outcropping near the Watauga RIver.

I had a similar experience when I was a kid at Allatoona Lake along the banks in the Little Victoria Area where my dad had a cabin.

Several years back I got the hankering to go back up there and poke around as the water was really down at that time. I encountered another guy looking in the same general area. He said he had found a lot of them there. I told him I had too, about fifty years earlier.

Funny thing though, almost all of the ones I recovered were made from quartz. I did recover one made of a beautiful pinkish flint that was completely different from anything else I encountered. Something tells me it must be much much older.

Recovered a cigar box full of Minnie balls there as well.

Merky

I remember asking the 1st person I spotted walking along the shoreline in front of my house, just what they were doing there. I found it kinda hard to believe when he responded that he was looking for arrowheads. Yeah, right. Then he bent down, picked one up and handed to me. Amazing. I continue to be surprised at just how many arrowheads litter the banks of Cherokee. Those injuns must've done a lot of hunting. Or, were lousy archers. lol

That is just too cool great post. Thank you.....

Just to give everybody some insight into the Tennessee River Valley in East Tennessee, this was the home of the Cherokee Indians and the river, at least from the head waters down to about Chattanooga, is littered with arrowheads, find a rocky beach that has a little inlet from the channel, look on the up stream side of the inlet and you may find an arrowhead or you may get lucky and find an area where no ones looked and find twenty.