Notes

1. Bows, Guns, and Diverging Views

1. Bordewich, Killing the White Man’s Indian, 122–23. See also Prucha, The Great Father, 2:881, 882.

2. Morgan, Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress, 10–11. For a discussion on the influence of Morgan’s ideas in shaping perceptions of Native people by non-Aboriginals, see Pettipas, “Other Peoples’ Heritage,” 17; and Keesing, Cultural Anthropology, 141.

3. A postcard of a photograph taken by Frederick Steele on June 17, 1889, at Moosomin, Saskatchewan, titled “Indian Powwow,” shows two Aboriginal men in front of two tipis. One of the men is brandishing a revolver, the other is drawing a Plains bow and arrow. In light of the conflicts between Canadian troops and Plains Cree in Saskatchewan in 1885, in what came to be known as the “Northwest Rebellion,” the image and its title associate Aboriginal people with a propensity for violence, symbolized by the weapons the two men were holding. J. Baldwin, Bows, Arrows and Quivers of the American Frontier, 28. In contrast, the U.S. military on occasion accorded a more positive symbolic value to Plains bows and arrows. For example, several Indian scout units of the U.S. Cavalry in the 1890s used bows and arrows as insignia in their flags and guidons as expressions of “Indianness” reflecting a warrior imagery. Martin, “United States Army Indian Scouts and Cavalry Troopers Guidons,” 1–7, http://www.americanvexillum.com/indian_scouts_guidons/indian_scouts_guidons.htm (accessed July 2005).

4. Burpee, Journal of Anthony Henday, October 15, 1754, 32. Inuit from Hall Island in Frobisher Bay in the Central Arctic gave archery outfits in exchange for pins, needles, and other small European manufactures to two emissaries from Martin Frobisher’s crew on July 19, 1577, during Frobisher’s second voyage to the Arctic. Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled, 35, 36. The German traveler Paul Wilhelm von Württemberg received several archery sets as gifts from Native peoples in the Lower Missouri region in 1822–24; Württemberg, Travels in North America, 282 (from the Kansa leader Wa-kan-ze-re), 342 (from the Omaha leader Ua-bac-tié).

5. Glover, ed., David Thompson’s Narrative, 231.

6. Meijer Drees, “‘Indians’ Bygone Past,’” 12.

7. Kutenai people of northwestern Montana, for example, considered their ancestors’ skills as archers to have been of major importance in their resistance against the Blackfoot, who by the late eighteenth and during the nineteenth century were able to bring European firearms to bear against them. Turney-High, Ethnography of the Kutenai, 81. However, Blackfoot people equipped with firearms did eventually drive the Kutenai and other western groups off the Plains and into the Rocky Mountains. The sentiment may express a necessity for superior archery skills in the absence of firearms and may pertain more to ideas about ideals in regard to overcoming adversity in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. If it was anything more than nostalgia on the part of Turney-High’s Kutenai coworkers, perhaps the statement was meant to indicate the importance of archery in preventing the complete annihilation of the Kutenai by their opponents, even though these were equipped with firearms.

Reginald Laubin referred to late nineteenth-century mounted bison-hunting exploits related to him by the Lakota White Bull, who had used a bow and arrows from horseback on these occasions. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 142, 143. See also Ewers, The Blackfeet, 122; Ewers, The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture, 156, 157.

Joseph M. Marshall, a traditional bow maker from the Rosebud Sioux community in South Dakota, stated: “For many generations, the bow and arrow were the primary weapon of the Sioux hunter/warrior. Even after the arrival of firearms on the High Plains, the bow did not lose its popularity.” Marshall, “Primitive Sioux Archery,” 24.

The historian Stanley Vestal provided information from an interview with the Lakota White Bull, a nephew of Sitting Bull, referring to trade with Métis traders in the 1870s: “White Bull, the chief’s [Sitting Bull’s] nephew, traded for two guns. These were single-shot breech-loaders, using percussion caps. He wanted them for stalking deer and antelope. For running meat [bison] on horseback at short range, he thought a bow quite good enough.” Vestal, New Sources of Indian History, 235.

A robe painted with the military and hunting exploits of the Blackfoot Running Rabbit depicts bows and arrows used in mounted bison hunting, while firearms are shown in combat, indicating the continued importance of the bow and arrow in bison hunting. L. J. Dempsey, Blackfoot War Art, 110.

8. Rich, History of the Hudson’s Bay Company; Careless, Canada: A Story of Challenge.

9. For a discussion of these views, see Morantz, “Old Texts, Old Questions,” 166–68.

10. John Clapham, Vice Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, quoted from introduction to Rich, Minutes of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 31. For similar views, see also D. Baldwin, Fur Trade in the Moose-Missinaibi River Valley, 69.

11. Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms”; J. G. E. Smith, “Western Woods Cree,” 442, 443.

12. Given, “Study of European Weapons Technology,” 105.

13. For examples of such views, see Careless, Canada; Lowie, Indians of the Plains; Rich, History of the Hudson’s Bay Company; Secoy, Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains; D. Baldwin, Fur Trade in the Moose-Missinaibi River Valley, 69.

14. In regard to assessments of the role of firearms in Cree-Inuit conflicts, see Bishop and Lytwyn, “Cree-Inuit Warfare in the Hudson Bay Region,” 41–43. Bishop and Lytwyn cited fur traders Joseph Robson and Andrew Graham: Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 174, 236; Robson, Account of Six Years Residence in Hudson’s Bay, 63. In regard to Aboriginal conflicts on the Northern Plains and Columbia Plateau, see Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 45, 171, 254, 278, 296, 297, 305, 306, 331, 332, 351, 391; Henry, Journal of Alexander Henry the Younger, Monday, July 21, 1806, 1:236; July, 22, 1806, 1:268; Wednesday, September 7, 1808, 2:358, 378; Monday, April 30, 1810, 2:440, 441.

15. Secoy, Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains; Ewers, The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture.

16. Secoy, Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains, 19; D. Baldwin, Fur Trade in the Moose-Missinaibi River Valley, 69.

17. HBC fur trader and explorer Anthony Henday claimed to have used Aboriginal archery gear to kill moose and swans. Burpee, Journal of Anthony Henday, 37, December 15, 1754; 43, April 17, 1755; 43, April 24, 1755. Duke Paul von Württemberg may have used Native American bows, arrows, and quivers during his travels in western North America. One of his Métis interpreters used bows and arrows to kill bison during their journey. The acquisition records of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin contain a list of artefacts collected by von Württemberg. It was printed by August Kranabaecker in Zweibrücken, but it is not clear whether it was compiled by the duke himself or posthumously by someone else. The title of this document is “Ethnographische Sammlung Gesammelt von Sr. Koenigl. Hoheit Herzog Paul von Württemberg.” After the duke’s death in 1860, the collection was broken up or destroyed. Thus, several objects on the list cannot currently be located. Of interest here are entries no. 64 and no. 93 from the list:

No. 64: “Köcher, Pfeile, Bogen, von mir selbst gebraucht.” (“Quiver, arrows, bow, used by myself.”)

No. 93: “Köcher mit Pfeilen, deren sich einer meiner Dolmetscher; ein Metis mit namen La Matice [La Malice = Wolf im Schafspelz], während meiner Reise von den Councyl [sic] Bluffs nach dem oberen Missouri bediente, mit welchen Pfeilen er mehrere Bison in meiner Gegenwart erlegte.” (“Quiver with arrows, used by one of my interpreters, La Matice [La Malice = Wolf in sheep’s clothing], during my journey from Council Bluffs to the Upper Missouri, with these arrows he killed several bison in my presence.”)

Klann, Die Sammlung indianischer Ethnographica aus Nordamerika, 26, 74, 76. The Crow Plenty Coups stated that non-Aboriginal trappers and traders often preferred short Plains bows over muzzle-loading firearms for mounted bison hunting. Linderman, Plenty Coups, 17, 18; Laubin and Laubin, The Indian Tipi, 15, 16.

18. Brink, Imagining Head-Smashed-In, 54–57.

19. For a similar approach of archaeologists to the nature of their sources, see S. J. Baldwin, Elk Point Burial, 61–63.

20. Fleming and Luskey, North American Indians in Early Photographs, 8, 9, 14.

21. Brown and Peers, Pictures Bring Us Messages, 60, 64, 108.

22. Fleming and Luskey, North American Indians in Early Photographs, 133.

23. Whenever possible, for each bow, I measured the overall length, width, and thickness in the grip area, at the approximate center of each bow limb, where most of the bending would occur, and at the tips, near the points of attachment of the bowstring. For arrows, I measured the total length, including the arrowhead, the usable length of the shaft (draw length), the diameter of the arrow shaft in several places along the shaft, the dimensions (width, thickness, and length) of the arrowhead, the length and height of the fletching, and the balancing point of the arrow. I recorded the materials used in the construction of each bow and arrow as much as possible, as well as details of construction techniques.

24. I began manufacturing and using reproductions of Aboriginal/Native American archery equipment in 1992 and since then have made archery sets for several educational institutions, including the Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, the Manitoba Children’s Museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the Young-Jib Archery Museum in Paju, South Korea.

25. Gleach, “Controlled Speculation and Constructed Myths,” 39–74, 42.

26. Smyth, “The Niitsitapi Trade,” 52; Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm,” 117.

2. Indigenous Subsistence Patterns

1. Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, 174; D. Russell, Eighteenth-Century Western Cree and their Neighbours, 218. The emphasis here is on seasonal subsistence mobility of Western Cree groups within rather narrowly defined home territories, which they occupied from before contact with Europeans. I do not refer to relocations and long-distance migrations from coastal areas on Hudson and James Bays into the western boreal forest and into the Parklands-Plains region as a result of the fur trade, as has been claimed by earlier writers such as D. Mandelbaum and disproved by D. Russell and others.

2. D. Russell, Eighteenth-Century Western Cree, 1, 216–18; D. Russell, “The Puzzle of Henry Kelsey and His Journey to the West,” 78, 79; J. G. E. Smith, “Western Woods Cree.” For a summary of the discussion of a precontact Cree presence west of Lake Winnipeg, see Smyth, “Niitsitapi Trade,” 124–27.

3. D. Meyer, “People Before Kelsey,” 67–69.

4. Letter from Father Marest, 1694, in Tyrrell, Documents Relating to the Early History of Hudson Bay, 126, 127.

5. Tyrrell, “Letters of La Potherie,” 219, 220, 261, 262.

6. Noble and Pollock, “Archaeology of the Hawley Lake Area,” 79.

7. Gardener, “General Environment,” in Handbook of North American Indians, 6:9–10.

8. Gardener, “General Environment,” 6:12.

9. Brownlee and Syms, Kayasochi Kikawenow, 3, 4.

10. Honigmann, “West Main Cree,” in Handbook of North American Indians, 6:217.

11. Gardener, “General Environment,” 6:13.

12. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 4, 5, 106.

13. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 110; Louis Bird, personal communication, October 2001; Houston et al., Eighteenth-Century Naturalists, 97, 177–87; Fort Dauphin Post Journal, Report of District, Spring 1820, Archives of Manitoba, HBCA, B.51/e/1. Peter Fidler was the first European to record this cycle of abundance and decline of hare and lynx.

14. Gillespie, “Major Fauna in the Traditional Economy,” in Handbook of North American Indians, 6:15–18.

15. Gillespie, “Major Fauna,” 6:18; Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 4, 5, 91–95.

16. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 110.

17. Gillespie, “Major Fauna,” 6:15; Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows”; Louis Bird, personal communication, September–October 1999.

18. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0051—“Fish Trapping and Caribou Hunting,” 1.

19. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 38, 39.

20. Lister, “Provisioned at Fishing Stations.”

21. Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 330.

22. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 24, 25.

23. Honigmann, “West Main Cree,” 217.

24. Skinner, Notes on the Eastern Cree and Northern Saulteaux, 56, 57; Goulet, “Cumberland Cree Nehinuw Concept of Land,” 9, 17–20.

25. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0051—“Fish Trapping and Caribou Hunting,” 2.

26. Skinner, Notes on the Eastern Cree and Northern Saulteaux, 24–26.

27. Spiess, Reindeer and Caribou Hunters, 120.

28. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 82, Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 166, 171, 184.

29. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0051—“Fish Trapping and Caribou Hunting,” 1.

30. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 83, 84.

31. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows”; Skinner, Notes on the Eastern Cree and Northern Saulteaux, 25, 26. Skinner described a similar method for hunting caribou, practiced by the Eastern Cree.

32. Spiess, Reindeer and Caribou Hunters, 120, 121; Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 430; Läng, Kulturgeschichte der Indianer Nordamerikas, 87.

33. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 86, 147. Caribou cows shed their antlers shortly before giving birth, usually in May or June. Bulls shed theirs in October or November, generally after the rut, while immature bulls do not shed their antlers until spring. Therefore, by the time of year that caribou hedges were in use, there were some caribou with and some without antlers. Although it would seem easier to catch caribou without antlers, the width of the caribou antlers apparently did not impede the functionality of the snares.

34. Isham, Isham’s Observations on Hudsons Bay, 1743, 152–54; Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 86.

35. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 86; see also Isham, Isham’s Observations on Hudsons Bay, 1743, for a drawing of such a “deer snare” (HBCA, PAM, E.2/2, fo. 43).

36. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 84, 85.

37. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 87.

38. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0116—“Guns and Bows II,” 20–22.

39. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 84.

40. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0051—“Fish Trapping and Caribou Hunting,” 2.

41. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 87, 93.

42. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0051—“Fish Trapping and Caribou Hunting,” 3.

43. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 96–98, 100, 101.

44. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 101, 102, Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 133.

45. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 95, 105; Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0051—“Fish Trapping and Caribou Hunting,” 1, 2; Louis Bird, personal communication, October 2001.

46. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0051—“Fish Trapping and Caribou Hunting,” 2; Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 118, 119; Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 96.

47. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 103.

48. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 104, 110.

49. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 105, 106.

50. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 106, 107; Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 11.

51. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 107; Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 11.

52. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 110, 111.

53. Houston et al., Eighteenth-Century Naturalists, 188–99.

54. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 92, 93, 110, 111; Radisson, Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson, 225.

55. For approximate locations of Native groups in the Northern Plains in the mid-eighteenth century, see Smyth, “Niitsitapi Trade,” fig. 2, 106. I do not use the term “Atsina” as another designation for the Gros Ventre des Prairies because the people so designated consider it derogatory. Theodore Binnema, personal communication, July 2005.

56. L. J. Dempsey, Blackfoot War Art, 5; Smyth, “Niitsitapi Trade,” 5, 6.

57. Smyth. “Niitsitapi Trade,” 9.

58. H. A. Dempsey, “Blackfoot,” in Handbook, 13:604.

59. Hartmann, Die Plains-und Praerieindianer Nordamerikas, 24.

60. Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 20, 21.

61. Wedel and Frison, “Environment and Subsistence,” in Handbook of North American Indians, 13:46.

62. Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 18, 29.

63. Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 28–33. Peter Fidler reported ash and poplar trees along the Bad River (Bow River?) in what is now southern Alberta. HBCA, 4M 103, E 3/2, Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land from Buckingham House to the Rocky Mountains,” 24, January 18, 1793.

64. Wedel and Frison, “Environment and Subsistence,” 13:52, 53.

65. Wedel and Frison, “Environment and Subsistence,” 13:53.

66. For a discussion of the varying importance of hunting versus gathering in different cultures and its consequences for the roles of women in these societies, see Dahlberg, introduction to Woman the Gatherer, 2; Sharp, “The Null Case: The Chipewyan,” 221–44; Bryan, Buffalo People.

67. Wedel and Frison, “Environment and Subsistence,” 50, 51.

68. Wedel and Frison, “Environment and Subsistence,” 50.

69. Wedel and Frison, “Environment and Subsistence,” 51.

70. Wedel and Frison, “Environment and Subsistence,” 51.

71. Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 79; D. Meyer, “People Before Kelsey,” 54–73, 67–69; D. Meyer, “Comment on McCullough’s View.”

72. H. A. Dempsey, “Blackfoot,” 13:604.

73. However, archaeological and historical evidence seems to link archaeological sites in the Saskatchewan River valley that contain material from the Selkirk complex to the ancestors of western Woods Cree groups, indicating their residence in the area in precontact times. Meyer and Thistle, “Saskatchewan River Rendezvous Centers and Trading Posts,” 403–44.

74. Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 77.

75. Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 80–85. For a detailed discussion of various proposed models of bison behavior in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Peck, Bison Ethology and Native Settlement Patterns. Based on historical records, Peck proposes a relatively consistent but limited migratory pattern of bison movement between the sheltered margins of the plains in winter and the open plains in summer.

76. Peck, Bison Ethology, 111, 112.

77. Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 41–46. Notes to page 64

78. Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 40–42.

79. Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 43.

80. Ewers, The Blackfeet, 86.

81. Brink, Imagining Head-Smashed-In, 61–63.

82. Brink, Imagining Head-Smashed-In, 61–63, 66, 67; Flores, “Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy,” 479.

83. Reeves, Head-Smashed-In, 173.

84. Ewers, The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture, 165.

85. R. N. Wilson Papers, 1:21, 22, Glenbow Archives. Robert Nathaniel Wilson (1863–1944) served with the Northwest Mounted Police at Fort MacLeod in Alberta and Fort Pitt and Battleford in Saskatchewan from 1881 to 1884. Then he ran a trading post on the Belly River, near Stand Off, Alberta. Subsequently, he served as Indian agent at the Peigan Agency (1898–1903) and on the Blood Reserve (1904–1911). He recorded ethnographic information about the Blood, Siksika, and Peigan from 1893 to 1903, and collected Aboriginal artefacts for the Field Museum in Chicago as well as other U.S. museums. He wrote several articles for the Royal Society of Canada and returned to his trading post near Stand Off in 1911. This story he recorded suggests the great importance Blackfoot people accorded to archery.

86. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land from Buckingham House to the Rocky Mountains,” 1–36, HBCA.

87. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 13, HBCA.

88. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 13, HBCA.

89. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:290.

90. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 34, March 2, 1793, HBCA.

91. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 23, January 13, 1793, HBCA.

92. Henry, Journal of Alexander Henry the Younger, 2:372; Verbicky-Todd, Communal Buffalo Hunting among the Plains Indians, 5; Frison, “The Role of Buffalo Procurement in Post-Altithermal Populations”; Burpee, Journal of Anthony Henday, 34; Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 14, December 25, 1792, HBCA.

93. Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 41.

94. “The inhabitants of the plains, generally, and of New Caledonia [interior British Columbia], live in large bands; and are much more addicted to amusements, than the inhabitants of woody countries [northern forests] who are more scattered.” Harmon, Journal of Voyages and Travels in the Interior of North America, 311, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/lib/collist (accessed May 2010).

3. Bows of the Northern Plains and Subarctic

1. Reeves, “Culture Change in the Northern Plains,” 94, 98.

2. Blitz, “Adoption of the Bow in Prehistoric North America,” 126–29.

3. Duke, Points in Time, 85, 86.

4. McCracken et al., Mummy Cave Project, 56, 57, 96.

5. In a “reflex bow” the limbs of the bow curve toward the target, that is, away from the bowstring, when the bow is unstrung. This means that in order to string the bow, it has to be bent against its curve. The draw weight is the force that is needed to draw a bow to full draw length. In contemporary North American archery, this is mostly measured in pounds. One pound equals about 453.59 grams. In order to be able to compare different bows with one another, it is important to know to which draw length the draw weight of a given bow refers. The draw length is measured from the back of the bow to the lowest point of the bowstring notch in the nock of the arrow at the moment of reaching the full draw weight of the bow, immediately before the arrow is released, often measured in inches.

6. For example, terms such as “double curved,” “reflexed,” “recurved,” “gull-wing-shaped,” “Cupid’s bow,” or “string follow” refer to the profile of a bow when viewed from the side. In contrast, a term such as “paddle bow” refers to the profile of a bow when viewed from the back, or the belly, emphasizing the extreme width of the limbs at their center. These terms can be applied regardless of the materials used in a bow’s construction, because they only classify shape. “Man-sized” bow indicates that the length of the bow is close to the height of the user.

7. The Northwest Company fur trader Alexander Henry the Younger, who traveled through the western Plains and Rocky Mountain region in the early 1800s, distinguished these three types of bows used by Native people of the Plateau and western Plains. Henry, Journal of Alexander Henry the Younger, 2:524, Wednesday, February 13, 1811. Plains, Parklands, and Plateau peoples considered here are the Arapaho, Arikara, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Crow, Flathead, Gros Ventre, Hidatsa, Kutenai, Mandan, Nez Perce, Pawnee, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibwa, Sarcee, Shoshone, Sioux.

8. Henry, Journal, 2:524, Wednesday, February 13, 1811.

9. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows”; Clifford Crane Bear, personal communication, August 22, 2002, Glenbow Museum, Calgary.

10. Hamm, Bows and Arrows of the Native Americans, 28; Walking Elk, Art of Making Indian Bows and Arrows, 37, in reference to self bows made from Osage orange; Massey, Bowyer’s Craft, 52–54; Waldorf, Art of Making Primitive Bows and Arrows, 7.

11. Sapwood is the youngest part of the stem of a tree. It consists of a relatively thin layer of recent growth. This layer conducts water and other dissolved materials. It is softer and of a lighter color than the heartwood that comprises the core of the tree. Usually, heartwood is denser and of a darker color than sapwood and no longer conducts water and dissolved minerals. As the tree grows, the layers of sapwood closest to the heartwood gradually become heartwood. The diameter of the heartwood gradually increases with the growth of the tree while the thickness of the sapwood remains the same.

12. Examples of Aboriginal bows with their backs damaged, collected during the twentieth century: (1, 2) Provincial Museum of Alberta, H68.204.29–30, self bow made from small branch, growth rings cut through on the back, collected from Blood people, ca. 1920, and H67.8.1, self bow, made from a small tree or branch, growth rings cut through on the back, collected from Bloods, 1967. (3, 4) Glenbow Museum, Calgary AF 311, self bow collected at Siksika Reserve during the first half of the twentieth century, and AP 273, self bow, possibly made from a chokecherry sapling. Instead of keeping the arched profile of the natural growth of the tree intact, the growth rings were chopped through to flatten the back of the bow. Collected from Cree people in Alberta during the twentieth century. (5) Northwest Museum of Art and Culture, Spokane, WA, Colby-69.33, possibly a Sioux bow based on construction details and collection history. (6) McCord Museum, Montreal, ACC6032A. According to collection information, this self bow may have come from Red Eagle, a Lakota living in Alberta, who was said to have obtained it from Sitting Bull as a parting gift. Supposedly these items were used and/or collected in or after the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876. If correct, this bow would be an exception to the statement made above.

Examples of self bows with intact growth rings on their backs: (1) Glenbow Museum, Calgary AD-22a, self bow, Northern Plains, possibly collected in 1835. (2, 3) Lindenmuseum Stuttgart, Germany, cat. nos. 12570 and 12571, self bows collected from Kansa and Omaha people by Paul von Württemberg, made ca. 1820. (4, 5) Ethnologisches Museum Berlin IV-B-2189, self bow, Omaha, collected by Alice Fletcher and Francis La Flesche, 1896–1898, and IV-B-6136, self bow, Oglala Sioux, collected by Clark Wissler in 1904. For Plains self bows with intact backs, collected by Father Eugene Buechel SJ, see Koppedrayer, “Cultural Signatures: Lakota Bows,” St. Francis Mission, http://www.sfmission.org/museum/exhibits/bowsandarrows/signatures.html.

13. Clifford Crane Bear, personal communication, August 22, 2002, Glenbow Museum, Calgary; Clark, Indian Sign Language, 76.

14. Baker, “Bows from Boards,” 2:27–33; Comstock, “Ancient European Bows,” 2:91, 92.

15. Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Spokane WA, cat. no. 2145.4. No provenance information was available for this bow. Museum records described it as “Plains,” made from “ash.” However, to me, the shape of the nocks, the presence of a rolled rawhide string, and its overall shape and mode of construction appear closer to Subarctic bows. The wood could be coniferous.

16. Hosie, Native Trees of Canada, 56, 57; Louis Bird, personal conversation, Winnipeg, October 1999. Mr. Bird pointed out that the Omushkego (Swampy) Cree on the western shores of Hudson Bay chose larch/tamarack (Larix laricina) for its qualities of springiness and compression strength, and also due to the limited availability of other woods suitable for bow making in the region.

17. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 242. Note also the distinction the account made in regard to the quality of wood used by the Parkland Cree in comparison to the bow wood available to the “Snake.”

18. Henry, Journal, 2:524, Wednesday, February 13, 1811.

19. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:354–57.

20. Bohr, “Plains Indian Archery Gear of the Historic Period,” 4.

21. Fidler, “Journal of Exploration and Survey, 1789–1806,” E.3/1, HBCA, 4M 103, No. 3, July 25, 1792, to July 4, 1793, September 29, 1792, F93.

22. S. L. Rogers, “The Aboriginal Bow and Arrow of North America and Eastern Asia,” 259. For a discussion of similar developments in North Asian Indigenous archery and the use of sinew backing to overcome problems inherent in locally available bow wood, see Balfour, “Structure and Affinities of the Composite Bow,” 220, 221.

23. Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales, 199.

24. Ewers, The Blackfeet, 122.

25. Mike Bruised Head, personal communication, “Beyond Borders and Boundaries: David Thompson and the North American Fur Trade,” conference at the Montana Historical Society, Helena MT, June 2007.

26. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 35. The ultimate source for these hickory bow staves is unclear, but they likely came from outside the Northern Plains, as the native range of hickory lies in the eastern and southeastern regions of the United States and the southern Great Lakes area of Canada. H. C. Smith, “Caraya cordiformis,” USDA Forest Service, http://www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/volume_2/carya/cordiformis.htm, (accessed February 22, 2011).

27. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:119: “The weapons of the Blackfeet do not much differ from those of the other Indians on the Missouri; but they are not so handsome and well made as those of the Crows, Manitaries and Mandans. They do not themselves make bows of the horn of the elk, or of the mountain sheep, which are consequently not common among them. Their country does not produce any wood suitable for bows; and they endeavour to obtain, by barter, the bow wood, or yellow wood (Maclura aurantiaca) from the River Arkansas. For their quivers, they prefer the skin of the cougar (Felis concolor, Linn.), for which they give a horse. The tail hangs down from the quiver, is trimmed with red cloth on the inner side, embroidered with white beads, and ornamented at the end or elsewhere, with strips of skin, like tassels.”

28. Catlin, North American Indians, 27: “The greater number of these bows are made of ash, or of ‘bois d’arc’ (as the French call it), and lined on the back with buffalo or deer’s sinews, which are inseparably attached to them, and give them great elasticity. There are very many also (amongst the Blackfeet and the Crows) which are made of bone, and others of the horns of the mountain sheep.”

29. Hamm, “Plains Indian Bows,” 3:120. However, Hamm provided no provenance information or collection history of these bows, nor did he mention where he encountered these bows.

30. Allely and Hamm, Encyclopedia of Native American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 2:141: Osage orange self bow at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, described as “Blackfoot.” In its mode of construction and decorations (horsehair), this bow is quite similar to Comanche and Kiowa self bows.

31. The Blackfoot Spumiapi told Jane Richardson Hanks that the Blackfoot leader Running Rabbit took a bow and arrows as a trophy in war. Spumiapi via Mary White Elk on Running Rabbit (Atsistaumaxkan), September 3, 1938, 122, file 4, Hanks Fonds, M8458, Glenbow Archives. According to L. James Dempsey, “Crooked Meat Strings, a Siksika, ranked the top eight objects that might be captured in battle. He said that ‘gun taking in battle is strongest,’ adding that ‘a man tried to get the gun to be a chief.’ Although he rated the bow and arrow second, he said, ‘Before we had guns, that was most important. Now it’s second.’” L. J. Dempsey, Blackfoot War Art, 14, 86.

32. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:144.

33. L. J. Dempsey, Blackfoot War Art, 71–73.

34. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 74. Horn and antler bows were rare and highly prized as prestige weapons among the Aboriginal people of the Northern Plains. Besides being a status symbol, especially the sheep horn bows were also formidable weapons.

35. Henry, Journal, 2:524, Wednesday, February 13, 1811.

36. Holm, “On Making Horn Bows,” 118–20. Artist and museum curator Bill Holm manufactured a mountain sheep horn bow with a draw weight of 55 pounds at a draw length of 22 inches. More than three decades after its construction, it still consistently shot distances exceeding 200 meters, and his longest shot with this bow was 235 yards. Bill Holm, personal communication, October 2005. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 84, 85. Reginald Laubin suggested that Aboriginal people developed horn bows only after the adoption of horseback riding and after they had access to metal tools. However, elk antler bows appear in old Blackfoot legends, such as the legend of Big Arrow. R. N. Wilson Papers, 1:36–38, Glenbow Archives.

37. Henry, Journal, 2:524, Wednesday, February 13, 1811.

38. Balfour, “Structure and Affinities of the Composite Bow,” 225, 226.

39. Jaap Koppedrayer, personal communication, World Traditional Archery Festival, Cheonan, South Korea, May 2007. Koppedrayer is of Dutch background and primarily manufactures Asiatic composite bows.

40. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:36, 37, Minnesota Historical Society (hereafter MHS).

41. M. Thompson, The Witchery of Archery; Massey, “Traditional Roots,” 3:13, 14; Hamm, “Lessons from Target Archery,” 4:258, 259.

42. Hamm, “Lessons from Target Archery,” 258, 259.

43. Penzer, The World Encompassed and Analogous Contemporary Documents Concerning Sir Francis Drake’s Circumnavigation of the World, 61, 62. In contrast, other English travelers and explorers expressed respect and even appreciation of Native North American archery. For example, accounts of Martin Frobisher’s expeditions to the eastern Arctic expressed a healthy respect for the power of Inuit bows and the accuracy of their users in combat. Stefánsson and McCaskill, Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 2:21, from Dionyse Settle’s account of the second voyage, London, 1577.

44. Chaplin, Subject Matter, 98.

45. Mary Rose Trust, “The Discovery and Excavation of the Mary Rose—Page 1 of 4,” http://www.maryrose.org/project/index.html, and “Armament—Page 6 of 9—Longbows,” http://www.maryrose.org/ship/bows1.htm (accessed February 22, 2011).

46. Heizer and Kroeber, Ishi the Last Yahi, 120–21, 229; Allely, “Ishi’s Archery Tackle,” 4:269.

47. Pope, Bows and Arrows.

48. Pope, Bows and Arrows, 73. Pope used a flight arrow made by Ishi in all his tests.

49. Pope, Bows and Arrows, 1.

50. Pope, Bows and Arrows, 9, 10.

51. Lowrey, “An Ethnoarchaeological Inquiry,” 55; Blitz, “Adoption of the Bow in Prehistoric North America,” 133–34; Heath, Grey Goose Wing, 274: “Among the Yurok, bows and arrows were made by old men skilled in the art. One specimen examined by Saxton Pope proved to be extremely well made but had an indifferent performance. ‘In action,’ said Pope, ‘this bow is soft, springy, bends in the hand, is flabby in cast and kicks.’ Toxophilites will agree that this is probably the worst set of faults a bow could have, and a modern bowyer, producing a weapon to such specifications of performance, would very soon be out of business.” English bow makers manufacturing sporting bows from the Victorian era onward took care to have the handle area of their bows remain stiff and unbending during the draw and release. This made for greater shooting comfort at the cost of energy storage because the stiff and unbending handle would not absorb any energy that could be transferred to the arrow. In contrast, medieval English war bows, as well as almost all types of Native American bows, were designed to bend in the handle to allow for greater energy absorption. See Bourke and Whetham, “Report of the Findings of the Defence Academy Warbow Trials,” 3.

52. Nagler, “Bow and Arrow for Big Game,” 18, 19.

53. Heizer, foreword to Pope, Bows and Arrows, 3. See also Heizer, “How Accurate Were California Indians with the Bow and Arrow?”

54. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:4, 5, MHS.

55. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:8. Wilson noted that the extremely long traditional bows of Japan were very similar in this regard, displaying a distinct asymmetry between the lower and upper limb. See also Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, 437. White Hawk, a Sioux from the Cheyenne River Reservation, described to anthropologist Frances Densmore the manufacture and characteristics of Lakota bison-hunting bows, interpreted by Mr. Edward Swan:

The buffalo bows of two men were seldom exactly alike, either in pattern or in strength, but one characteristic which all had in common was that the place for fitting the arrow was nearer the upper than the lower end of the bow, the lower section being longer and thicker than the upper. Some men used the wood of the cherry or plum tree for their bows, while other preferred the crab apple or some other hardwood. The back of the bow was covered with sinew which had been made flexible by rubbing and then dried. When this was ready the back of the bow was cut in numerous places and covered with glue made from the hide of the buffalo, the part used for this purpose being a strip between the horns, back of the eyes; the sinew was then applied and became part of the bow. The string of the bow was of the sinew of the buffalo bull, twisted and dried.

This account indicates the upper arm of Lakota bows to have been shorter and thinner than the lower arm, the opposite of what Wolf Chief described. However, this difference could be due to translation issues. Both accounts agree that the lower arm of a bow was made thicker and less flexible than the upper arm. White Hawk’s statement may have been in reference to an allowance for hand placement. However, both accounts agree that a noticeable asymmetry was an important design feature in Northern Plains bows.

Densmore’s ethnographic information on Native American archery must be used with great caution and cannot always be taken at face value. For example, the steps in the preparation of sinew for backing a bow are reversed in the above account. Sinew was commonly dried first and then made flexible by rubbing to loosen and soften the hardened fibers. The cutting of the back of the bows refers to roughing up the surface of the bow’s back to improve the adherence of the glue-sinew matrix.

56. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:72, MHS.

57. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:71, MHS. The Omaha, an agricultural, earth lodge–dwelling people living along the Missouri, like the Hidatsa also used this stringing method; see Fletcher and LaFlesche, Omaha Tribe, 449, 452; Vonderhey, Secrets of the Omaha Bow, title page (photograph “Omaha Man with Bow,” National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC).

58. Weitzner, Notes on the Hidatsa Indians Based on Data Recorded by the Late Gilbert L. Wilson.

59. Both bows, one of them a horn bow, were collected by Dr. Washington Matthews, who worked among the Hidatsa as a U.S. Army surgeon and ethnologist from 1865 to 1872.

60. Pope, Bows and Arrows, 68, plate 3, fig. 12.

61. Pope, Bows and Arrows, 16.

62. Pope, Bows and Arrows, 62. This bow had a draw weight of 45 pounds at a draw length of 25 inches, while the bow was only 47.5 inches long. Stringing such a self bow to a brace height of 4 inches and then still drawing it 25 inches overstresses the weapon a great deal.

63. Allely and Hamm, Encyclopedia of Native American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 2:148, 149, 155. Sinew-backed horn bow, collected from the Mandan or Crow by Duke Paul von Württemberg before 1850, and hickory self bow, belonging to Chief Crow Eagle of the Two Kettle division of the Lakota.

64. Gilman and Schneider, Way to Independence, 76, 103; Taillon, “Hidatsa Archery,” 55.

65. Hughes, “Getting to the Point: Evolutionary Change in Prehistoric Weaponry,” 348: “Owing to the low velocity of primitive weaponry [traveling at speeds below 366 meters per second], gravitational force causes projectiles to travel in an arched trajectory. To achieve an accurate shot, a hunter must be able to judge the distance and know his equipment well enough to choose the right point-of-aim in an arched trajectory.” See also Van Buren, Arrowheads and Projectile Points, 9.

66. Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, plate 62, fig. 2; S. L. Rogers, “Aboriginal Bow and Arrow of North America and Eastern Asia,” 268. Citing Otis T. Mason and others, Rogers concluded, “[W]e may postulate that the preponderant use of the more primitive methods of shooting in the New World indicates a less highly developed archery type.”

67. For such an account see Densmore, Chippewa Customs, 146–48. Two other examples of simplistic accounts of Plains Aboriginal bow making: Mandelbaum, Plains Cree, 94: “The best bows were made of chokecherry wood. A straight shoot, three to four feet long and two or three inches in diameter, was whittled flat on both sides and smoothed with a stone.” Mason, Origins of Invention, 272: “Among the Plains Indians bows were made from the wood of the Osage Orange (Bois d’arc), and long journeys were often taken to obtain it. Only the best stocks were selected, straight and as free from knots as possible. The seasoning process was slow and thorough, a little scraping and cutting and shaping [my emphasis], then a rubbing with fat, and it was laid aside for weeks. Each warrior had several in different stages of completion.” These oversimplified accounts do not mention steps of gradual wood removal and repeated control of its effect on the bend of the bow limbs (i.e., tillering), which is necessary to make a functioning and durable bow. Mandelbaum’s account is already a description of bows made from branches or saplings, with their growth rings cut through on the back, not consistent with manufacturing techniques evident in self bows from the Plains dating to the first three quarters of the nineteenth century.

68. Hearne, Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort, 308, 309, 310; Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, 73; Honigmann, Handbook of North American Indians, 6:218; Mandelbaum, Plains Cree, 20–22.

69. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows”; Isham, James Isham’s Observations on Hudsons Bay, 118. The Hudson’s Bay Company factor James Isham provided an illustration of a simple “D” bow, made of “berch” by the Natives near York Factory. E. S. Rogers, Material Culture of the Mistassini, 67.

70. Record, Mechanical Properties of Wood, http://library.beau.org/gutenberg/1/2/2/9/12299/12299.txt, tables 2 and 6.

71. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows”; William Dumas, elder, Fox Lake Cree Nation Manitoba, personal communication, March 2010; Horace Massan, Cree elder, Split Lake First Nation Manitoba, personal communication, March 2010.

72. Skinner, Notes on the Eastern Cree and Northern Saulteaux, 24, 25.

73. For a discussion of sinew-cable-backed bows in use by Native peoples in the southwestern United States, see Driver and Massey, “Comparative Studies of North American Indians,” 355.

74. Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, plate 71.

75. Verne Dusenberry wrote about bows among the Assiniboine in Montana: “Sometimes the sinew-backed bow was made with the bow stave tapered at both ends with a groove cut along the back of the bow . . . [and] one long bowstring drawn through this groove.” Dusenberry, “Notes on the Material Culture of the Assiniboine Indians,” 53. The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology in Bristol, Rhode Island, has a bow labeled “Dakota Tribes” that has a twisted sinew cord running along the length of its back from one tip to the other. Hail, Hau Kola! The Plains Indian Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, 170, 171, Haffenreffer Museum cat. no. 75–60. The Forrest Fenn collection contains a bow from the Southwest (Athapaskan?) with a single sinew cable on the back. J. A. Hanson, Spirits in the Art, 180, 181.

76. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows”; Louis Bird, personal communication, September–October 1999. From shooting experiments conducted with my Plains-style asymmetrical sinew-backed ash bow, I know that in temperatures around minus 30 degrees Celsius, the bow becomes noticeably stronger, because the sinew backing contracts in the cold. However, nineteenth-century Plains Indians seem to have been concerned about exposing their bows to intense cold for too long, since they devised a special winter carrying method for short bows. They carried their bows on their backs underneath their clothing, next to the bare skin. Multiple layers of winter clothing, such as shirts, coats, and bison robes would keep the bow pressed against the archer’s back. This method was mostly used when riding on horseback. Weitzner, Notes on the Hidatsa Indians, 65.

77. E. S. Rogers, Material Culture of the Mistassini, 67.

78. Hamilton, Native American Bows, 30–32.

79. Ethnologisches Museum Berlin IV A 5601 and IV A 5602.

80. S. L. Rogers, “Aboriginal Bow and Arrow of North America and Eastern Asia,” 259: “If there is a ‘basic’ type of North American bow, it is the plain wooden bow consisting of a single stick. The first tendency toward any refinement of the plain wooden self-bow appears to be the shaping of the staff to a flattened cross-section, leaving an area reduced in width for the grip. With this often comes a decided improvement in the contour for springiness.”

81. Skinner, Notes on the Eastern Cree and Northern Saulteaux, 24.

82. Cooper, Notes on the Ethnology of the Otchipwe of Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake, 16–18.

83. Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, plates 65–75.

84. Theriault, Moose to Moccasins.

85. Theriault, Moose to Moccasins, 89–93; Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows.” Theriault, as well as Louis Bird, stated that one of the main tools for making bows and arrows used in the Subarctic in postcontact times was the so-called crooked knife.

86. Cooper, Snares, Deadfalls, and Other Traps of the Northern Algonquians and Athapaskans.

87. Allely and Hamm, Encyclopedia of Native American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 1:36–39.

88. Rudderbows Archery, http://www.rudderbows.com/Bowmakindianstaves.html, 2, 3; Krackow Company, http://www.krackow.com/html/default_bows.html, “Penobscot,” 11; Woodland Archery, http://www.woodlandarchery.com/prod12.htm, 1–3.

89. Carver, dir., The Silent Enemy: An Epic of the American Indian; D. B. Smith, Long Lance, 233, 234. Molly Nelson, or Molly Spotted Elk, was a Penobscot from Old Town, Maine.

90. The online anthropological collections for North America at the American Museum of Natural History show two of these Penobscot-style “double bows” (accession nos. 1911–61, 50.1/6047 and 1916–9, 50.1/9830). Both bows are labeled “Abenaki-Penobscot.” The museum records indicate that both bows were acquired from Gabriel A. Paul of Maine, along with other wooden items, including at least two regular self bows. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia holds another example of this “double bow.” It has the accession no. 33–32–11 and is labeled “war bow.” This bow, also made by Gabriel Paul, allegedly after a traditional type, was a gift to the museum by Dr. Samuel Fernberger in 1933. According to the anthropologist Frank G. Speck, this tradition was revived or invented some years previously by Frank Loring, alias Chief Big Thunder. William Wierzbowski, Assistant Keeper, American Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum, e-mail to author, August 16, 2001.

Frank Loring (1827–1906), of Penobscot descent, acquired a reputation as an “Indian showman” in late nineteenth-century New England. He later styled himself “Big Thunder” and opened a small “museum” on Olamon Island, near Old Town, Maine. Among the exhibits was his “war bow, which he represented as handed down to him by tradition of his foreparents.” Prins, “Chief Big Thunder (1827–1906): The Life History of a Penobscot Trickster,” 149.

Gordon Day concluded that the “war bow” originated as a circus bow. Day, “Penobscot War Bow,” 8. Frank Speck stated that “apparently at least a dozen reproductions of it had been made.” Speck, Penobscot Man, 113–14.

91. Allely and Hamm, Encyclopedia, 1:36–39.

92. Krackow Company, http://www.krackow.com/html/default_bows.html, “Penobscot,” 11.

4. Arrows and Arrow Makers

1. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:44, MHS.

2. Hughes, “Getting to the Point,” 362; Cosner, “The ‘Stone Scraper’ and Arrow ‘Wrench.’”

3. Brues, “The Spearman and the Archer—An Essay On Selection in Body Build,”465; Ewers, “Bodily Proportions as Guides to Lineal Measurements among the Blackfoot Indians.”

4. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:354–57, 354n322.

5. Hamm, Bows and Arrows of the Native Americans, 92; Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 112.

6. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:41, MHS.

7. Pope, Bows and Arrows, 44, 45. However, Pope did not take into account the generally lower draw weights of Native North American bows, when compared to medieval English war bows, or Asiatic composite bows. Due to their lower draw weight, especially for the short Plains Indian bows and arrows, the archer’s paradox and thus the stiffness of the arrow shaft was of less concern.

8. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:41, MHS.

9. Hamm, Bows and Arrows of the Native Americans, 93, 94; Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 112.

10. Pyszczyk, “Historic Period Metal Projectile Points and Arrows,” 165.

11. Elmer, Target Archery, 352, 353.

12. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 48, 49, 131, 137.

13. Stockel, Lightning Stick, xv–xix, 48, 50, 104, 109.

14. Stockel, Lightning Stick, 62, 63.

15. Morse, “Ancient and Modern Methods of Arrow Release.” Although based on a similar classification of arrow releases, Driver and Massey provide a more balanced account by considering various Aboriginal bow types and the purposes they were developed for in regard to the efficiency of North American Aboriginal archery. Driver and Massey, “Comparative Studies of North American Indians,” 353–55.

16. Pope, Bows and Arrows, 6, 7.

17. Flenniken and Raymond, “Morphological Projectile Point Typology.”

18. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 45, 95, 151, 152, 248, 278, 296, 297, 303, 305, 331–34, 341, 342, 351, 391.

19. Duke, Points in Time, 166. Archaeologist Daniel Holmberg argued that differences in functionality and effectiveness alone do not account for differences in lithic projectile point shapes. Holmberg, “Arrow Heads and Spear Points,” 9, 79.

20. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 14, December 25, 1792, HBCA.

21. Henry, Journal of Alexander Henry the Younger, 2:524, Wednesday, February 13, 1811.

22. Henry, Journal, 1:221, Sunday, July 20, 1806.

23. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:362, MHS. See also Weitzner, Notes on the Hidatsa Indians, 241.

24. McGonagle, “Metal Projectile Points from the Deapolis Site, North Dakota.”

25. Foster, “Metal Projectile Points”; C. E. Hanson, “Upper Missouri Arrow Points”; Pyszczyk, “Historic Period Metal Projectile Points and Arrows,” 163, 164.

26. Silsby, “Stone Points,” 3:281, 282; Mason et al., “Arrows and Arrow-Makers,” 71, 72.

27. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 242.

28. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 242.

29. E. N. Wilson, Among the Shoshones, 159; O. Russell, Journal of a Trapper, 133; Fidler, Notebook, 1794–1813: “Contents of a Gun Chest of Curiosities,” HBCA. Among other artefacts, Fidler’s list indicates “9 Quivers full of arrows, 9 Bows two of which is Horn, 6 arrows shod with stone. Snake Ind.”

30. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:171.

31. Thaler, Die Welt der Indianer, 84; Pope, Bows and Arrows, 56: “The most striking phenomenon is the great superiority of the obsidian point in cutting animal tissue. . . . The steel heads, even when sharpened to a keen cutting edge, do not approach the penetration of the obsidian by 25 per cent. Doubtless the better cutting qualities of glass, combined with the concoidal edge of the obsidian point, give this superiority. The same principle is used in modern bread knives; here a rough wavy edge cuts better than does a straight sharp edge.”

32. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 242.

33. Wolf Chief was born in 1849; therefore he probably referred to the 1820s. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:42, 49, 50, MHS.

34. McCracken et al., Mummy Cave Project, 56, 57, 96.

35. However, G. E. Van Buren argued that late precontact/protocontact lithic arrowheads were roughly of the same weight as later metal arrowheads, although he did not specify the type of metal point he referred to. Van Buren, Arrowheads and Projectile Points, 14, 15.

36. Pyszczyk, “Historic Period Metal Projectile Points and Arrows.”

37. Rich, introduction to Minutes of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 5:xxi; also cited in Mancke, Company of Businessmen, 43.

38. York Factory Account Books, 1688–89, 9, 10, HBCA.

39. York Factory Account Books 1689–90, 2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 28, 34, B.239/d2; 1693–94, 38, B.239/d5, both HBCA.

40. Albany Account Book, 1695, 1–6, 18, B3/d/5, HBCA.

41. Krech, Subarctic Fur Trade, 39; Albany Account Book, 1695, 1–18, B3/d/5, HBCA.

42. York Factory Account Book, 1759–60, 4, 7, B.239/d50, HBCA.

43. York Factory Account Books, 1793–94, 3, B.239/d/100, 2, 7, B.239/d/101, both HBCA.

44. York Factory Account Books, 1798–99, 3, B.239/d/118; 1799–1800, 4, B.239/d/120; 1800–1801, 5, B.239/d/123, all HBCA.

45. Buckingham House Account Books, B.239/d/87–121, HBCA; Pyszczyk, “Use of Fur Trade Goods by the Plains Indians,” 58.

46. Manchester House Post Journal, 57, 1M 73, B121/a/3, HBCA.

47. Manchester House Post Journal, 19, 1M 74, B121/a/6, HBCA.

48. Williams, Hudson’s Bay Miscellany, 1670–1870, Albany Fort Journal, 67, http://www.canadiana.ca/hbc/_popups/PAMalbany1_e.htm.

49. Henry, Journal, 2:637, Friday, January 7, 1814.

50. Milloy, Plains Cree, 17, 18; J. A. Hanson, Spirits in the Art, 47.

51. Catlin, North American Indians, 28.

52. Linderman, Plenty Coups, 18. This trader may have been Charles Larpenteur, who traded along the Yellowstone River into the late 1860s.

53. Native American art collector Preston Miller owns a metal arrowhead collected from Plains peoples, bearing a manufacturer’s mark that reads “Truitt & Co.” According to Miller’s research, this was a hardware and cutlery shop located at 528 Market Street in Philadelphia during the 1860s. Preston Miller Collection, St. Ignatius, Montana, cat. no. D0054810710. Other manufacturers of metal arrowheads collected from Plains peoples included the company of Isaac Milner, in Sheffield, England. This arrowhead also has a large hole drilled through the tang. Allely and Hamm, Encyclopedia of Native American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 2:163.

54. Allely and Hamm, Encyclopedia, 2:162, 163.

55. J. Baldwin, Bows, Arrows, and Quivers of the American Frontier, 30.

56. Aboriginal archers often rounded the tips of their metal points to make them glance off an animal’s bone, rather than penetrating it and becoming stuck. Hamm, Bows and Arrows of the Native Americans, 134; Weitzner, Notes on the Hidatsa Indians, 241.

57. Provincial Museum of Alberta, Edmonton, catalogue nos. H68.204.33, Blood, collected ca. 1920; H62.12.4 and H62.12.6, Northern Plains, no provenance information, no collection date, acquired by museum in 1946. Glenbow Museum, Calgary, cat. no. AF 2638, two arrows, probably collected in the early twentieth century. Siksika elder Clifford Crane Bear expressed his opinion that these arrows were not meant for actual hunting or warfare, because the shafts were too crooked and the arrowheads far too wide at the base to penetrate well. He stated that they may have been made for sale to non-Aboriginal people. Both arrows have bright orange and dark violet fluff feathers attached to the front ends of their relatively short fletchings. The fluffs look almost new and may have been commercially dyed. Except for the points, these arrows have a rather “modern” appearance. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, cat. no. MHS 7059.75b, arrow, probably made by Henry Wolf Chief, collected by Gilbert Wilson before 1918. An image of this arrow is published in Gilman and Schneider, Way to Independence, 199.

58. Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians, 1:33; Catlin, North American Indians, 28; G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:58, 59, MHS; Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:183, 184; Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, plate 47; Wissler, Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians, 158: “The only difference reported for war arrows [among the Blackfoot] was a disposition to bind the heads loosely, so that they would remain in the wound, after the shaft was withdrawn.” Gilman and Schneider, Way to Independence, 74. The Mandan elder Black Chest, a personal friend of Wolf Chief, corroborated Wolf Chief’s statements in regard to the two different shapes of metal arrowheads and their uses for the Mandan. Grinnell made similar statements in regard to the shapes of metal arrowheads used by the Cheyenne.

59. T. Wilson, “Arrow Wounds,” 530, 531; Mandelbaum, Plains Cree, 94, 95.

60. Dodge, Our Wild Indians, 418–19; Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 31.

61. Wallentine, Making Arrows the Old Way, 22. Through several shooting experiments Wallentine disproved the validity of the notion of different alignments of the arrowhead for hunting and combat. His results concerning the unpredictability of the striking angle of the arrowhead are consistent with my own experience in shooting arrows with bladed arrowheads.

62. Wissler, Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians, 158. Wissler conducted fieldwork among Blackfoot-speaking peoples between 1902 and 1905.

63. Hamm, “Plains Indian Bows,” 3:121–33, 136.

64. Hail, Hau Kola!, 172; Gilman and Schneider, Way to Independence, 74.

65. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:52, MHS.

66. Stodiek and Paulsen, Mit dem Pfeil, dem Bogen . . . : Technik der steinzeitlichen Jagd, 34, 35, 43, 52.

67. Allely and Hamm, Encyclopedia, 138 (Blackfoot-Blood arrows, now at the Field Museum, Chicago). For these arrows, see also Van Stone, Material Culture of the Blackfoot (Blood) Indians of Southern Alberta, 5, 31, fig. 4., 144, 166 (Blackfoot and Cheyenne arrows, now at the American Museum of Natural History, New York), 168 (Cheyenne arrow collected from the Darlington Agency, Oklahoma, now at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia), 173 (Arapaho arrow, now at the Jacksonville Museum in Jacksonville, Wyoming).

Manitoba Museum, Winnipeg: Set of eleven arrows, T. J. Fleetham Collection, Blood, HBC-156 B-L. Set of thirteen arrows, possibly Blackfoot, H.4.4.81 B-N. Set of seven arrows, Plains, H4.4.23 C–H, Q. Plains arrow, possibly Blackfoot, H4.4.36b.

Royal Alberta Museum, Edmonton: Set of fifteen arrows, Blood, collected 1900–1902, H.69.187.36–50. Some of these fifteen arrows were fletched using glue, others were fletched without glue.

Glenbow Museum, Calgary: Set of 15 arrows, Blackfoot AF 2971 A–O.

68. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:54, 55, MHS.

69. Weitzner, Notes on the Hidatsa Indians, 238; G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:14, 15, MHS; Kluckhohn et al., Navaho Material Culture, 34, 35. Navajo people used a similar type of thorn-bound arrow to hunt warblers and bluebirds. Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, plate 60, fig. 2, cat. no. 90138, USNM. Inuit arrow from Whale River in the northeastern part of Hudson Bay. Instead of thorns or quills, this arrow had a metal nail lashed perpendicular to the shaft about two inches from the point. The arrow was collected by Lucien Turner.

70. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:52, 53, MHS.

71. Manitoba Museum, Winnipeg, Ethnology Collection, coll. nos. H4.12–302c–f, belonging to bow H4.12–302, all collected from the Granite Lake Cree, acquired by the museum in 1969 from Noah Custer. See also Mandelbaum, Plains Cree, 60, 94, mentioning bone points as traditional among the Plains Cree.

72. Louis Bird mentioned oral traditions that indicated the use of large triangular bone arrowheads by Cree archers in the Hudson Bay Lowlands, but he did not provide a time frame for this. Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows.” These large bone arrowheads are somewhat puzzling to me. When sharpened, bone does not hold its edge for very long. It would take a very powerful bow to make such a large point penetrate the tough hide of a moose, for instance. A smaller metal arrowhead, like that used in the Plains for bison hunting, would seem much more suited to the task, but large bone arrowheads like these are consistently found on Central Subarctic arrows, collected during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

73. Manitoba Museum, Ethnology Collection, H4.12–302c.

74. Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, plate 60; Allely and Hamm, Encyclopedia of Native American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 1:43, 45. Allely and Hamm show arrows that were part of an archery outfit collected by the anthropologist Frank G. Speck from the Barren Ground Band of Naskapi before 1930 and now kept in the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia.

75. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows”; Allely and Hamm, Encyclopedia, 1:44. The previously mentioned Naskapi archery set includes also a shooting glove.

76. Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature, Ethnology Collection, H4–12–13 to 16, collected with bows nos. H4.12–11 (shorter bow) and H4.12–12 (longer bow) from the Nelson House Cree. These bows and arrows were acquired by the Manitoba Museum from Charles Clay in 1941 and may have been made in the late nineteenth century.

77. Isham, Isham’s Observations on Hudsons Bay, 1743, 118.

78. Manitoba Museum, Winnipeg, Archaeological Collections, Churchill River HiLp-1 10361, Nelson River GgLl-5 1, Nelson River GjLp-8, Nelson River GjLp-14 3, Nelson River GkLr-24 5, Nelson River GlLr-29 24.

79. Isham, James Isham’s Observations on Hudsons Bay, 12, 118, HBRSA vol. 12, HBCA Library FC 15 K7v. Indian Bow by James Isham, 1743. Pen & ink drawing. In James Isham’s “Observations on Hudson’s Bay, 1743”. HBCA E.2/1 fo. 73d.)

80. Louis Bird, Our Voices, “Guns and Bows II,” 9, 10.

81. For a more detailed discussion of craft specialization in Indigenous and/or precontact societies, see Bamforth and Finlay, “Introduction: Archaeological Approaches to Lithic Production Skill and Craft Learning,” 4–6, 9.

82. Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 8, 12; Mason et al., “Arrows and Arrow-Makers,” 55.

83. Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 16.

84. Kidd, Blackfoot Ethnography, 38, 56.

85. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 35. The businessman William Wildschut was born in the Netherlands in 1883 and spent much of his working life in the United States. Wildschut conducted fieldwork in Montana during the 1920s on behalf of Gustav Heye and the Museum of the American Indian. There he became especially interested in the Crow . He collected artefacts and conducted interviews with Two Leggings, using an interpreter. However, his field notes remained unpublished before his death in 1955. In 1967 Peter Nabokov published a heavily edited version of Wildschut’s field notes of the Two Leggings interviews, perhaps further obscuring Two Leggings’ ‘voice’ in the published text.

86. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 8.

87. Clark, Indian Sign Language, 76. Wagon bows were bent struts on covered wagons such as the Conestoga wagon, the so-called prairie schooner, that supported the canvas cover and gave it its characteristic arched shape.

88. In my own use of Plains Indian archery gear, I also found that plant fiber bowstrings do not last very long.

89. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:176.

90. Louis Bird, personal communication, October 2001.

91. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows.”

92. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows.”

93. “History of the Blackfeet,” 8, Joe Little Chief Fonds, Glenbow Archives, M 4394, f. 5. Joe Little Chief did not state if women used bows and arrows in hunting or in combat. There are several references to Plains Indian women warriors, for example, the Blackfoot Running Eagle in Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, 229, 348–50. In regard to Cree attacks on Blackfoot camps, the Blackfoot Crooked Meat Strings related in 1938: “Sometimes a whole lot of Crees came to attack, women and men. Blackfoot women never went on attacks back against the Crees. Attacks by Cree and their wives always occurred in winter, never in summer. In summer Cree men came alone to attack. . . . Cree winter attacks came about once a winter; 80–100 (not more) people of which not more than 10 were women and no children. Those were young women awfully brave. ‘Blackfoot women were not brave—always scared, and don’t like to die, and always ran away to hide. None were ever brave.’ Two Piegan women, however, did go out to war with their husbands. But never a Blackfoot woman.” Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk, September 12, 1938, 164, 165, Hanks Fonds, file 6, M8458, Glenbow Archives. The reference to the two Piegan women may have been in conjunction with the concept of “manly hearted women” among Blackfoot-speaking peoples. Such women were said to have more assertiveness and aggressiveness, character traits usually accorded to men rather than women in Blackfoot culture. O. Lewis, “Manly-Hearted Women.”

94. “Notebook of Dr. A. Jukes, Chief Surgeon for N.W.M.P., containing notes from interviews with Hugh Monro, 1886,” 11, Jukes Family Fonds, M607/6, Glenbow Archives. This woman may have been “Pine Leaf”:

‘Whenever a war party started, Pine Leaf was the first to volunteer to accompany them. Her presence among them caused much amusement to the old veterans; but if she lacked physical strength, she always rode the fleetest horses and none of the warriors could outstrip her . . . and when I engaged in the fiercest struggles, no one was more promptly at my side than the young heroine. She seemed incapable of fear; and when she arrived at womanhood, could fire a gun without flinching and use the Indian weapons with as great dexterity as the most accomplished warrior.’

Beckwourth wooed Pine Leaf relentlessly, but she always rebuffed him, saying she would marry him ‘when the pine-leaves turn yellow’ or ‘when you find a red-headed Indian.’ But his perseverance finally paid off, and when Beckwourth returned to the Crow after a misadventure in which they thought him killed, Pine Leaf renounced the War Path and agreed to marry him.

But for Beckwourth, the pursuit always held more attraction than the goal, and five weeks later he left the Crow. He never saw Pine Leaf again. . . .

Some historians have dismissed Pine Leaf as a figment of Beckwourth’s imagination, but in 1856 Edwin T. Denig, in Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), 195–200, describes the exploits of Woman Chief, a Gros Ventre maid captured by the Crow at the age of ten. Denig describes Woman Chief’s remarkable victories in war and horse stealing and states that her accomplishments were such that the tribe could no longer rule her out of the council. Denig asserted that he knew the woman personally, that she was killed by the Gros Ventre in 1854, and that for twenty years she set a valued example in hunting and war. Denig’s tale of Woman Chief and Beckwourth’s narrative about Pine Leaf jive perfectly, as does the time frame.

Bradley, “Beckwourth’s Life with the Crow, http://www.beckwourth.org/Biography/crow.html (accessed June 26, 2013).

95. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:91, 92, MHS.

96. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:91, 92, MHS; information volunteered by Buffalo Bird Woman and her son Goodbird. Gilman and Schneider, Way to Independence, 69.

97. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 32, February 21, 1793, HBCA.

98. Bowers, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization, 92. Bowers conducted fieldwork with Mandan and Hidatsa from the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota in the 1930s and 1940s, primarily in regard to the social and ceremonial organization of Mandan and Hidatsa communities in the past. His research combined fieldwork with an analysis of older text documents, such as the journals of explorers, fur traders, and military personnel. His research was published in two monographs, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization in 1950 and Hidatsa Social and Ceremonial Organization in 1965.

99. Schoolcraft, Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes, 3:81: “There was, according to Chippewa tradition, a particular class of men among our northern tribes, before the introduction of fire-arms, who were called MAKERS OF ARROWHEADS.” Frances Densmore indicated the existence of specialized arrow makers among the nineteenth-century Lakota, as well. Teton Sioux Music, 439.

100. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:120.

101. G. L. Wilson, The Horse and the Dog in Hidatsa Culture, 162.

102. Small Ankle teaching his fifteen-year-old son Wolf Chief the manufacture of archery gear that went far beyond the average, such as the manufacture of an elk antler bow and a mountain sheep horn bow, might indicate a formal master–apprentice relationship. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:22, 26–37, MHS.

103. Gilman and Schneider, Way to Independence, 116.

104. Bowers, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization, 282–86.

105. At the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in southwestern Alberta and elsewhere, Native people often “recycled” lithic materials. For example, worn-out knife blades could be reduced to scrapers or arrowheads. Once these were broken, they could be crushed into powder for use in abrasive tools such as the “sandpaper” described above. Brink and Dawe, “Preliminary Report of the 1988 and 1989 Field Seasons at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump,” 149: “The users of Head-Smashed-In were very frugal with their lithic materials. Virtually every large piece of lithic material shows indications of use, often for several different functions. Hundreds of cores and shatter fragments derived from bipolar reduction attest to the need to recover useable pieces of fine-grained lithic material which would be unavailable otherwise.”

106. Bowers, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization, 286, 294–95.

107. Bowers, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization, 260, 283.

108. Jerry Potts, Peigan elder, personal communication, Provincial Museum of Alberta, Edmonton, August 2002.

109. “History of the Blackfeet,” 19A, Joe Little Chief Fonds, M4394, f. 5, Glenbow Archives.

110. “Late White Eagle (PE TA KE KIS KIS NA MA),” 3, Joe Little Chief Fonds, M4394, f. 2, Glenbow Archives.

111. Gilman and Schneider, Way to Independence, 327, 331, 332.

112. Gilman and Schneider, Way to Independence, 223, 338, 339.

113. Weltfish, Lost Universe, 389–92.

114. Weltfish, Lost Universe, 138, 139.

115. Vonderhey, Secrets of the Omaha Bow, 55–63.

116. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:97, MHS. This also attests to the high regard for women’s work among the Hidatsa, because the hard and time-consuming work of tanning just one of these massive hides was considered equal in value to the laborious and equally time-consuming manufacture of a sinew-backed bow.

117. Hassrick, The Sioux, 47.

118. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:104, MHS.

119. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:21, MHS.

120. Fowler, The Arapaho, 30.

121. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:138, 142, 178.

122. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:178.

123. Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, 439; Hassrick, The Sioux, 198; Weltfish, The Lost Universe, 137, 138. According to Weltfish, however, among the Skidi Pawnee such marks did not indicate the owner of an arrow, but its maker. Therefore, they may have been similar to modern brand names or product logos.

124. Manitoba Museum, H 4.0–541 A and H4.0–541 B–J. This is a wide and thick self bow of birch with burnt and incised designs on back, 139 centimeters long. The bow and the arrows came to the museum from Jack Watt of Winnipeg. A search in the HBC employee files revealed only that a John Watt was employed by the HBC in 1959, but not where he was stationed.

125. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 237.

126. “Journal at Brandon House 1817.18 with some account of the Transactions at Fort Douglas &c &c &c &c by Peter Fidler, 1817, Sept 21st, 1817,” Brandon House Post Journal, 1817–18, F16d, B.22/a/20, HBCA.

127. Nye, Plains Indian Raiders, 258, 259.

128. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 35, 36.

129. Nye, Plains Indian Raiders, 258, 259.

130. Wallace and Hoebel, The Comanches, 101, quoting Herman Lehmann, a German settler who as a boy in the late nineteenth century had lived among Comanche and Apache. Lehmann, Nine Years among the Indians, 46.

131. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:49, MHS.

132. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 123.

133. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 123; Koppedrayer, “Cultural Signatures: Lakota Bows,” http://www.sfmission.org/museum/exhibits/bowsandarrows/signatures.html, images 20, 21, 22, 28; Allely and Hamm, Encyclopedia, 2:153, 155, 157, 158, 161.

134. Burpee, Journal of Anthony Henday, 26, September 7, 1754. This may have been only a matter of differentiating between the long Subarctic arrows used by the Swampy Cree and short Plains arrows used by the Blackfoot and their allies.

135. Smyth, “Missed Opportunity,” 341.

136. Joe Little Chief Fonds, M4394, f. 8, 1–6, Glenbow Archives.

137. Linderman, Pretty Shield, 121; Clark, Indian Sign Language, 98. In the Plains Indian sign language the Cheyenne were referred to by a gesture that indicated either the slashing of wrist and arm, or the “striping of arrows,” possibly a reference to their use of wild turkey wing feathers with their alternating light and dark stripes for arrow fletchings.

5. Aboriginal Peoples and Firearms

1. Bamforth, Ecology and Human Organization on the Great Plains, 95; Binnema, “Allegiances and Interests,” 331; Otterbein, “Why the Iroquois Won,” 2, 3; Schilz and Worcester, “Spread of Firearms among the Indians”; Württemberg, Travels in North America, 338: “It is evident that the Omahas and Poncas are at a disadvantage when compared with the Sioux, in that they have fewer firearms than the latter.”

2. Mandelbaum, Plains Cree, 262, see also 23, 30, 31, 37; Given, “Study of European Weapons Technology,” 105.

3. Calloway, “Snake Frontiers,” 87.

4. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, 74.

5. Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, 146, 147; Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms”; B. J. Smith, “How Great an Influence Was the Gun in Historic Northern Plains Ethnic Movements?”; J. G. E. Smith, “Western Woods Cree,” 442, 443.

6. In the 1740s, Joseph LaFrance, a former HBC employee, stated that “the Nations who go up that River with Presents, to confirm the Peace with them, are Three Months in going up; and say, they live beyond a Range of Mountains beyond the Assinibouels; and that beyond them are Nations who have not the Use of Fire Arms; by which means, many of them are made Slaves by them, and are sold to the Assinibouels, Panis Blanc, and Christinaux.” Papers of Committee of House of Commons, 1749: Appendix to Report from the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the State and Condition of the Countries adjoining to Hudson’s Bay and of the Trade Carried on There, 1749, 247, HBCA.

7. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 45.

8. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 95, 151.

9. Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms,” 1.

10. Secoy, Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains, 92. Mandelbaum, Plains Cree, 96, on the use of guns and bows among the Plains Cree: “Guns played a more important part in warfare than in the food quest. Bows were exclusively used in the buffalo pound, and for the concerted attack on a herd, the bow was almost as efficient as the gun. Only in stalking and tracking game did the gun give a decided advantage.”

11. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 6.

12. Rosebush, American Firearms and the Changing Frontier, 48–59; C. P. Russell, Guns on the Early Frontiers, 248.

13. Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms,” 3.

14. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows,” 5, 6.

15. Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms,” 3.

16. Priming the weapon before loading the main charge was safer. When using paper cartridges, the weapon had to be primed first. Barry McPherson, Manitoba Living History Society, personal communication, May 2010.

17. Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms,” 5, 6.

18. Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms,” 6.

19. Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms,” 6; Junkelmann, Die Reiter Roms, Teil 3, 172.

20. Hassrick, The Sioux, 306.

21. Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 236.

22. “How Bloods First Got Guns,” March 3, 1911, David C. Duval Papers, 1904–11, 3:621–26, M4376, Glenbow Archives.

23. “The Late Crooked Back Bone (O MO K KE KE NE),” 1, 2, Joe Little Chief Fonds, M4394, f. 14, Glenbow Archives. Joe Little Chief stated that Crooked Back Bone, a Blackfoot war leader, was born in 1832. When he was thirteen years old, European traders were said to have arrived by boat among the Blackfoot for the first time. They were said to have sold four rifles to the Blackfoot. These were likely muzzle-loaders and were said to have been the first firearms the Blackfoot encountered. However, the perception that Blackfoot people were introduced to firearms only in 1845 does not correspond to fur trade records, which indicate that they had used such weapons at least since the mid-eighteenth century. For another account of this encounter, see “From 1830 to the Year Crow Foot Was Born,” 3, Joe Little Chief Fonds, M4394, f. 22, Glenbow Archives.

24. According to a passage from the York Factory Post Journal by James Knight, at least some HBC employees were trained in marksmanship at their posts: “I gave to Men some Powder & Ball, etc. to practice shots at a mark to make them perfect to bring themselves fit for hunting.” Knight, York Factory Post Journal, October 14, 1717, 1M 154, B.239/a/1, fo. 22, HBCA.

25. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 242.

26. Linderman, Plenty Coups, 17, 18.

27. Maurice Doll, curator of military and political history at the Provincial Museum of Alberta in Edmonton (now Royal Alberta Museum), personal communication and demonstration, August 2002.

28. The linguist Richard Lancaster recorded a description of a very similar loading method from the Blackfeet elder James White Calf. However, Lancaster did not provide information on the spiritual and cultural context of this account. Lancaster, Piegan, 201, 207–10. See also Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:100: “[The late nineteenth century Cheyenne leader] Buffalo Chief had a peculiar way of handling his gun. After loading it he used to hit the stock on the ground. He never missed his aim.”

29. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 201, 207–10. Robert Brightman recorded a story from the Rock Cree of northern Manitoba about magical ways to operate firearms. Johnny Bighetty’s grandfather Okimaw Acahpy (Bow Chief/Master of the Bow) was said to have killed a caribou by loading his muzzle-loader with snow during a harsh winter when bullets and powder were hard to come by. Brightman, Acaoohkiwina and Acimowina, “Okimaw Acahpy kills a caribou with snow,” 150.

30. Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians, 1:141. As an archer with no special expertise in rapid shooting, I am able to shoot three arrows in this type of game. When shooting at targets at chest height, I am able to shoot about a dozen arrows per minute at short range.

31. Catlin. Letters and Notes, 1:141, 142.

32. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:177.

33. T. Wilson, “Arrow Wounds,” 523.

34. Hamilton, Native American Bows, 30.

35. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 12.

36. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 6–7.

37. Papers of Committee of House of Commons, Appendix to Report from the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the State and Condition of the Countries adjoining to Hudson’s Bay and of the Trade Carried on There, 1749, 257, HBCA. The original that may have served as the basis for this version of the document could not be located at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives. This document was cited in Woodward, “Trade Goods of 1748,” 5; and C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 12–13.

38. The term “Northwest Gun” referred to the northwest of North America, the region where the weapons were mainly to be sold, and antedates the founding of the North West Company of Montreal. The first known reference to Northwest guns appears in the journal of John Long, who traded for an independent Montreal merchant north of Lake Superior from 1777 to 1780. Thwaites, John Long’s Journal, 2:93.

The Montana Blackfeet referred to these weapons as “North Guns” because they were mostly traded from posts north of the border between Canada and the United States. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 2, 15.

39. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 15.

40. York Fort Account Book, July 1689–July 1690, B.239/d/1, fos. 53–53d, HBCA. These documents were also cited in Mancke, Company of Businessmen, 77, 78.

41. Oldmixon, “History of Hudson’s-Bay” (1708), 380, 381.

42. Hamilton, Colonial Frontier Guns, 20.

43. Mancke, Company of Businessmen, 52. Mancke cited London Office to James Knight, May 31, 1717, A.6/4, fo. 11d, and Invoice Book, A.24/2, fos. 32d-33, 37d-38, 60–60d, 67–67d, 81, both HBCA.

44. Mancke, Company of Businessmen, 56, 57.

45. Lucas, Appendiculae Historicae, 37, also cited in C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 7, 20, 21.

46. Piers, “Firearms of the Hudson’s Bay Company,” 62; C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 7.

47. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 22:389: “Like all Indians, they [the Assiniboine] carry, besides, a separate ramrod in their hand, a large powder-horn, which they obtain from the fur company, and a leather pouch for the balls, which is made by themselves, and often neatly ornamented, or hung with rattling pieces of lead, and trimmed with coloured cloth. All have bows and arrows; many have these only, and no gun. The case for the bow and the quiver are of the skin of some animal, often of the otter, fastened to each other; and to the latter the tail of the animal, at full length, is appended. The bow is partly covered with elk horn, has a very strong string of twisted sinews of animals, and is wound round in different places with the same to strengthen it. The bow is often adorned with coloured cloth, porcupine quills and white strips of ermine, but, on the whole, this weapon does not differ from that of the Sioux.”

48. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 22:389n365.

49. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 2, 3.

50. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 2, 3.

51. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 1.

52. Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, 73.

53. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 1, 6.

54. Edmonton House Post Journal, October 12 and 31, 1808, B.60/a/8, reel 1M49, HBCA.

55. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 54.

56. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows,” 7.

57. Smyth, “Niitsitapi Trade,” 483–84; Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:134–35, August 12, 1833. A Kainai man shot an employee of the American Fur Company inside Fort McKenzie with a pistol. The Kainai claimed it was an accident, but later John Rowand at Edmonton House noted: “The Bulls Back Fat a Blood Indian chief the vagabond who first visited the Americans at the Yellow Stone and is now their support at Bears [Marias] River paid Mr. Harriott a visit accompanied by his son a villain who boasts of having shot an American lately in the very Fort where a Gentleman of the name of Mitchell has charge.” Smyth, “Niitsitapi Trade,” 484; Edmonton House Post Journal, November 2, 1833, B.60/a/28, reel 1M50, HBCA.

58. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 64.

59. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 33, 64 (plate 8A), illustration of a Sioux hide scraper made from a fusil barrel. Baillargeon, North American Aboriginal Hide Tanning, 7.

60. Manchester House Post Journal, 58, January 6, 1789, 1M 73, B121/a/3, HBCA.

61. Fehrenbach, The Comanches, 260–63.

62. Anderson, “The Last Indian Battle,” 39.

63. Anderson, “The Last Indian Battle,” 39.

64. Schultz, Friends of My Life as an Indian, 233–34; C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 51.

65. Letter from James Willard Schultz to Charles E. Hanson, February 6, 1939; C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 1.

66. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 20, 67.

67. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 22:389.

68. Anderson, “The Last Indian Battle,” 38, 39.

69. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 34.

70. Marquis, Wooden Leg, 213; C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 50.

71. Roberts, Muzzle-Loading Cap Lock Rifle, 1940), 141; C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 3, 18, 19.

72. Minutes of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670 and 1671, 1-A 1/1, fos. 6, 14, HBCA. For published excerpts from these documents, see Nute, “Minutes of the Hudson’s Bay Company,” 46.

73. London office to chief trader Henry Sergeant, May 16, 1684, in Rich, Letters Outward, 1679–1694, 11:122–24. These guns were referred to as “short guns of three and a half foote” and “four and a half foote.” See also Mancke, Company of Businessmen, 47, 48.

74. Sales may have been low at that time because of the French takeover of the bayside posts.

75. Hamilton, Colonial Frontier Guns, 20–22.

76. Hamilton, Colonial Frontier Guns, 21.

77. Manchester House Post Journal, 20–22, February 13, 1791, 1M 74, B121/a/6, HBCA.

78. “Journal of Transactions in 1792 & 93 by William Tomison,” F14d, November 22, 1792, Buckingham House Post Journal, 1792–93, B.24/a/1, 4M 18, HBCA.

79. “Journal . . . by William Tomison,” F43d, March 1, 1793.

80. Jackson, Jemmy Jock Bird, 59.

81. Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, 151. Notes to page 176

82. For a more detailed discussion of population figures for Northern Plains groups, see Brumley and Dau, Historical Resource Investigations within the Forty Mile Coulee Reservoir, 264, 265; and Bamforth, Ecology and Human Organization on the Great Plains, 106–8.

83. Buckingham House Post Journal from 1792 to 1793 by William Tomison, 26, December 5 and 7, 1793, B.24/a/2, 1M 18, HBCA.

84. File 2, Late White Eagle, Joe Little Chief Fonds, M4394, Glenbow Archives. White Eagle, Joe Little Chief’s grandfather, was born in 1842.

85. “Journal at Brandon House 1817–18 with some account of the Transactions at Fort Douglas &c &c &c &c by Peter Fidler,” March 7, 1818, F37d, Brandon House Post Journal, 1817–18, B.22/a/20, HBCA.

86. Wood and Irwin, “Mandan,” 352.

87. R. W. Meyer, Village Indians of the Upper Missouri, 97; Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions, 1:80, letter 11; Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:255.

88. Pitoxpikis (Eagle Rib) Sleigh via Mary Royal, 1938, interview, Box 1, Series 1, Hanks Fonds, M8458, Glenbow Archives.

89. Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions, 1:42–45, letter 7; Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:90, 95, 96; Ewers, The Blackfeet, 37.

90. Ewers, The Blackfeet, 60, 212.

91. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 16.

92. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 2; These weapons parts are now part of the collections of the Nebraska State Historical Society.

93. Manchester House Post Journal, 28, November 9–10, 1789, 1M 74, B121/a/4, HBCA.

94. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 2–3.

95. Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms,” 3.

96. “A Journal of Transactions and Occurrences at Fort Albany by Mr Edward Jarvis Chief Factor for the Honble Hudson Bay Company Commencing the 14th of September 1784 Ending the 16th of September 1785,” October 19, 1784. Albany Journal, 1784–85, 1M8, B.3/a/84, HBCA.

97. “Journal of Transactions in 1792 & 93 by William Tomison,” F17, January 5, 1793; F18, January 18, 1793; F21, February 18, 1793, Buckingham House Post Journal, B.24/a/1, 4M 18, HBCA.

98. Manchester House Post Journal, 24, 1M 73, B 121/a/2, HBCA.

99. Manchester House Post Journal, February 2, 1788.

100. Manchester House Post Journal, November 21, 1786.

101. Letter from James Bird at Carlton House to George Sutherland at Edmonton House, November 28, 1796, 13, Edmonton House Post Journal, 1M 48, B.60/a/2, HBCA.

102. Manchester House Post Journal, 45–47, March 11–13, 1790, 1M 74, B.121/a/4, HBCA.

103. Manchester House Post Journal, 28, March 13, 1788, 1M 73, B.121/a/2.

104. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 36, 37, plates XA XB, XIA, XIB.

105. Hamilton, Colonial Frontier Guns, 94, 95.

106. “A Journal of the Most Remarkable Transactions and Occurrences at Gloucester House from 1st August 1782 to 20th June 1783 by Mr. John Kipling,” F7, October 10, 1782, Gloucester House Journal, 1782–83, B.78/a/8, HBCA.

107. Manchester House Post Journal, 28, January 13, 1787, 1M 73, B121/a/1. David Thompson made similar observations in regard to firearm malfunctions due to extreme cold. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 31.

108. Manchester House Post Journal, 25, January 13, 1787, 1M 73, B121/a/2.

109. “Journal of Transactions in 1792 & 93 by William Tomison,” F17d, January 2, 1793, Buckingham House Post Journal, B.24/a/1, 4M 18, HBCA.

110. “Journal . . . by William Tomison,” F17, Monday, January 7th, 1793.

111. Louis Bird, personal communication, Winnipeg, October 2001.

112. Houston et al., Eighteenth-Century Naturalists, 117.

113. Houston et al., Eighteenth-Century Naturalists, 116.

114. Edmonton House Post Journal, 31, October 24, 1795; letter from William Tomison to James Spence, 3–4, November 12, 1795, Edmonton House Post Journal, both 1M 48, B.60/a/1, HBCA.

115. Fidler, “Journals of Exploration and Survey, 1790–1809, June 25, 1807,” E.3/3, 4M 103, F14, HBCA.

116. Mandelbaum, Plains Cree, 56.

6. Injuries Caused by Arrows and Firearms

1. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 142.

2. “How a Chief Builds a Following,” 16, Hanks Fonds, Box 1, Series 1, M8458, Glenbow Archives; Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 14, December 25, 1792, HBCA.

3. Gilman and Schneider, Way to Independence, 76, 103; Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows.”

4. T. Wilson, “Arrow Wounds,” 521, 529.

5. Junkelmann, Die Reiter Roms, Teil 3, 171, 172; Kalaus, “Schiessversuche mit historischen Feurwaffen,” 60.

6. Aboriginal people depended on trade with Europeans for their supply of gunpowder. In order to save powder, Aboriginal people would often load their weapons with slightly less than the required amount of powder. This resulted in lower projectile velocity and lower penetrative force. However, at short range the difference was minimal.

7. Junkelmann, Die Reiter Roms, Teil 3, 171, 172.

8. Odom, “Black Powder Ballistics,” 4, http://www.televar.com/~willgo/pastgate/notebook/balistics/ball.htm (accessed June 28, 2004). Projectile velocities of reproduction trade guns reached from 1090 fps (332 m/s) to 1240 fps (378 m/s) (charge: 80 grains FFg to 90 grains FFg, ball size .570). Northwest guns were mostly 24 gauge, ca. .58 caliber. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 2, 3.

9. Fidler, “Journal at Red River Settlement” (F50–18478), Sunday, June 11, 1815, Selkirk Papers MG 2, A1, Vol. 69, p. 18, 429–18, 534,HBCA.

10. Manchester House Post Journal, 13, September 12, 1787, 1M 73, B121/a/2, HBCA.

11. Manchester House Post Journal, 33, April 17, 1788, 1M 73, B.121/a/2, HBCA.

12. Manchester House Post Journal, 55, May 19, 1790, 1M 74, B.121/a/4, HBCA.

13. Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions, 1:39.

14. Junkelmann, Die Reiter Roms, Teil 3, 165–73.

15. The arrows were shot through a chronograph at Heights Archery, an indoor archery range in Winnipeg.

16. Although the second arrow was lighter, probably the rather large fluff feathers at the front end of the fletching caused its lower velocity.

17. Bergman et al., “Experimental Archery.”

18. Junkelmann, Die Reiter Roms, Teil 3, 171, 172.

19. Junkelmann, Die Reiter Roms, Teil 3, 167; T. Wilson, “Arrow Wounds,” 528. The U.S. Army Medical Museum has a bison shoulder blade with a metal arrowhead lodged in its inside. The arrow, shot during a bison hunt, was apparently powerful enough to penetrate most of the animal’s body and was only prevented from entirely piercing the animal by the shoulder blade. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 142. According to Reginald Laubin, the Lakota White Bull, a nephew of Sitting Bull, completely pierced the body of a female bison with an arrow.

20. T. Wilson, “Arrow Wounds,” 521, 529.

21. Linderman, Plenty Coups, 210–12.

22. T. Wilson, “Arrow Wounds,” 519; Wallace and Hoebel, The Comanches, 105; Bill, “Notes on Arrow Wounds,” 368.

23. T. Wilson, “Arrow Wounds,” 519.

24. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:10, 41, MHS. Gilbert Wilson did not give any botanical name for “snakewood.” Wolf Chief mentioned that snakewood grew on the side of clay hills in the vicinity of the Little Missouri River in western North Dakota. It had sharp thorns, somewhat like rose bushes. He stated that it grew in finger-sized sticks and turned yellow when the bark was removed. Wolf Chief mentioned that the wood was usually used exclusively for war arrows, because it was considered poisonous. However, Wolf Chief had used snakewood arrows to hunt rabbits.

25. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:41, 42, MHS.

26. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:183. However, Black Elk expressed a different opinion, which may have been based on his unfamiliarity with the actual combat capabilities of stone arrowheads, suggesting that only after the adoption of metal arrowheads did arrows become effective combat weapons: “I am going back to tell you how they used bows and arrows. . . . At that time the bow and arrow was not developed so that it did much harm. When the white man came they used iron for the point, and it came to be very effective.” DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather, 316.

27. Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 36.

28. Stodiek and Paulsen, Mit dem Pfeil, dem Bogen . . . : Technik der steinzeitlichen Jagd, 35, 52; Silsby, “Stone Points,” 3:310–13.

29. E. N. Wilson, Among the Shoshones, 6, 44. E. N. Wilson was born on April 8, 1843, and came to Utah with his Mormon parents in 1850, where they farmed. A man working on his father’s farm taught him the Gosiute language, which is related to Shoshone. When he was about twelve years old, Wilson ran off with a group of Shoshones. After living with Chief Washakie’s family among the Eastern Shoshones for approximately two years, he was sent back to his family. Wilson eventually had his own farm and later became a pony express rider, stagecoach driver, and hotel owner. He spent his later years in the town of Wilson, Wyoming, named after him, where he died on December 27, 1915.

Concerning the death of Washakie’s father, Virginia Cole Trenholm stated that that he was killed by Blackfoot raiders in an attack upon his village, giving the impression that he died outright, not after suffering from his injuries for a year. Trenholm, The Shoshonis, 98.

E. N. Wilson noted that Washakie’s mother stated her mother was Bannock and her father Shoshone. She was said to be sixty-two years old when Wilson came to her. She had three sons and a daughter, but by the time Wilson arrived, Washakie was her only living child. E. N. Wilson, Among the Shoshones, 45.

30. E. N. Wilson, Among the Shoshones, 108, 109.

31. Bill, “Notes on Arrow Wounds” and “Sabre and Bayonet Wounds; Arrow Wounds.”

32. E. N. Wilson, Among the Shoshones, 159.

33. E. N. Wilson, Among the Shoshones, 160.

34. Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 18.

35. Schulze-Thulin, Indianer der Prärien und Plains, 72, 73; Württemberg, Travels in North America, 283.

36. Mandelbaum, Plains Cree, 94, 95. “War arrows were loosely bound so that the head remained in a wound when the shaft was withdrawn.”

37. “Journal at Brandon House 1817–18 with some account of the Transactions at Fort Douglas &c &c &c &c by Peter Fidler,” Wednesday, July 13, 1817, folder 7, Brandon House Post Journal, B.22/a/20, HBCA. Note that Fidler wrote that two of the three Bungees were killed “on the spot” by firearms, suggesting an instant and powerful stopping effect of these weapons.

38. Württemberg, Travels in North America, 283.

39. Schulze-Thulin, Indianer der Prärien und Plains, 72, 73; Württemberg, Travels in North America, 269.

40. T. Wilson, “Arrow Wounds,” plates 17, 18, 19.

41. Bill, “Notes on Arrow Wounds” and “Sabre and Bayonet Wounds; Arrow Wounds.”

42. Junkelmann, Die Reiter Roms, Teil 3, 171, 172; Linderman, Plenty Coups, 106.

43. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 3.

44. T. Wilson, “Arrow Wounds,” 519, 520.

45. Linderman, Plenty Coups, 304.

46. Linderman, Plenty Coups, 304; Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:142.

47. Linderman, Plenty Coups, 304–7.

48. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:59, MHS.

49. T. Wilson, “Arrow Wounds,” 531.

50. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:147.

51. Bill, “Sabre and Bayonet Wounds; Arrow Wounds.”

52. Hassrick, The Sioux, 85, 307.

53. Laudicina, “Of Natives and Justice in the District of Assiniboia”; Public Interest vs. Capenesseweet, August 1849, I, 23, 33, Manitoba Archives.

54. “Journal of Transactions in 1792 & 93 by William Tomison,” F29d, Tuesday, April 23, 1793, Buckingham House Post Journal, B.24/a/1, 4M 18, HBCA.

55. Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms,” 3.

56. R. E. Wilson, Frank J. North, 160, 161.

57. Secoy, Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains, 16–19.

58. “A Journal of the Most Remarkable Transactions and Occurrences at Gloucester House from 1st August 1782 to 20th June 1783 by Mr. John Kipling,” September 28, 1782, Gloucester House Post Journal, HBCA. The person referred to as “Lieut.” was probably an Aboriginal leader, whom the HBC gave this “rank” in recognition of his leadership services and his inducement of his people to trade with the HBC. This person might have been a member of the so-called homeguard Indians.

59. George Sutherland, August 23, 1777, Albany Post Journal, 27 June 1777 to 27th June 1778, F11, B.3/a/73, HBCA.

60. George Sutherland, August 25, 1777, Albany Post Journal, 27 June 1777 to 27th June 1778.

61. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 1.

62. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 2.

63. Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms,” 5.

64. Jefferson, Fifty Years on the Saskatchewan, 66.

65. John Kipling, F17, May 26, 1785, Gloucester House Post Journal, 1784–85, B.78/a/12, HBCA. One cannot help but wonder about the dire consequences of this accident for an orphaned girl, possibly left without family members to support her, even if she survived the injury. Louis Bird stated that kindness to orphans was emphasized as a particularly important virtue in Omushkego-Cree culture.

7. Archery and Firearms in Aboriginal Beliefs

1. Henry, Journal of Alexander Henry the Younger, 2:538, Wednesday, February 13, 1811.

2. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 254.

3. Warburton and Duke, “Projectile Points as Cultural Symbols,” 214; Grinnell, “Childbirth among the Blackfeet.”

4. Warburton and Duke, “Projectile Points as Cultural Symbols,” 214.

5. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:10, 91, MHS; Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:127; Linderman, Pretty Shield, 55.

6. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:85, MHS.

7. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:79–86, MHS.

8. Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk, August 8–10, 1938, 252, file 9, Hanks Fonds, M8458, Box 1, Series 1, M8458, Glenbow Archives; Dixon, The Vanishing Race, 62.

9. Dixon, Vanishing Race, 62. A similar statement is attributed to the Lakota leader Sitting Bull: “I have followed the war path ever since I was able to draw a bow.” Calloway, Our Hearts Fell to the Ground, 191. Calloway cites Vestal, New Sources of Indian History, 309–10.

10. The Plains Aboriginal leader whose people (Gros Ventre or Blackfoot) Anthony Henday tried to induce to come to Hudson Bay to trade with the HBC in 1754–55 responded to Henday’s proposal “that it was far off, & they could not live without Buffalo flesh; and that they could not leave their horses &c.: and many other obstacles, though all might be got over if they were acquainted with a Canoe, and could eat Fish, which they never do.” Burpee, Journal of Anthony Henday, October 15, 1754, 32. Similarly, European traders often expressed negative views on fishing peoples, while praising mounted bison hunters as daring, active, and manly. For a discussion of these distorted European perceptions of Aboriginal food production systems and the cultural values and gender aspects Aboriginal people of the Plains and Plateau attached to different foods, see Vibert, Trader’s Tales, chapter 4, “Traders and Fishers: Tales of the State of Nature,” 119–62.

11. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:93–104, MHS, related by Buffalo Bird Woman and Goodbird, song related by Buffalo Bird Woman, 94. Perhaps this song was meant as a metaphor for the boys’ lack of adult sexuality, using archery as a vehicle to convey an explicitly sexual sense of humor. As women usually made moccasins for their husbands, the reference to being barefoot could have been an allusion to the boys’ not yet being married or fully adult.

12. Linderman, Pretty Shield, 55–64.

13. Ball, Indeh, an Apache Odyssey, 211; Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:176. Even contemporary archers, subconsciously or not, often view a bow with a high draw weight as a mark of masculinity. At traditional archery tournaments one can often encounter male archers (author not necessarily excluded) bragging of their bows with draw weights of 60, 70, or even 80 pounds. However, at the end of the tournament, more often than not, female competitors, using much lighter bows of draw weights from 28 to 40 pounds, keep hitting the bull’s-eye while their male companions shake and shiver from the strain of merely bringing their bows to full draw length, not to mention aiming accurately.

14. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 127, 128, 130. It is not clear when and where quiver-bow case combinations evolved. Painters such as George Catlin and Karl Bodmer, who traveled the North American West in the early 1830s, depicted just as many single quivers as quiver-bow case combinations in their paintings of Aboriginal people. It may be that during this time the single quiver gradually gave way to the quiver-bow case combination.

15. Catlin, North American Indians, 93, letter 13.

16. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:60–62, MHS. In contrast, Prince Maximilian observed a Hidatsa man returning from the hunt wearing a richly decorated quiver of “panther fur.” Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 24:66.

17. This may have been a reason for the coexistence of single quivers and quiver-bow case combinations, or possibly a reflection of older practices dating back to times when only single quivers had been in use. In the summer of 1833 Prince Maximilian observed Plains Cree men at Fort McKenzie in Montana who “wore the leather cases of their bows wound round their heads, like a turban.” Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:13.

18. This method of carrying arrows when courting reflected older practices. Wolf Chief related that when his father was young (in the early nineteenth century) the Hidatsa still used flint arrowheads. These arrows were placed in the quiver with the feather toward the bottom and the arrowheads exposed above the rim of the quiver. This was originally done to prevent the arrowheads from breaking when they rattled against each other as the archer moved. For added protection, a little wool from the head of a buffalo was twisted around each arrowhead. When the arrow was withdrawn from the quiver, the wool was ripped off before shooting. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:9–11, 50, 51, MHS.

19. Among the Mandan, Hidatsa, and other Northern Plains peoples, specific decorations and embroidery, such as striped leggings, striped quillwork designs on bows, and striped beadwork on leggings, quivers, and pipe bags, visually expressed the military achievements of the wearer. Wolf Chief related: “Red stripes were sometimes painted on bows, meaning ‘I used this bow to strike an enemy!’” G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:11, MHS.

20. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:60, MHS.

21. Bodmer, Karl Bodmer’s America, 160, 161; images of Omaha men, 315; portrait of the Mandan Sih-Sä (Red Feather), 321, 356. Wolf Chief related that elkhorn bows carried on such occasions were not intended for big game hunting and combat but rather were for decorative purposes, only capable of killing rabbits but not large animals. On the other hand, bows of Rocky Mountain sheep horn were very efficient and powerful weapons, well suited for use in combat and in big game hunting. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:10, 21, 22, 60, MHS.

22. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:93, MHS.

23. “Deer’s Hair, Son of Keokuk,” and “Grandson of Buffalo Bull’s Back Fat.” Truettner, Natural Man Observed. Karl Bodmer’s and George Catlin’s paintings were certainly influenced by their own bias toward what they perceived as “traditional” Aboriginal culture, as well as by the expectations of their target audience, middle- and upper-class whites in Europe and in the eastern United States. Unlike their contemporaries Gustav Sohon and Paul Kane, they hardly ever painted Métis people, and they rarely painted Plains Indians wearing European clothing, even though shirts, blankets, and textile leggings were in widespread use in the Plains by the time of Bodmer’s and Catlin’s visits. However, it would go too far to ascribe all Aboriginal attire depicted by Catlin and Bodmer to mere artistic license. Especially in the Southern Plains, many photographs from the later nineteenth century confirm earlier traditions of wearing elaborate archery gear for dress occasions.

24. Walking Elk, Art of Making Indian Bows and Arrows, 3, 6; Nye, Plains Indian Raiders, 216 (Kicking Bird, Kiowa), 238 (Horseback, Nokoni Comanche), 240 (Horseback’s son), 296 (Esa-Havey, Penateka Comanche), 320 (Gui-Tain, Kiowa), 322 (Koi-Khan-hole, Kiowa), 324 (“Kiowa-brave”), 328 (Tape-Day-Ah, Kiowa), 346 (Powder Face and family, Arapaho).

25. Crowshoe and Manneschmidt, Akak’stiman, 24–27. Blackfoot scholar Theresa Schenck related that among her ancestors, archery sets could become Medicine Bundles in their own right. Schenck, personal communication, February 2005, Winnipeg.

26. Hanna, Life and Times of James Willard Schultz (Apikuni). Schultz grew up in Boonville in upstate New York and had come to Montana in the late nineteenth century. He went to Montana motivated by a “romantic” interest in the Indigenous people of the Great Plains and by a dislike for the restrictions imposed on him by small- town society in rural New York state. Schultz soon became acquainted with Joseph Kipp, son of the fur trader James Kipp and a Mandan woman. Kipp offered Schultz employment in his trading venture, selling alcohol and other trade goods to the Piegan-Blackfoot in return for bison robes and other furs. Schultz married a Piegan woman and spent considerable amounts of time with the Piegan people. Schultz did not specify whether this was a quiver-bow case combination or only a bow case.

27. Boy’s Life, July, August, and September 1935. Later, Schultz published a condensed version in Blackfeet and Buffalo, 179–93.

28. Jackson, Jemmy Jock Bird, 103, 186n22.

29. Jackson, Jemmy Jock Bird, 186n21.

30. Swampy Cree people considered ermine skins as “Manitou,” having spiritual importance. Tyrrell, “Letters of La Potherie,” 228.

31. Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo, 210–25.

32. Quiver and bow case, cowhide, Peigan (bow AF 4293b and arrows AF 4293d, etc.) AF 4293a, Glenbow Museum, Calgary.

33. Quiver–bow case made of otter fur, decorated with seed beads, Piegan-Blackfeet, donated by George Bird Grinnell, American Museum of Natural History, catalog no. 50.2/2854, accession no. 1927–19. A line drawing of this object was published in Allely and Hamm, Encyclopedia of Native American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 2:142.

34. From “Indians meet Royalty,” in Report of the Northwest Mounted Police 1906, 11:54 (Government of Canada, Ottawa, Sessional Papers, no. 28), Box I, file 2, Gooderham Fonds, Glenbow Archives. The bow and arrows currently contained in this quiver–bow case were not fit for big game hunting. The little bow was ingeniously crafted to resemble a sheep horn bow. It is a self bow made from a tree branch. The bark that was left on it gives the appearance of a sinew backing. The bow has the same elegant curves and narrowing recurved tips as a sheep horn bow. The arrows have elaborate oblong wooden points, similar to gaming arrows. While this bow might have been able to launch light arrows to some distance, the equipment would hardly have been capable of taking large game such as a bison or a steer. The bark, or “imitation sinew backing,” has broken under tension stress on one limb of the bow, probably because the bow was overdrawn at some point.

35. No such image could be located at the Glenbow Archives.

36. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:63, MHS.

37. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows.”

38. E. S. Rogers, Material Culture of the Mistassini, 70.

39. Mails, Plains Indians, 78, 190, 215.

40. Crowshoe and Manneschmidt, Akak’stiman, 16; Wissler, Societies and Dance Associations of the Blackfoot Indians, 365–70.

41. Wissler, Societies and Dance Associations of the Blackfoot Indians, 375.

42. Mails, Plains Indians, 91, 92.

43. Mails, Plains Indians, 91, 92. According to Clark Wissler, Bear Skin, a Piegan man who was then seventy-five years old, told Wissler in 1910 that he had been a founding member of the Pigeon Society when he was eighteen years old. This would place the founding of the Pigeon Society in 1853. According to Bear Skin, an old blind man named Ghost Boy had founded the society due to a vision. Wissler, Societies and Dance Associations of the Blackfoot Indians, 375. It is not clear to what extent the founding and activities of the Pigeon Society constituted a response to the increasing social stratification that occurred in Blackfoot-speaking communities during the nineteenth century.

44. Mails, Plains Indians, 91, 92.

45. Mails, Plains Indians, 91, 92; McClintock, Old North Trail, 449, 450.

46. Mails, Plains Indians, 92; McClintock, Old North Trail, 449, 450. During the Massaum ceremony, or “animal dance,” of the Cheyenne, four dancers, or “clowns,” also harassed the audience playfully with red-painted bows and arrows. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:205ff, 286, 287, 329ff, 334.

47. Provincial Museum of Alberta, Edmonton: H89.220.415a–f, self bow with thick handle and five crudely made arrows with very crooked shafts, three have the tips of the shafts whittled to a point, two have crude stone points, all have crude fletchings, much shorter and the vanes much higher than on older plains arrows. H89.220.414i–k, Blood self bow and two arrows: self bow is reminiscent of the old Plains type, arrow shafts are relatively straight, but with rather simple fletchings. These items are part of the Scriver collection, a private collection that the Provincial Museum of Alberta purchased in 1989. Bob Scriver and his father, Thaddeus, had a store in Browning, Montana, and collected primarily Blackfoot material for close to 100 years but unfortunately did not keep detailed records identifying exactly when and from whom they had acquired particular objects. The H65 and H66 materials were purchased in 1965 and 1966 by museum staff. H65.264.5a was made recently, according to the catalogue notes, which probably means in the early 1960s. According to curator Dr. Susan Berry, the H65.212 and H66.200 materials are older than that, but there is no specific information about their age. (Susan Berry, Provincial Museum of Alberta, Edmonton, e-mail to author, August 26, 2004.) H65.212.1A + B, thick-handled self bow and arrow from the Blood at Cardston, Alberta (date unknown). H65.264.5A, recent replica of Pigeon Society self bow (thick handle) from the Blood at Cardston, Alberta. H66.200.1A + B, self bow and arrow from the Siksika at Gleichen, Alberta: self bow is of older design, without riser handle, similar to nineteenth-century Plains self bows. The arrow shaft appears to be relatively straight, the bow and arrow are covered in red ochre, and the bow has a sinew string. H89.220.414i–k, Blood self bow and two arrows: self bow is reminiscent of the old Plains type, arrow shafts are relatively straight but with rather simple fletchings, different from the long and low-cut fletchings commonly found on Plains big game hunting or combat arrows.

48. Bob et al., “Standing Alone,” First Nations: The Circle Unbroken, vol. 1, videorecording.

49. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:57.

50. Linderman, Plenty Coups, 40.

51. Linderman, Pretty Shield, 53.

52. Fowler, The Arapaho, 14.

53. R. N. Wilson Papers, 1:21, 22, Glenbow Archives.

54. Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, 67.

55. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:90.

56. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:95.

57. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:211.

58. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:95.

59. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:30, 36.

60. Bowers, Hidatsa Social and Ceremonial Organization, 303–8.

61. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:97, MHS.

62. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:53, MHS.

63. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:23–25, MHS.

64. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:237, 238ff, 244ff.

65. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:210.

66. Linderman, Pretty Shield, 55–64.

67. Hassrick, The Sioux, 91; Nabokov, Two Leggings, 81–85.

68. Hassrick, The Sioux, 91.

69. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 81–85.

70. Catlin, North American Indians, 153–55, letters 21, 22.

71. Catlin, North American Indians, 83, letter 12.

72. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:187, 188. Eventually the term “parfleche” was applied to a wide variety of nonmilitary items made from rawhide, such as food containers, headgear, and boxes, but mostly to flat folding bags used to store pemmican.

73. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 241, 242; O. Lewis, Effects of White Contact upon Blackfoot Culture, 47; Keyser, “Plains Indian War Complex and the Rock Art of Writing-On-Stone,” 43, and “Lexicon for Historic Plains Indian Rock Art,” 46, 47, 49.

74. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 32–35.

75. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:117, 118, 122.

76. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:108, 109.

77. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:110.

78. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:123.

79. J. Brown, “Fields of Dreams,” 27, 28.

80. Tyrrell, “Letters of La Potherie,” 231.

81. Robson, Account of Six Years Residence in Hudson’s Bay, 49, 50.

82. Chappell, Narrative of a Voyage to Hudson’s Bay, 113, 114..

83. E. Jones, Gentlemen and Jesuits, 185.

84. Catlin, North American Indians, 83, letter 12.

85. Hassrick, The Sioux, 325.

86. E. N. Wilson, Among the Shoshones, 91.

87. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 51. See also Annals of Wyoming, “High-Backed Wolf” and “Cheyenne Indians,” http://wyshs.org/index_h.htm (accessed January 2013).

88. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:160.

89. Brown and Brightman, Orders of the Dreamed, 73, 74.

90. Brown and Brightman, Orders of the Dreamed, 73, 74.

91. Brown and Brightman, Orders of the Dreamed, 41.

92. Brown and Brightman, Orders of the Dreamed, 33.

93. Brown and Brightman, Orders of the Dreamed, 44.

94. Brown and Brightman, Orders of the Dreamed, 44. Anna L. Leighton suggests this is probably Amelanchier alnifolia or Saskatoon berry. See Leighton, Wild Plant Use by the Woods Cree, 28.

95. George Sutherland, Albany Post Journal, 1783–84, F38, B.3/a/82, 1M7, HBCA.

96. Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 180.

97. “Isle a la Cross Journal, with Astronomical Observations Made at the Same Place, by Peter Fidler,” Saturday, May 4, and Sunday, May 5, 1811, Ile-a-la Crosse Post Journal, 1810–11, F30d, 1M63, B.89/a/2, HBCA.

98. Brown and Brightman, Orders of the Dreamed, 38, 112; Matthews, “Thunderbirds,” Ideas, radio broadcast transcript, May 15 and 16, 1995, Maureen Matthews, 1, Charlie George Owen, Ojibwa elder, 4, Jacob Owen, Ojibwa elder, 6, Roger Roulette, Ojibwa linguist, 17, 19, Bertha Sinclair, Ojibwa elder, 19.

99. Louis Bird, personal conversation, March 2001; Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows,” and 0116—“Guns and Bows II,” 2, 3.

100. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows,” and 0116—“Guns and Bows II,” 27, 28. The “magical” control over firearms, using them with deadly force but without gunpowder and bullets, is reminiscent of the information related by the Piegan leader James White Calf to linguist Richard Lancaster, discussed in chapter 5.

101. Benndorf and Speyer, Indianer Nordamerikas 1760–1860, Abb. 71, bag, Menomini, collected prior to 1780 (cat. no. 180); Abb. 54, 55, 56, Ojibwa bags (cat. nos. 147, 148, 149). The first two are pre-1800, the last one is ca. 1780. Benndorf and Speyer state that Ojibwa people believed the thunderbird wielded power over the day; Schulamt der Stadt Zürich, Indianer Nordamerikas: Katalog zur Sammlung Hotz, 43, 154, Iroquois or Ojibwa bag with thunderbird design, pre-1800, Hotz Collection, Indianermuseum der Stadt Zürich, cat. no. 17–1, 3.

102. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 4, 5, 133, 144; According to the Laubins, Plains Indian archers using short bows and arrows insisted that the bow must be pushed away as the arrow is drawn toward oneself in order to reach the maximum draw length possible with these weapons. Holding the bow and arrow overhead immediately before the shot helped to accomplish this.

103. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:95.

104. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:52, 53, MHS.

105. Gilman and Schneider, Way to Independence, 199.

106. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:354n322.

107. Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 30; Hamm, Bows and Arrows of the Native Americans, 101, 102. Both Mason and Hamm based their assessment on the examination of surviving arrows from different regions of North America, finding a prevalence of grooved arrows shafts among arrows from Plains cultures. This is consistent with my observations in examining original arrows.

108. Bowers, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization, 260–69, 283.

109. Bowers, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization, 267.

110. Bowers, Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization, 260.

111. Blish, “Ceremony of the Sacred Bow” American Anthropologist, 183.

112. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 375.

113. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 88.

114. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 35.

115. Raczka, “Ohkiniksi,” 1:134, 135. The Plains Cree leader Fine Day owned a rattlesnake-effigy belt, made of brain-tanned leather, beaded with dark blue and white pony beads. The tail section of this belt shows alternating blue and white stripes, similar to the alternating dark and light bands of quillwork found on some Plains and Plateau bows. This belt, now at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton, was said to have been made by Fine Day’s grandmother upon his request, after a vision of a rattlesnake revealed to him an escape route out of an encirclement of his war party by Blackfoot opponents.

116. Rattlesnake skin–covered bows: Lindenmuseum Stuttgart: cat. no. 94636, sinew-backed wooden bow, collected by Duke Paul of Württemberg, 1824–1850, possibly Assiniboine. Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: cat. no. 1893.67.24, sinew-backed wooden bow, Northern Plains, collected by Edward Martin Hopkins, private secretary to Governor George Simpson in 1842, and cat. no. 1900.80.3, sinew-backed wooden bow, collected by Henry Balfour, ca. 1900, possibly Northern Plains. Manitoba Museum, Winnipeg: cat. no. H4–4-80, sinew-backed wooden bow, shaped like a horn bow, gift in 1964 from H. G. H. Smith, Medicine Hat, Alberta. U.S. National Museum: cat. no. 9043, sinew-backed wooden bow, collected by Dr. James T. Ghiselein of the U.S. Army at Fort Colville, Washington Territory, in 1868 from the Flathead (see Hamilton, Native American Bows, 104, 105). The Kutenai often covered their sinew-backed bows with snakeskin; see “Kootenay Economic Activities,” 181, information obtained from Simon Francis, a Kutenai from Bonner’s Ferry in Idaho in the 1950s, Schaeffer Papers, M1100/8, Glenbow Archives.

117. Garter snakeskin–covered bows: Field Museum of Chicago: cat. no. 51662, sinew-backed wooden bow, collected by George Dorsey on the Blood Reserve in Alberta in 1897 (see also Van Stone, Material Culture of the Blackfoot, fig. 4). Manitoba Museum: Hudson’s Bay Company Collection, no. 156 A, self bow, collected on the Blood Reserve by Indian agent T. J. Fleetham in the early twentieth century. Ethnologisches Museum Berlin: cat. no. IV B 143, sinew-backed wooden bow, obtained from Friedrich Koehler, ca. 1846, possibly Blackfoot.

118. Honigmann, “West Main Cree,” 6:223. Louis Bird also mentioned Omushkego-Cree stories about underwater monsters in lakes near Hudson Bay.

119. Brown and Brightman, Orders of the Dreamed, 109, 110, Matthews, “Thunderbirds,” Ideas, radio broadcast transcript, Rob Brightman, anthropologist, 9; Oetelaar, “Moving Beyond the Technical Imperatives,” 4, http://nevada-archaeology.org/files/Oetelaar_Session_2.pdf: “Thus, the universe of the Blackfoot is divided into an upper, a middle, and a lower world. The middle world is home to the earth beings including humans, four-legged animals, plants, rocks, and the earth itself. The above world is home to the sun, moon, morning star and other sky beings as well as thunder and most of the birds. The below world is inhabited by the water beings as well as certain waterfowl, beaver, otter and muskrat. Even though the animate and inanimate components of the Blackfoot world do not correspond to those of western science, the maintenance of a balance in both worlds is dependent on the implied relationships among these elements.”

120. Reid, “Dragon Sideplate”; Fox, “Dragon Sideplates from York Factory,” http://www.adamsheritage.com/articles/fox/dragon_sideplates.htm, (accessed August 2004).

121. Fox, “Dragon Sideplates from York Factory,” 3.

122. Fox, “Dragon Sideplates from York Factory,” 3; Brown and Brightman, Orders of the Dreamed, 46. Margaret Simmons, an Ojibwa from Berens River, Manitoba, stated in regard to thunderbirds: “they have sort of horns on them; it’s like a copper [covered] head: their head shines.” Matthews, “Thunderbirds,” Ideas, 8.

123. Aboriginal people also attributed metallic and shiny aspects to the appearance of thunderbirds. Plains Cree elder Stan Cuthand from Saskatchewan related in regard to the appearance of thunderbirds: “They always close their eyes, and their feathers kind of shine like the rainbow.” Matthews, “Thunderbirds,” Ideas, 1. George Nelson: “The Thunder also appears to them [the Cree and Ojibwa] in the shape of a most beautiful bird (The Pea-Cock).” Brown and Brightman, Orders of the Dreamed, 38.

124. Fox, “Dragon Sideplates from York Factory.”

125. Benndorf and Speyer, Indianer Nordamerikas 1760–1860, Tafel 8, cat. no. 114, 76–78, bag, Ottawa, pre-1800; Abb. 67 (cat. no. 182), 101, 102, gunstock club with a metal blade collected from the Menomini before 1840. The image of this horned underwater panther is connected to that of a running human; Phillips, Patterns of Power, 49, 78. Pouch, eastern Great Lakes, ca. 1800, NMM III-M-6, Speyer and Sir Walter Scott Collections.

126. Matthews, “Thunderbirds,” Ideas, 9, 20.

127. Matthews, “Thunderbirds,” Ideas, Rob Brightman, anthropologist, 9, 10.

128. H. A. Dempsey, “Blackfoot,” 13:611. This Blackfoot man wears a breastplate made from dragon side plates of trade guns and what appears to be strips of otter or beaver fur. Both animals were central to Blackfoot spiritual beliefs and were strongly associated with water, rivers and lakes. He holds a Winchester center-fire repeating rifle, model 1873, heavily decorated with brass tacks. His saddle-leather belt, knife sheath, and riding quirt were also heavily studded with brass tacks. William Norman took this photograph on the Blackfoot Reserve near Gleichen, Alberta, in 1889. Blood apparently believed in powerful underwater beings as well. The Blood Indian Scalp Roller, born approximately in 1808, told R. N. Wilson in 1893: “Rocks, Cut Banks, Big Tree, Sand Bank, Rivers, we gave to them our offerings to the underwater person.” R. N. Wilson Papers, 1:343, Appendix 2, Glenbow Archives.

129. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 22:389.

130. Cowie, Company of Adventurers, 198.

131. Bishop and Lytwyn, “Cree-Inuit Warfare in the Hudson Bay Region”; J. G. E. Smith, “Chipewyan, Cree, and Inuit Relations,” 134, 150.

132. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 22:391, 392.

133. R. L. Hall, Archaeology of the Soul, 158; Hoffman, “Menomini Indians,” 167; G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa Eagle Trapping,” 229; Weltfish, Lost Universe, 75.

134. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 243–44. The concept of killing humans to gain spiritual power for war apparently still existed to some extent among Blackfoot people in the mid-nineteenth century. “The Story of Medicine Hat,” file 2, Joe Little Chief Fonds, M4394, Glenbow Archives.

135. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 243.

8. Archery and Firearms in Hunting

1. Bowe and Deck, Legacy of Stone, 9, 73.

2. Rich, Minutes of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 27.

3. Carlos and Lewis, “Trade, Consumption, and the Native Economy,” 1044–50. Albany Account Book, 1695, 1–18, B3/d/5; York Factory Account Books, 1688–89, B.239/d/1, 9, 10; 1689–90, B239/d2, 2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 28, 34; 1693–94, B239/d5, 38; 1759–60, B239/d50, 4, 7; 1793–94, B.239/d/100, 3; B.239/d/101, 2, 7; 1798–99, B.239/d/118, 3; 1799–1800, B.239/d/120, 4; B.239/d/123, 5, all HBCA.

4. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows”; William Dumas, elder, Fox Lake Cree Nation Manitoba, personal communication, March 2010; Horace Massan, Cree elder, Split Lake First Nation Manitoba, personal communication, March 2010. Fur trader David Thompson noted the brittleness of birch rind (and possibly birch wood?), necessitating that it be warmed over a fire before use. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 97.

5. Hearne, Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort, 308, 309, 310; Denys, Description and Natural History of the Coasts, 409. The French fisherman and trader Nicholas Denys lived with Mi’kmaq people for forty years. He mentioned the use of the lance and not the bow and arrow for hunting moose in winter.

6. Weitzner, Notes on the Hidatsa Indians, 244. Similarly, Blackfoot people sometimes carried bows and arrows under their coats. Eagle Rib’s War Deeds, 1938, 48, Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) Eagle Ribs via Mary Royal (interpreter), Box 1, file 1, Hanks Fonds, M8458, Glenbow Archives.

7. Louis Bird, personal conversation, November 1999, March 2003; Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows,” and 0116—“Guns and Bows II.”

8. For example, see Manchester House Post Journal, 28, January 13, 1787, 1M 73, B121/a/1, HBCA.

9. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:10, 68, MHS.

10. Usually, the ratio of bow length to draw length is less for a shorter bow. This means that all else being equal, a shorter bow at full draw is under considerably more strain than a longer bow. From my own experience in using reproductions of Aboriginal bows, for example, a 44-inch bow drawn to 22 inches, not uncommon for Northern Plains bows, is drawn half its length and would likely fracture if held in this position for too long, due to the enormous strain. In contrast, a 60-inch bow drawn to 28 inches, as was common for bows from the Great Lakes area, would be under much less stress at full draw, due to a greater ratio of bow length to draw length. Such a bow would be much less likely to break when held at full draw for a longer period, such as the space of a breath or two. Because such a bow can be held at full draw longer, the archer can anchor the arrow hand to the cheek, which facilitates aiming and accuracy. In contrast, the shorter Plains bows were shot in a single, fluid motion, without holding the arrow at full draw.

11. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 142–43.

12. Odom, “Black Powder in the Rain,” 1–3, http://www.televar.com/~willgo/pastgate/notebook/rain/rain.htm.

13. Odom, “Black Powder in the Rain,” 1.

14. Weitzner, Notes on the Hidatsa Indians, 232–33; Hamm, Bows and Arrows of the Native Americans, 73; Alleley and Hamm, Encyclopedia, 2:166; Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 375.

15. Spiess, Reindeer and Caribou Hunters, 120, 121; Lytwyn, “Hudson Bay Lowland Cree in the Fur Trade to 1821,” 430.

16. Hearne, Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort, 308, 309, 310.

17. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows”; Skinner, Notes on the Eastern Cree and Northern Saulteaux; Skinner described a similar method for hunting caribou, practiced by Eastern Cree. The safety consideration mentioned above applied to Plains peoples’ antelope or bison drives as well.

18. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 86. While caribou hedges are well documented through early ethnographic records of the fur trade, Louis Bird did not mention them. He referred to enclosures with funnels and barricades and to hunting blinds with archers waiting behind them to dispatch the caribou that were driven into these enclosures. He did not mention the use of snares for caribou hunting.

19. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 86 (see also Isham’s description of a snare hedge). For a drawing of a “deer snare,” see Isham, Isham’s Observations on Hudsons Bay, 1743 (HBCA, PAM, E.2/2, fo. 43).

20. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 84, 85.

21. Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 15.

22. Chappell, Narrative of a Voyage to Hudson’s Bay, 216–18.

23. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 103.

24. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 85.

25. Fort Dauphin Post Journal, April 8, 1819, F35d, 1M41, B.51/a/2, HBCA.

26. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 95.

27. See Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 118, 119; Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 96.

28. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0051—“Fish Trapping and Caribou Hunting,” 2.

29. Honigmann, “West Main Cree,” 6:218, 223.

30. Honigmann, “West Main Cree,” 6:218, 223.

31. Pilon, Washahoe Inninou Dahtsuounoaou, 35.

32. Louis Bird, personal communication to Anne Lindsay, July 10, 2003.

33. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 92–93. It has not been demonstrated that Radisson actually reached James Bay.

34. Louis Bird, personal communication to Roland Bohr, October 2001.

35. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows”; Isham, Isham’s Observations on Hudsons Bay, 1743, 118. Louis Bird described a method for multiple killings of geese that was very similar to one recorded by Hudson’s Bay Company factor James Isham more than 250 years earlier.

36. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows.”

37. Louis Bird, personal communication to Anne Lindsay, July 7, 2003; Louis Bird and Roland Bohr, “Arrows and Thundersticks: Technologies Old and New,” 190.

38. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 111; HBCA B.198/a/11, fo. 23d.

39. Tyrrell, “Letters of La Potherie,” 236. Besides projectile weapons, Subarctic people used a wide variety of snares and deadfalls to catch animals varying in size from rabbits to bears. For a detailed discussion of these traps, see Cooper, Snares, Deadfalls, and Other Traps.

40. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 107, 237n146. In 1792–93 Peter Fidler observed that the few Pikani who would kill beaver to trade their pelts, used firearms for the purpose. “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 7, November 27, 1792, HBCA.

41. Radisson, Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson, 143, 144, http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/ItemRecord/09232?id=8f7f7587fadcefc9.

42. Bow maker Paul Comstock killed a 300-pound black bear with a wooden bow. The bow hunter Rob Young also killed a black bear using a 56-inch, 57-pound reproduction of a Californian Modoc bow. “About the Authors,” in Hamm, Traditional Bowyer’s Bible, vol. 1; Baker, “Bows from Boards,” 2:31.

43. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows.”

44. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 12.

45. Bodmer, Karl Bodmer’s America, 300, 318.

46. George Catlin, Die Indianer Nordamerikas (1851; reprint, Vienna, Austria: Verlag Lothar Borowsky, n.d.), 161. See also http://www.wpclipart.com/animals/B/bears/grizzly/grizzly_indian_attack_George_Catlin.jpg.html (accessed June 2011).

47. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 248, 249. Five years after David Thompson, Peter Fidler stayed with a group of Pikanis and recorded the following information that possibly referred to Saukamappee (“Journal of a Journey over Land,” 16, December 29, 1792, HBCA):

Arrived this day 2 Tents of Muddy River Indians, along with the Old Southern Indian man from a Pound SE of this about 7 miles—this man has been living with these Indians above 25 Years & has a large family of Children—who all speak the Muddy River Indian or Peekanow Language—as their mothers was of this Tribe, he speaks this Language as well as his own mothers tongue—he is the 2d man in rank of this nation & great attention is paid to what he says respecting war—he has been a noted warrior, by which he acquired his great authority—at present he is hauled about upon a sledge—not being able to walk—by an accident that happened to him last spring—he found a Beaver house in a small Lake—had broke it open & found the vault where the beaver had fled to on breaking open the house—he was staking up the mouth of this vault when a Beaver ran out into the Lake & bit him by the calf of his leg—Where the man stood was knee deep in water—this bite not being properly attended, the warm weather coming on & being an old man—this mortified and carried him off in June 1793—he was universally beloved by all the Pecanow Tribe & made himself respected amongst the adjacent friendly nations.

48. E. N. Wilson, Among the Shoshones, 71.

49. Louis Bird, personal communication, December 2004.

50. Henry, Journal of Alexander Henry the Younger, 1:30, 31, Sunday, August 24, 1800.

51. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 241.

52. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 106, 126.

53. Württemberg, Reise nach dem nördlichen Amerika in den Jahren 1822 bis 1824 (München, 1979), 186; quoted in Schulze-Thulin, Indianer der Prärien und Plains, 72, 73. Württemberg, Travels in North America, 197: “Since firearms are preferred to bow and arrows in the forest hunt, almost all the Osages and Kansa are armed with guns. On the other hand, those tribes living on the prairies manipulate the bow with great skill and strength. I found scarcely any guns among them and they use them but little, if any, in hunting bison.”

54. Burpee, Journal of Anthony Henday, October 15, 1754, 32.

55. Albany Post Journal, 1783–84, April 24, 1784, 1M7 f28, B.3/a/82; Wednesday, July 21, 1784 (margin note), 1M7, F44d, B.3/a/82; Edward Jarvis, August 14, 1785, 1M8, B.3/a/84, all HBCA.

56. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 20, December 31, 1792, HBCA

57. Fidler, “Journal over Land,” 20, 21, January 1793.

58. Fidler, “Journal over Land,” 7, November 21, 1792.

59. Fidler, “Journal over Land,” 29, 30, February 7, 1793.

60. Fidler, “Journal over Land,” 31, February 17, 1793.

61. Crooked Meat Strings, 1938, 273, Hanks Fonds, Box 1, Series 1, M8458, file 9, Glenbow Archives.

62. Crooked Meat Strings, 1938, “How a Chief Builds a Following,” 16, Glenbow Archives.

63. Reeves, Head-Smashed-In, 164–67. The Mummy Cave complex yielded the earliest evidence for the use of the Head-Smashed-In bison jump site in southern Alberta, dating back to 3600–3100 BC.

64. Pikani killed thirty mountain sheep in a pound, especially constructed for sheep hunting. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 34, March 2, 1793, HBCA; Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:277–91.

65. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 33, February 24, 1793.

66. Catlin, Letters and Notes on the North American Indians, 2; Barsh and Marlor, “Driving Bison and Blackfoot Science.”

67. Henry, Journal, 1:33, Tuesday, August 26, 1800.

68. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 5, November 18, 1792. HBCA.

69. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 14, December 28, 1792, HBCA. Louis Bird also mentioned that during caribou drives among the Omushkego-Cree, the young men who drove the animals to the enclosure received a greater share in the meat than anybody else, because their task required constant running, often on snowshoes, to drive the animals in the desired direction. Only the strongest and most agile young hunters were able to do this. Louis Bird, personal communication, Winnipeg, November 1999.

70. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 13, December 17, 1792, HBCA. Fidler’s quotation implies that he considered his Pikani hosts to behave wastefully in regard to the ratio of bison killed to the amount of meat they actually used. However, according to Blood Indian traditions, their culture hero Napi had taught them that “all pieces of meat scraped from hides must be eaten [only by humans or by other creatures, too?] so as not to waste anything.” R. N. Wilson Papers, 1:23, 24, Glenbow Archives.

71. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 13, December 18, 1792, HBCA.

72. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 14, December 20, 1792.

73. William E. Moreau (ed.), The Writings of David Thompson: The Travels 1850 Version (Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2009), Vol. 1, 68.

74. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 14, December 28, 1792, HBCA.

75. For discussions of Aboriginal conservation practices in the Subarctic and on the Great Plains, see Brightman. Grateful Prey; Krech, Ecological Indian; Barsh and Marlor, “Driving Bison and Blackfoot Science.”

76. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 23, January 14, 1793, HBCA.

77. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 34, March 6, 1793; 36, March 14, 1793, HBCA.

78. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 33, February 23, 1793, HBCA.

79. Bamforth, “Historical Documents and Bison Ecology,” 8.

80. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 14, December 25, 1792, HBCA.

81. Burpee, Journal of Anthony Henday, 34, October 16, 1754.

82. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 13, December 17, 1792; 26, January 27, 1793, HBCA.

83. Weitzner, Notes on the Hidatsa Indians, 245, 246.

84. Catlin, Letters and Notes on the North American Indians, 96, illustration “Buffalo chase, near Fort Union”; Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians, 1:254, illustration 111, “Buffalo chase; bulls battling with men and horses.”

85. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 30, February 10, 1793, HBCA.

86. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:73, 74, MHS. Wolf Chief stated that End Rock used a very sturdy bow, but it was braced somewhat more “loosely” with a thicker bowstring. His arrows were said to have been of exceptional quality. See also Ewers, Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture, 158: “The arrow was shot without sighting, generally with the bow held a little off vertical, the top tilted to the right. However, each hunter used the position easiest for him. Informants insisted that all Blackfoot hunters did not learn to shoot in the same way, nor did they all employ the same method of arrow release.”

87. E. N. Wilson, Among the Shoshones, 98–103.

88. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:80, MHS.

89. Weitzner, Notes on the Hidatsa Indians, 245.

90. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 28, January 31, 1793; 30, February 10, 1793, HBCA. Fidler noted that the Pikani hunters sometimes killed only buffalo bulls. He observed an absence of cows whenever this happened. It is likely that those hunts were conducted during the time the herds broke up into smaller groups and young mature bulls would segregate themselves from the cows and calves.

91. Flores, “Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy,” 479, 480.

92. Flores, “Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy,” 479, 480.

93. Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 19, 20.

94. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows” and 0116—“Guns and Bows II.”

95. Henry, Journal of Alexander Henry the Younger, 2:663, Tuesday, January 25, 1814.

96. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:195.

97. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:109.

9. Archery and Firearms in Central Subarctic Combat

1. Linderman, Plenty Coups and Pretty Shield; Marquis, Wooden Leg; Grinnell, Fighting Cheyennes.

2. Cooper, Notes on the Ethnology of the Otchipwe; Cooper, Snares, Deadfalls, and Other Traps; Speck, Naskapi; Speck, Penobscot Man.

3. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0077—“Inuit Expedition, Skirmishes.”

4. Bishop and Lytwyn, “Cree-Inuit Warfare in the Hudson Bay Region,” 6. Louis Bird preferred the term “Natowaywuk.” An old term, na’towe’wa, was widely used in Algonquian languages to refer to various Iroquoian groups. Some have translated it as “snake,” but Ives Goddard believes that this is a later extension and that it “should instead be compared to the verbal element a’towe, ‘speak a foreign language’, to which it can be related by regular grammatical processes.” Both variants, with and without the initial n, have validity. Goddard, “Synonymy [for Iroquois],” 320.

5. Tyrrell, “Letters of La Potherie,” 264–66.

6. “This [the Nelson River] is a very beautiful river about a league across at its mouth, in the land of the Mashkegonhyrinis or Savannahs [Swampy Cree], who are at war with the Hakouhirmious [Inuit].” Tyrrell, “Letters of La Potherie,” 258.

7. Chappell, Narrative of a Voyage to Hudson’s Bay, 93, 166.

8. Oldmixon, “History of Hudson’s-Bay,” 381, 382.

9. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0077—“Inuit Expedition, Skirmishes”; Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 222n5. Victor Lytwyn quoted William Coates, who was an HBC employee from 1727 to 1751 and who recorded that Lowland Cree people sometimes gave Inuit captives to Ottawa (Odawa) raiders who handed them over to the Five Nations Iroquois people, who were said to sacrifice them. The Cree and Ottawa supposedly delivered these captives to avoid becoming Iroquois sacrificial victims themselves. Coates, Geography of Hudson’s Bay, 56, 57.

10. J. G. E. Smith, “Chipewyan, Cree and Inuit Relations,” 133.

11. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0077—“Inuit Expedition, Skirmishes.”

12. Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled, 54.

13. Chappell, Narrative of a Voyage to Hudson’s Bay, 110; Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0077—“Inuit Expedition, Skirmishes.”

14. Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled, 54.

15. Attituq Quitsualik, “War: Part Six,” February 11, 2000, 6, Nunatsiaq News, http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/nunavut000230/nunani.html.

16. Robson, Account of Six Years Residence in Hudson’s Bay, 48.

17. “Nothing is more ingrained in the real Eskimo and nothing pervades more thoroughly his traditions and folklore than the idea that strangers are necessarily hostile and treacherous.” Stefánsson, Friendly Arctic, 426.

18. Mason, Origins of Invention, 270: “the Eskimo, who are the most ingenious bowyers, never go to war.” Hoebel, Law of Primitive Man; Mead, “Warfare Is Only an Invention”; Mead, “Alternatives to War.” For a discussion of this stereotype, see Fienup-Riordan, “Yup’ik Warfare and the Myth of the Peaceful Eskimo,” xv.

19. Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled, 48, 49.

20. Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled, 44–49.

21. Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled, 37. In the late sixteenth century, bows and arrows were still in use on English warships.

22. Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled, 46; Fienup-Riordan, Eskimo Essays, 156, 157.

23. Papers of Committee of House of Commons, 1749: Appendix to Report from the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the State and Condition of the Countries adjoining to Hudson’s Bay and of the Trade Carried on There, 1749, 246, HBCA.

24. Louis Bird, 0016—“Guns and Bows II,” 1, 16.

25. Brown and Brightman, Orders of the Dreamed, 78.

26. Hearne, Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort, 97, 114, 115, 321, 322.

27. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0077—“Inuit Expedition, Skirmishes.”

28. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0077—“Inuit Expedition, Skirmishes.” Louis Bird recorded this account from a person he referred to as “Elder K,” who had obtained it from his grandfather.

29. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0077—“Inuit Expedition, Skirmishes.”

30. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0077—“Inuit Expedition, Skirmishes.”

31. Slobodin, “Eastern Kutchin Warfare,” 84; D. E. Jones, Native North American Armor, Shields, and Fortifications, 89.

32. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0077—“Inuit Expedition, Skirmishes.” The Hudson’s Bay Company Archives have a historic photograph of a Subarctic Aboriginal man with a native-made crossbow of wood (“Man with bow,” 1987/363-I-83/30, HBCA). The Laubins also reported the use of crossbows by Canadian Aboriginal people. American Indian Archery, 158.

33. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0077—“Inuit Expedition, Skirmishes.”

34. Bishop and Lytwyn, “Cree-Inuit Warfare in the Hudson Bay Region,” 33.

35. Chappell, Narrative of a Voyage to Hudson’s Bay, 110, 111.

36. Hearne, Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort, 154.

37. Slobodin, “Eastern Kutchin Warfare,” 84; D. E. Jones, Native North American Armor, Shields, and Fortifications, 89.

38. Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled, 47.

39. Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled, 89.

40. Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled, 47; letter from James Lockhart at Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake to Robert Kennicott, December 5, 1864, Box 1 (personal files of Jennifer S. H. Brown, University of Winnipeg), Hudson’s Bay Company Collection, Smithsonian Institution Archives, describing the captivity and subsequent escape of a Yellowknife woman among Inuit people. Warfare and captivity experiences had been part of Déné people’s lives for so long that the motif of the “Stolen Woman” had become deeply embedded in their oral traditions and legends. For an example, see Petitot, Traditions Indiennes du Canada Nord-Ouest (Paris, 1886), 413–23. A captive Déné woman known as “Thanadelthur” is credited with a crucial role in James Knight’s attempts to bring about peace between Cree and Chipewyan peoples in 1715–16, and has been popularized by numerous writers. For an overview, see McCormack, “The Many Faces of Thanadelthur.”

41. Lytwyn, Muskekowuck Athinuwick, 65–68, 70, 73; Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 174.

42. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 247.

43. Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled, 45, 46, 47.

44. Robson, Account of Six Years Residence, 62.

45. Robson, Account of Six Years Residence, 63, 64.

46. Robson, Account of Six Years Residence, 63, 64.

47. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0077—“Inuit Expedition, Skirmishes.”

48. Richardson, Arctic Searching Expedition, 1:213, http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/bibliography/266.html

49. York Factory Post Journal, August 1, 1718, reel 1M154, B.239/a/4, HBCA; Smyth, “Niitsitapi Trade,” 308.

50. Louis Bird, personal communication, Winnipeg, April 2003.

51. Bishop and Lytwyn, “Cree-Inuit Warfare in the Hudson Bay Region,” 38, 39.

52. Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled, 59; Antoine Silvy, “Journal of Father Silvy from Belle Isle to Port Nelson,” in Tyrrell, Documents Relating to the Early History of Hudson Bay, 79. A blunderbuss was a short musket of wide bore and flaring muzzle, used to scatter shot at close range. They were used from the seventeenth century to the 1840s and were variously equipped with flintlocks, wheel locks, or percussion locks. They could fire almost any hard object from birdseed to pebbles or grapeshot. This gave the weapon great versatility in the field, where some sort of hard object would probably be at hand even if proper musket balls were in short supply. Such weapons could be especially devastating in fighting at close quarters in confined spaces aboard ship.

53. Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 236.

54. Bishop and Lytwyn, “Cree-Inuit Warfare in the Hudson Bay Region,” 41.

10. Archery and Firearms in Northern Plains Combat

1. Willey, Prehistoric Warfare on the Great Plains.

2. Moreau, ed., Writings of David Thompson, 1:xii, xvii. David Thompson composed his narrative between 1845 and 1850, when he was in his late seventies, living in Montreal, more than sixty years after his first stay with the Pikanis. William Moreau commented on this time gap: “Thompson’s story had been shaping itself for decades, evolving in its author’s mind. This quality lends the work a mature and wide perspective, but also reminds us that the Travels does not necessarily present what was; rather, it presents what was remembered.” However, at least in his descriptions of material culture, when compared to surviving artefacts and similar descriptions from Aboriginal oral traditions, Thompson’s accounts were often very accurate.

3. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative.

4. For a description of such armor, albeit from the Southern Plains, see Fletcher and LaFlesche, Omaha Tribe, 79: “To protect their horses from arrows they [the Padoucas] made a covering for the horses’ breasts and sides, to prevent an arrow taking effect at ordinary range. This covering (armor) was made of thick rawhide cut in round pieces and made to overlap like the scales of a fish. Over the surface was sand held on by glue. This covering made the Ponca arrows glance off and do no damage. The Padoucas protected their own bodies by long shields of rawhide. Some of them had breastplates made like those on their horses.” See also Gelo and Jones, “Photographic Evidence for Southern Plains Armor.”

5. Cocking, Adventurer from Hudson Bay, 110, 111.

6. Secoy, Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains, 16; Lewis and Clark, Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1806, 3:21.

7. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 306.

8. Wissler, Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians (1910), 163.

9. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 241.

10. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 241.

11. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 242.

12. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 241.

13. John C. Ewers suggested that the shields were made from rawhide, because later shields in the Plains were made from this material. Ewers, The Blackfeet, 16; Vermander, “Use of the Bow by Our Indians,” http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/3/indianbow.shtml. Joseph Vermander, who was a Franco-Manitoban of Flemish origin, was inspector for the Winnipeg Postal Service. Active as a local historian and archery enthusiast, he passed away in 1974.

14. Keyser, “Plains Indian War Complex and the Rock Art of Writing-on-Stone,” 43, and “Lexicon for Historic Plains Indian Rock Art,” 46, 47; North Cave Hills, South Dakota; Pictograph Cave and Joliet in Montana.

15. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 33, February 28, 1793, HBCA.

16. Accounts by outside observers from the 1830s, such as George Catlin and Prince Maximilian, and Aboriginal accounts from the second half of the nineteenth century emphasized individual warrior’s actions, small group raids, stealth, and speed as prominent in offensive warfare, while rifle pits and earthworks were important in defense.

17. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 241, 242; The Blood Indian Scalp Roller, born approximately in 1808, told R. N. Wilson in 1893 about the origin of horses: “When I was young there were many horses among our people but not the great number that there were later. My father never saw the time when there were no horses but my father’s mother, who was a very old woman, told me that she remembered when there were no horses. She said that the first horses were procured from the Pegans (Piegans) who got them from the Mountain Indians.” R. N. Wilson Papers, Appendix 2, 334, Glenbow Archives.

18. Keyser, “Plains Indian War Complex,” 43.

19. Keyser, “Lexicon for Historic Plains Indian Rock Art,” 46, 47; North Cave Hills, South Dakota. There, however, the defeated persons are depicted as larger, not smaller, than their mounted conquerors, and they do not bear any arms. At least one of them may depict a woman, not a man.

20. Calloway, “Snake Frontiers,” 84, 85.

21. Secoy, Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains, 14; Cowdrey et al., American Indian Horse Masks, 1–4.

22. Chavez, “Segesser Hide Paintings,” 96 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/413. While stationed in the Mexican province of Sonora, the Jesuit priest Father Philipp von Segesser von Brunegg sent three hide paintings to his brother in Switzerland in 1758. The origin and the identity of the artist are unclear.

23. Brooks, Captives and Cousins, 121, 122. See also Hotz, Indian Skin Paintings, plates 5 and 6.

24. Catlin, North American Indians, 27.

25. Balfour, “Structure and Affinities of the Composite Bow,” 225, 226; Fletcher and Flesche, Omaha Tribe, 452; Hamm, “Plains Indian Bows,” 3:118, 119.

26. Hamilton, Native American Bows, 102.

27. Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, 3–19; R. White, “Winning of the West,” 321.

28. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 241. In Thompson’s rendering of the account, Saukamappee described a battle fought between the “Snake Indians” (Eastern Shoshone) on one side and combined Cree, Assiniboine, and Pikani-Blackfoot forces on the other. This battle probably occurred around 1730, before any of these Aboriginal groups had taken to commonly using horses in warfare. While Saukamapee described the bows of the Cree (and probably of the other allies as well) as man-sized and being made of “larch” (tamarack), the bows of the Snake were said to have been short and of a better-quality wood while their backs were covered with bison sinew.

29. Wallace and Hoebel, The Comanches, 17, 18; Ewers, The Blackfeet, 37, 211, and Indians of Texas in 1830, 32; Hamm, “Plains Indian Bows,” 132, 133. Prince Maximilian noted about the height of Blackfoot men he observed in 1833: “One of the Blood Indians measured six feet eleven inches English measure. Several Piekanns were nearly six feet, French measure. The Big Soldier was five feet ten inches two lines, French measure.” Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 22:97. Steckel and Prince presented somewhat different data for average Comanche and Blackfoot body height for males (Comanche males 167 to 168 centimeters; Blackfoot males 171 to 172 centimeters). Even though these figures are lower than those presented by Wallace and Hoebel and by Ewers, they still show a considerably lower average body height among Comanche men, compared to Blackfoot/Blackfeet men. Steckel and Prince, “Tallest in the World,” table 1.

30. Wissler, Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians (1910), 155, 156.

31. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 241.

32. J. A. Hanson, Spirits in the Art, 23, 258; Taylor, Native American Weapons, 40; Phillips, Patterns of Power, 44, 82.

33. Graham, Andrew Graham’s Observations, 147.

34. Schulze-Thulin, Indianer der Prärien und Plains, 72, 73; Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 22:103.

35. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 242.

36. Taylor, Native American Weapons, 8, 9, 17; Hail, Hau Kola!, 157–66.

37. Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms.” “Some [Cheyenne] men declare that the best bowmen could send an arrow five hundred yards, and old men say that in days of the old smoothbore flintlock trade guns the [mountain sheep horn] bow at long-distance shooting was a more effective weapon than the gun.” Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:176, 177.

38. Maurice Doll, curator of firearms at the Provincial Museum of Alberta in Edmonton, personal communication and demonstration, August 2002.

39. Taillon, “Understanding Old Bows.” Reginald Laubin related the example of the Lakota One Bull. During a visit to One Bull’s family in Little Eagle, South Dakota, on the Standing Rock Reservation, Laubin gave his sporting bows and arrows to One Bull to try out. One Bull shot six arrows at a cardboard box about a foot square at a distance of approximately 30 yards. On the first try he missed the box but placed all six arrows in a tight cluster. When he tried again he placed all six arrows in the box. According to Laubin, One Bull was over ninety years old at the time and hadn’t used a bow and arrow in approximately sixty years. Furthermore, Laubin’s bow and arrows were much longer than traditional Lakota bows and arrows. Nonetheless, One Bull managed to hit the target, even though Laubin’s archery gear was unfamiliar to him and therefore more difficult to use. Furthermore, his placement of all six arrows in tight clusters indicates a consistent shooting technique. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 4, 5.

40. G. L. Wilson, The Horse and the Dog in Hidatsa Culture, 168, 169.

41. Malone, Skulking Way of War, 62–66.

42. Henry, Journal of Alexander Henry the Younger, 1:30–33, Sunday, August 24, and Tuesday, August 26, 1800.

43. Fidler, February 22, 1816, Brandon House Post Journal, F19d, 1M17, B.22/a/19, HBCA.

44. Burpee, Journal of Anthony Henday, 38, December 30, 1754.

45. Cowie, Company of Adventurers, 197.

46. Pyszczyk, “Use of Fur Trade Goods by the Plains Indians,” 58; Milloy, Plains Cree, 75, 110.

47. Laubin and Laubin, American Indian Archery, 138.

48. Kalaus, “Schiessversuche mit historischen Feurwaffen,” 44, 68, 69.

49. G. L. Wilson, “Hidatsa-Mandan Report, 1911,” 10:5, MHS. The intended use of asymmetrical bows as clubs may have been a reason for the much maligned double-curved deflex bow design of many Mandan and Hidatsa bows. Wood that already bends toward the bowstring can more easily be bent during the tillering process. This means that draw weight and draw length being equal, bows could be made more massive and heavier, which facilitated their use as clubs. At the same time, because of their more robust construction, they were less likely to break.

50. Taylor, Buckskin and Buffalo, 48, 49; Mallery, Picture Writing of the American Indians, 1:380, 2:562. Peabody Museum, Harvard University, cat. no. 99–12–10/53121, Mandan bison robe collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition, 1804–5, showing Mandan and Hidatsa people in combat with Arikara and Lakota warriors.

51. Mason, North American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 17.

52. Linderman, Plenty Coups, 102, 103, 210, 211; Nabokov, Two Leggings, 35.

53. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 35, 36; Allely and Hamm, Encyclopedia of Native American Bows, Arrows, and Quivers, 2:141, 143. Allely and Hamm show two Blackfoot bows from the University of Pennsylvania Museum (Philadelphia) and from the American Museum of Natural History (New York City) with strands or braids of human hair attached to the upper tips of each bow.

54. The North West Company fur trader and explorer Alexander Henry the Younger participated in a Native bison hunt, with hunters using their firearms from ambush positions to direct a massed volley of musket fire at a small bison herd.

Before I left this place upwards of twenty men had joined us by land on foot, having sent their families on by water. We now armed ourselves, by laying wait for the Buffaloes when they came down to drink. We lay close under the bank until the poor brutes would come to within about 10 yards of us when on a sudden we would fire a whole discharge of 25 Guns at them, killing and wounding many, the tongues of which we only took. At one time a single Bull only made his appearance. The Indians [Ojibwa] observed that we should all fire at him at the same time, to have the satisfaction, as they said, of killing him stone dead. The poor beast advanced until he was not more than 6 or 8 paces from us when the yell was given and all hands let fire. But instead of falling he sett [sic] off upon a round gallop, when all hands pursued him and it was not until several discharges was [sic] fired, that he was brought to the ground. The Indians appeared to enjoy this kind of sport highly.

Similar tactics may have been used in warfare, too. Henry, Journal of Alexander Henry the Younger, 1:35, Wednesday, August 27, 1800.

55. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 139.

56. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 2:54, 55.

57. Szabo, “Artistic License and Plains Representational Imagery,” 85, 89.

58. Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions, 1:150–54.

59. Catlin, North American Indians, 328–30, letter 42, illustration 37.

60. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 125.

61. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 91.

62. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 241, 242.

63. “William Pink Inland Journal,” April 1, 1770, HBCA; Smyth, “Niitsitapi Trade,” 145.

64. Smyth, “Niitsitapi Trade,” 150, “Matthew Cocking’s Inland Journal,” September 1772, HBCA.

65. Manchester House Post Journal, 35, March 19, 1787, 1M 73, B121/a/1, HBCA.

66. “The Principal part of what ammunition these Indians [Pikani] trade use for war & as a principal article to barter with other nations they are at peace with for Horses, etc.” Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 14, December 25, 1792, HBCA.

67. Brandon House Post Journal, March 7, 1818, F37d, B.22/a/20, HBCA.

68. Gilman and Schneider, Way to Independence, 76.

69. Nisbet, Sources of the River, 105; Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 277–78.

70. “They [the North West Company envoys to the Mandan] came past the East end of the Turtle Mountain on purpose to avoid meeting with any Stone Indians that might intentionally be in the way to plunder our people, as they don’t like us to carry ammunition &c to their Enemies" [my emphasis]; Brandon House Post Journal, December 15, 1817, F2, B.22/a/20, F24–25d-25, HBCA.

71. “How Bloods First Got Guns,” March 3, 1911, David C. Duval Papers, 1904–1911, 3:621–26, M4376, Glenbow Archives. Duval wrote: “I got this information from Three Bears. P.S. Blood Heavy Runner, gave the same story about when the Bloods first got guns,” 625, 626. Even though the term “rifles” appears here, it may probably have been in reference to smoothbore muzzle-loading flintlock trade guns. The section on Cree people giving guns to the Blood and teaching them their use is in contrast to later historic developments.

72. Fidler, “Journals of Exploration and Survey, 1789–1806, Number Three—July 25th 1792 to July 4th 1793: A Journal from York Fort Hudson’s Bay, to Cumberland Hudson, Manchester & Buckingham Houses,” F93, 4M 103, E.3/1, HBCA.

73. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey over Land,” 31, February 14, 1793, HBCA. With few exceptions, it was a fundamental policy of Spanish trade to prohibit the sale of firearms to Native peoples. Schilz and Worcester, “Spread of Firearms among the Indian Tribes,” 2, 4, 5.

74. Hudson House Post Journal, December 26, 1785, reel 1M63, B.87/a/8, HBCA.

75. Burpee, Journal and Letters of La Verendrye, 422. In early 1743 La Verendrye’s sons Francois and Chevalier (Louis-Joseph?) accompanied a large war party of the Gens de l’Arc or Bowmen (possibly Pawnee-Arikara) going to war against the Gens du Serpent (Kiowa? Comanche?). According to this account, on the return journey, after an unsuccessful attempt to make contact with the enemy and after a subsequent disorderly retreat, La Verendrye’s sons fired their guns at a group of enemy warriors who had readied themselves to attack the French and their hosts. The attackers retreated hastily after a few shots. One of La Verendrye’s sons commented: “Seeing that they were preparing to attack us, I judged it well to let fly a few shots at them which caused them to retreat in a hurry, fire-arms enjoying a high respect among these tribes, who do not make use of them, and whose shields cannot protect them against bullets [my emphasis].”

76. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 332.

77. King, First Peoples, First Contacts, 264.

78. Bancroft-Hunt, Warriors, 219. Bancroft-Hunt credited the Morning Star Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as the source for this image. However, the original provenance of this piece of ledger art could not be determined. One of the Pawnee warriors is depicted placing the muzzle of his gun on a forked stick while aiming, probably to achieve greater accuracy. Two Leggings related that he usually carried such a stick with his flintlock gun and on at least one occasion was able to kill a bison cow with one shot, even though the animal was barely within range. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 67.

79. Book of Arikara drawings by anonymous artist, ca. 1875, Smithsonian Institution, Manuscript 154064B: “Anonymous Arikara drawing of battle between two lines of warriors, ca. 1875,” NAA INV 08510630, http://siris-archives.si.edu.

80. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 50, 51.

81. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 269.

82. Smyth, “Niitsitapi Trade,” 257. Smyth correlates the documentary evidence from fur traders to a Pikani winter count. Raczka, Winter Count, 37. This was apparently part of a Pikani initiative to stop the arms trade between European fur trade companies and the Pikani’s western neighbors and enemies, such as the Salish (Flathead) and Kutenai.

83. “Isle a la Cross Journal,” February 9, 1811, Ile-a-la Crosse Post Journal, 1811, F24–25d, 1M63, B.89/a/2, HBCA. Aboriginal people in the western Great Lakes used their firearms in combat in similar ways. See Kinietz, Indians of the Western Great Lakes, 254–55.

84. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 305, 306; “Edmonton-Saskatchewan Journal 1810/1811—by James Bird,” October 31, 1810, Edmonton House Post Journal, 1M49, B.60/a/9, HBCA.

85. Raczka, Winter Count, 37.

86. Henry, Journal of Alexander Henry the Younger 2:524–27, Wednesday, February 13, 1811.

87. “Edmonton-Saskatchewan Journal 1810/1811—by James Bird.”

88. Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk, September 12, 1938, 165, file 6, Hanks Fonds, M8458, Glenbow Archives.

89. L. J. Dempsey, Blackfoot War Art, 84, 85.

90. Hungry Wolf, Ways of My Grandmothers, 68. For a discussion of women engaging in pursuits considered masculine among the Blackfoot, see O. Lewis, “Manly-Hearted Women.”

91. Bamforth, “Indigenous People, Indigenous Violence,” 100, 101.

92. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:146–55.

93. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:152. Maximilian’s account is unclear on the number of casualties among the Piegan, but they likely suffered higher casualties than their attackers, who were able to exploit the element of surprise in their initial attack.

94. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 23:147. Even though Maximilian stated Assiniboine/Cree casualties of three killed and twenty severely wounded, this passage seems to suggest a much higher, but unspecified, number of casualties.

95. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 18.

96. Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das Innere Nordamerika, Vignettenband, Vignettes 19, 20; Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians, 1:150–54.

97. Fidler, “Journal of a Journey,” 16, December 30, 1792, HBCA.

98. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 22:103 and 22:370, 371, June 23, 1833.

99. Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk, September 12, 1938, 172, file 6, Hanks Fonds, M8458, Glenbow Archives.

100. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 32, 40, 52, 138; 91, 125.

101. C. E. Hanson, Northwest Gun, 51; see also Annals of Wyoming, “High-Backed Wolf” and “Cheyenne Indians,” http://wyshs.org/index_h.htm.

102. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 40–44.

103. J. A. Hanson, Spirits in the Art, 29.

104. Nabokov, Two Leggings, 40–44.

105. Ball, Indeh, an Apache Odyssey, 115.

106. R. E. Wilson, Frank J. North, 160–61.

107. “Raw Eater’s Story Robe,” Glenbow Museum, www.glenbow.org.

108. “The War Experiences of My Grandfather,” pictographic war record, Wolf Collar Fonds, Glenbow Archives. Paul Wolf Collar, 1901–1985, provided this information to Hugh A. Dempsey in 1961 with Adolphus Weasel Child interpreting. Paul Wolf Collar’s grandfather (Maguigoxkinas) was born in 1839 and died in 1928.

109. Joe Little Chief Fonds, f. 2, 1, 2, M4394, Glenbow Archives. White eagle was born in 1842. Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk, September 12, 1938, 189, 190, file 6, Hanks Fonds, M8458, Glenbow Archives; “Eagle Rib’s War Deeds,” 1938, 50, Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) Eagle Ribs via Mary Royal (interpreter), Hanks Fonds, Box 1, file 1, M8458, Glenbow Archives. Eagle Ribs was sixty-eight years old at the time of the interview in 1938. He spoke about the war deeds of an older relative (his father?) who died in 1910 when he was in his eighties (M8458, file 2, 72).

110. Joe Little Chief Fonds, f. 2, 5, 6, 14, M4394, Glenbow Archives. Capture of guns from Sioux, “Snake,” and Kutenai frequently mentioned.

111. Joe Little Chief Fonds, f. 2, 8, 9, M4394, Glenbow Archives.

112. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 241.

113. Calloway, Our Hearts Fell to the Ground, 42; Calloway, “Snake Frontiers,” 88–92; Secoy, Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains, 33–38, 42; Milloy, Plains Cree, 83–99.

114. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 245.

115. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 242.

116. Eagle Rib’s War Deeds, 1938, 51, Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) Eagle Ribs via Mary Royal (interpreter), Box 1, file 1, Hanks Fonds, M8458, Glenbow Archives.

117. Burpee, Journal and Letters of La Verendrye, Report of La Verendrye, October 31, 1744, 451, 452; 135n2.

118. Burpee, Journal of Anthony Henday, 41, February 28, 1755, March 1, 1755.

119. Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 171, 181, 192, 228n134.

120. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 247.

121. R. N. Wilson Papers, 1:123, Glenbow Archives.

122. Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk, September 12, 1938, 181, 182, Hanks Fonds, file 6, M8458, Glenbow Archives.

123. “Eagle Rib’s War Deeds,” 1938, 44, 45, Pitoxpikis (Sleigh) Eagle Ribs via Mary Royal (interpreter), Hanks Fonds, Box 1, file 1, M8458, Glenbow Archives.

124. For access to bison as a motivation for hostilities between Blackfoot and Cree, see Milloy, Plains Cree, 104–10.

125. For revenge as a motivation for small-scale war parties, but also for large-scale revenge raids involving hundreds of warriors, see Crooked Meat Strings via Mary White Elk, September 12, 1938, 164–71, Hanks Fonds, file 6, M8458, Glenbow Archives.

126. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 241.

127. Brandon House Post Journal, January 26, 1816, F15–16d, 1M17, B.22/a/19, HBCA.

128. For one of the more playful accounts of conflict between the Plains Cree and the Blackfoot in the 1880s, see Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, 45–47.

129. Grinnell, Cheyenne Indians, 1:119.

130. Linderman, Plenty Coups, 106, 107.

11. Survival and Adaptation

1. Ewers, The Blackfeet, 70.

2. Maximilian, Travels in the Interior of North America, 22:389; Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nordamerika, Vignettenband, Vignette 19, “Blackfoot-Indianer zu Pferd,” Vignette 20, “Mex-ke-mau-as-tan, ein Chef der Grosventres des Prairies”; Catlin, North American Indians, 319, letter 41, illustration 36: “Camanchees meeting Colonel Dodge and the Dragoons.”

3. Milloy, Plains Cree, 75, 110; Gladstone, William Gladstone’s Diary, July 28, 1859.

4. Gilman and Schneider, Way to Independence, 132.

5. L. J. Dempsey, Blackfoot War Art, 14.

6. L. J. Dempsey, Blackfoot War Art, 10, 11.

7. Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 86–161.

8. Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, 87; Pyszczyk, “Use of Fur Trade Goods by the Plains Indians,” 52.

9. Glover, David Thompson’s Narrative, 277.

10. C. M. White, David Thompson’s Journals, 210, 211, citing Cox, Adventures on the Columbia River, 167, 168.

11. Wallace and Hoebel, The Comanches, 299; Grinnell, Fighting Cheyennes, 80–92.

12. Wallace and Hoebel, The Comanches, 325, 326.

13. Townsend, “Firearms Against Native Arms,” 7, 8, 9.

14. Lytwyn, “Hudson Bay Lowland Cree in the Fur Trade,” 57, 58.

15. Morantz, “Old Texts, Old Questions,” 179, 180.

16. Morantz, “Old Texts, Old Questions,” 178.

17. Lytwyn, “Hudson Bay Lowland Cree,” ii.

18. Hearne, Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort, 156, 157.

19. Burpee, Journal of Anthony Henday, September 15, 1754, 27.

20. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows.”

21. Tanner, Bringing Home Animals, 60.

22. Dzeniskevich, “Ecology and Chronology of Athapascan Settlement,” 1:124–25.

23. Stefánsson, My Life with the Eskimo, 503.

24. J. A. P. Wilson, “Material Culture Correlates of the Athapaskan Expansion,” 239, 240.

25. Benson, “Northern Athapaskan Bow,” 40.

26. Catlin, North American Indians, 83, letter 12; Linderman, Plenty Coups, 80–82.

27. Louis Bird, Our Voices, 0014—“Guns and Bows.”

28. The Manitoba Museum holds a photograph showing three Northern Ojibwa or Cree women using bows and bird blunt arrows. The picture was probably taken in the area of The Pas around 1925 in northern Manitoba by the schoolteacher Sam Waller (photo negative number 6515). Caution needs to be taken with a too literal reading of this image, as Sam Waller may have exerted considerable influence on the arrangement of persons and accoutrements in it. However, the Ojibwa linguist Roger Roulette mentioned to me that northern Ojibwa women had owned, used, and even made their own archery gear, at least as far back as the late 1800s. Roger Roulette, personal communication, Fall 2000.

29. Burgesse, “Montagnais Cross-Bows.” In a travel report published in 1847, John Birkbeck Nevins stated that by 1842 Aboriginal peoples on Hudson Bay had almost lost the use of the bow and arrow. Nevins, Narrative of Two Voyages to Hudson Bay, 52, 91.

30. Burpee, Journal of Anthony Henday, 37, December 15, 1754; 43, April 17, 1755; 43, April 24, 1755.

31. Linderman, Plenty Coups, 17, 18.

32. Government of Canada, Sessional Papers, Dominion of Canada, Department of the Interior, Indian Affairs Report 1905 for 1904, J. L. Le Vern, principal, NWT, Blood Boarding School, Blood Reserve, Stand-Off, Alberta, July 8, 1904, 332; Sessional Papers, Dominion of Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the year ended March 31, 1910, Ottawa 1910, Reports of Inspectors and Principals of Boarding and Industrial Schools, Report of the Rev. J. M. Salaun, Principal of the Roman Catholic boarding school, Blood Reserve, Alberta, for the year ended March 31, 1910, 477; Sessional Papers, Dominion of Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the year ended March 31, 1910, Ottawa 1910, Reports of Inspectors and Principals of Boarding and Industrial Schools, Report of the Rev. J. L. Levern, OMI, Principal of the boarding school (Crowfoot), Blackfoot Reserve, Alberta, for the year ended March 31, 1910, 478.

33. Government of Canada, Sessional Papers, Dominion of Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the year ended March 31, 1910, Ottawa 1910, Reports of Inspectors and Principals of Boarding and Industrial Schools, Report of the Rev. Ernest O. Duke, Principal of the boarding school, Moose Factory, James Bay, Ontario, for the year ended March 31, 1910, 429.

34. Government of Canada, Sessional Papers, Dominion of Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the year ended March 31, 1910, Ottawa 1910, Reports of Inspectors and Principals of Boarding and Industrial Schools, Report of the Rev. S. Perreault, OMI, Principal of the boarding school, Cowessess Reserve, Crooked Lakes Agency, Saskatchewan, for the year ended March 31, 1910, 454.

35. Government of Canada, Sessional Papers of the Government of Canada, Department of Indian Affairs Reports, J. L. Le Vern, Principal, NWT, Blood Boarding School, Blood Reserve, Stand-Off, Alberta, July 8, 1904, 332; Report of Rev. S. R. McVitty, Principal of the Mount Elgin Institute, Muncey, Ontario, for 1910, 421; Report of Rev. Ernest O. Duke, Principal of the Boarding School at Moose Fort, James Bay, Ontario, for 1910, 429. Here Cree fathers supplied archery gear to their sons at school or the boys made their own. Report of Boarding School Principal Rev. P. R. Soanes at Chapleau, Ontario, for 1910, 430; Report of Rev. G. Leonard, OMI, Principal of the Boarding School at Sandy Bay, Manitoba, for 1910, 442; Report of Rev. S. Perreault, OMI, Principal of the Boarding School on Cowessess Reserve, Crooked Lakes Agency, Saskatchewan, for 1910, 454. Here Aboriginal boys made their own archery gear. Report of Rev. J. M. Salaun, Blood Reserve, Alberta, for 1910, 477; Report of Rev. J. L. Levern, Crowfoot Boarding School, Blackfoot Reserve, Alberta, for 1910, 478; Sister M. McDougall, Fort Chipewyan Boarding School, Alberta, for 1910, 485; Report of Rev. P. Joussard, OMI, Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta, for 1910, 486; Report of the Rev. J. Calais, OMI, Sturgeon Lake, Alberta, for 1910, 487; Report of Rev. Sister McQuillan, Fort Resolution, Great Slave Lake, for 1910, 490.

36. For a discussion of Euro-American appropriations of Aboriginal cultural elements, see Deloria, Playing Indian.

37. Government of Canada, Sessional Paper No. 27, Department of Indian Affairs Report 1905 for 1904, Indian Agent J. B. McDougall, Walpole Island Agency, Pottawattamies and Chippewas, Walpole Island, September 8, 1904, 41.

38. Szabo, Howling Wolf and the History of Ledger Art, 76; Pratt Papers, Western American Collections, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

39. Manitoba Museum, cat. no. H-4.43–19a and-19b, arrows, originally part of an archery set consisting of eleven arrows, bow, bow case and quiver, all now missing except these two arrows. Donated in 1933 by Philip H. Godsell who purchased the archery set from Calf Child on the Blackfoot Reserve, Gleichen, Alberta.

40. Copway, Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation, 26–30, http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/PageView/59357/0041?id=56fe203cbcaaddae (accessed July 2008).

41. Lindstrom, “Native American Responses to the Wanamaker Expedition,” 212, 213; “Red Indian’s Statue: Continent’s First Owner Will Be Honored in American Style,” New York Times, March 2, 1913, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9400EFD6163FE633A25751C0A9659C946296D6CF.

42. Massey, “Tradition Begins with the Past,” 2:13.