Chipped Stone Chipped-stone arrowheads from the Waterman site, a Michigamea Illinois village (1752-1765).

Arrows . . . are barbed at the tip with a stone, sharpened and cut in the shape of a serpent's tongue. (Sébastien Rale, 1723)

The Illinois made chipped-stone tools from fine-grained siliceous rocks, called chert, which they obtained from natural rock outcrops. One chert quarry mined by the Illinois was located near one of their winter villages on the Illinois River. From pieces of chert they fashioned a variety of artifacts, including triangular arrowheads, knife blades and "daggers" that were hafted to wooden handles, bi-pointed drills used for drilling holes in wood or bone, and scrapers used to remove fat from animal hides.