Native American Projectile Points: What Stories Can They Tell Us?

Native American Projectile Points are ubiquitous throughout the United States and have been an important icon of indigenous peoples of North America and their past. This paper explores what projectile points can tell us about the people who made and used them, the history of collecting projectile points, and the challenges associated with projectile point research and collection management. The focus of this research is a collection of Native American projectile points in the Tate Archives and Special Collections in The Ames Library at Illinois Wesleyan University. In addition, the paper also describes the process used to catalog the collection, the many complications encountered throughout the cataloging process, and the display created on the first floor of The Ames Library at IWU in order to showcase and educate the public about the projectile point collection