- Joined
- Jun 24, 2003
- Messages
- 473
A wide variety of sources, many read a long time ago, and many of those were personal observations by witnesses at the time.
People have to take into account a few things about that era vs now.
First of all, these guys had no rescue or EMS coming. They were often a month or more from the nearest non-Indians and easy resupply of manufactured goods, and so many of them that were not part of a trapping company often hooked up to a local Indian tribe, often marrying into them.
They covered vast distances and usually had transportation that they could ride, and often also a pack animal with supplies, trade goods, and a means to haul out their furs that they would sell for more trade goods and supplies.
The game was a bit different back then also. Nowadays your average American hunter kills a huge amount of deer, mostly whitetail. Right now there is an estimate 2x the number of deer in the USA as there was in the days of the early frontier. Back then there were huge number of bison, and the frontiersmen also killed a lot of other game like elk.
Today that is more reflected in those living on the modern frontier in the north, such as in parts of Alaska, Canada, etc. The game is often much bigger than ordinary deer, such as caribou and moose. It's often said, even nowadays, that the further north you go, the bigger the knives get.
The gear of the early frontiersmen was as individual as they were. There was no 'survival orthodoxy' such I see brewing nowadays with popular books and TV shows by the 'gurus'. There were, however, a of of commonalities that were seen by the 2/3 that managed to survive their first couple of seasons. These were simply dictated by the realities of the environment and the other people they had to deal with.
What the early frontiersman tended to carry was at least one largish knife, often of about 9" in blade length, sometimes a bit longer or shorter, plus at least a 'patch knife'. The patch knife was a small, general purpose utility knife that was also used to cut the patches for their muzzleloading rifles.
There was usually a plethora of other knives, often carried in the gear on one of the horses, and carrying a skinning knife on one's person was common. Often a hatchet was also carried. Other knives and hatchets were sought after trade good used in barter with the various Indians that they dealt with.
Sometimes the main large knife on a man's person was a skinning knife, and those tended to be about 6" to 7" in blade length. These were also used against humans as much as the butcher knives were.
People should keep in mind that these guys butchered and skinned a LOT of animals and cleaned and dried a LOT of hides on an regular basis. This was both for commerce and the reality of life far from sources of manufactured goods. Some hides were for personal use, some were for trading. Life was rough when you lived like that 24/7/365.
Now, they could tell a greenhorn to the trans-Mississippi West not just by the size of his primary knife, but also by the number of knives he had, such as if he was only carrying only one knife on him. They could also gauge his experience level in dealing with the trans-Mississippi West if he was carrying a smaller bore rifle, such as one of the .36 calibers that were common in the American East. The preferred rifle for the West generally had a bore of .50 to .58, and many of the trade muskets in the hands of the Indians were larger in bore diameter, such as .62 caliber (Indians weapons were generally smoothbore, not rifled).
All of that didn't mean he was a total greenhorn to the woods, but probably lacking in experience in dealing with the trans-Mississippi West were things were a lot different than back East in places like New York, or even Tennessee and Kentucky.
The Indians themselves, the full time 'bushcraft' society, before the trade with the Whites for metal implements began, tended to follow the manufacturing limits of the blade materials available to them (flint, obsidian, stone, etc). This mean knives with shorter blades, short to medium axes, and war clubs that were deadly but could take a lot of hard use. On average, in the past, primitive human societies around the world have tended to lose an average of 1% of their population per year due to warfare, more in some years, less in others, and the Indians were no exception.
Needless to say, the Indians very, very rapidly acquired a taste for manufactured goods, metal implements, and firearms. Knives, hatchets, iron cook pots, blankets, and muskets were tops on their shopping list. The Indians acquired a taste for guns so fast that when Lewis and Clark arrived in the far west and met the Nez Perce, most of the Nez Perce had never seen a White man before, but every Nez Perce man had a musket, usually acquired in trade with other Indians who prized Nez Perce horses.
The move towards smaller knives was more of something in the Eastern US that moved west with the closing of the wild frontier and is as much a product of people's aesthetics and the writings of popular 20th Century outdoor writers as much as anything else.
Most people nowadays don't actually 'live it' but either journey into the wilderness like an astronaut living on packed in supplies or they are practicing extreme 'survival' which often means simply holding death away for as long as possible until rescue or civilization can be reached.
There is, however, a small hardcore bunch that practice living it, and many of them do it 'primitive'. What is interesting is that some of the most extreme 'live it' types, such as the McPherson's ("Naked Into The Wilderness") who now teach courses to the US Army Special Forces, advocate learning sustainable, long term wilderness living skills without the use of ANY manufactured metal implements. When they titled their book series 'Naked Into The Wilderness', they obviously meant just that.
Nowadays, you still encounter larger knives in the hands of many in the wilderness, and the number seems to be growing. Much of the prejudice against them by 'traditionalists' from the early to middle 20th Century is fading. A lot of it nowadays just depends upon your style and your needs.
A lot of the larger knife guys involved in 'bushcraft' nowadays will carry a multi-tool and a large knife like a Busse or a Trailmaster, plus maybe a Buck 110 or something like it. Often, that will do quite well.
You'll find that many of the 'small knife' guys tend to carry a hatchet when they can and they will be in the woods doing serious 'bushcraft'. The hatchet is really another answer to the needs of the large knife, and in many ways from the modern perspective the 4" fixed blade and the hatchet in lieu of a large bush knife represents the splitting of the large bush knife into two more specialized tools.
