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Carrying on an 11,000-year-old tradition

Fred Keeslar

Stephen Drake, a math professor at Northwestern Michigan College, took up the hobby of knapping 30 years ago when his son Eric was a boy. 

Knapping is the ancient art of chipping stone into a desired shape.

“One day my son was banging on rock with a hammer,” Drake recalls. “I asked him what he was doing and he said he was trying to make an arrow head. I took him to the Con Foster Museum and we looked at arrowheads and started experimenting. There weren’t many books at that time.”

Drake strikes the edge of a palm size stone and sheers off a large flake, which flattens one side.  This is repeated until the egg shaped stone is now a thin oval shape. As edges are trimmed the flat oval stone starts to take on the characteristic shape of an arrow point.

Knowing where and at what angle to strike to apply the pressure to get the desired shape is the essence of the art.

The tools Drake uses are identical to what was used for thousands of years. The striking tool, commonly called a bopper, is a piece of wood shaped like a tiny baseball bat with a copper cap. The flaking tools used to trim the edges are made from antlers of deer, moose, and elk.

Credit Fred Keeslar
Stephen Drake demonstrates knapping at Samels Farm

Stone tools in Northern Michigan were commonly made out of a stone called chert. There is an ancient chert mine in Norwood, Michigan, near Charlevoix.  The mine was used for thousands of years, and piles of stone flakes, some six feet deep, are left from eons of knapping.

Samels Farm, where Drake demonstrates the art of knapping, is also an important archeological site. Carbon dating suggests the area around Lake Skegemog was inhabited 11,000 years ago and ancient stone tools have been found there.

Drake says there are many misconceptions about making stone tools. One is that Indians were the only people that used stone tools. He says everyone’s ancestors did.

“It just evolved in the human race all over,” he says. “It’s probably why humans are still here today.”