Tomahawk Q&A Thread

Last week the postman delivered a nice surprize from my good friend and fellow martial artist, Steve Huff, of the International Martial Study Group in Waldorf, Maryland. Inside the shipping package was a big 'Coffee-Table' size text titled INDIAN TOMAHAWKS & FRONTIERSMEN BELT AXES by Danial Hartzler and James Knowles. This is one of those self published books with no publisher's address that I've been able to find. Shaper Images did the half tone work on the pictures and Bookcrafters did the printing. It is a IV revised addition of a 1995 copyright. Anyway this 277 page text covers the following topics: Trade Axes, Spike Tomahawks, Halbred Battle Axes, Spontoon Tomahawks, Riflemen's Belt Axes, Missouri War Hatchets, Pipe Tomahwaks and Navel Boarding Axes. This thing has tons of illustrations, great capations and footnotes and really interesting is a documented list of Tomahawks Makers from the 18th & 19th century. This is really something and a very valuable source, so any of you get a chance to get one of these, GET IT!

FYI : Steve Huff is sort of my heir apparent for Tomahawk training, he teaches a hell-of-a-lot-better class than I, he's young, fast, and great instructor who has no problem adjusting his training presentations to fit both period and modern student. We have been working together for on to 5 years now and he has taken over my classes at the Lansing Western Martial Arts Convention held annually . Highly recommend anyone who is up the Waldorf Maryland way and want to train with one of the best drop Steve a line at
8794 Dream Court, La Plata, MD 20646.

Best Dwight
 
I come from a line of proud Miami Indians from the state of Indiana. In my family we have used tomahawks as weapons and for sport for hundreds of years. Each part of the tomahawk can be used as a potential weapon. The pole may be used to inflict a very nasty blow to an assiliant. Most of the tomahawks I own are handforged with hickory handles. I am looking to buy a Vietnam Era fighting tomahawk for my collection. My family and myself have been throwing tomahawks for years and have become well adapted in the use of the weapon. It can also be used as a survival tool, to chop firewood, to hunt game, and clean game. As an all around weapon as far as bladed ones go you can't get any better. :D
 
I have reseached this and have fond from a number of sources that as as early as the American revolution that this weapon has seen duty in the American military. For example Gen. Anthony Wanye used tomahawks made by the American fur trading Co. out of Fort Wanye In. in his campain to wipe out the Miami Indians living in Indiana. So this weapon has a long history and is still being used by our noble troops today. God bless America.!!!Buy a Dalton!!!! Mrnatural2006......... :p
 
Thought I'd bump this back to the top before I ship out for Boot Camp tomorrow. I don't know if the experts who have posted are still hanging around, but if not, I'm sure someone here can get ahold of 'em to answer any new questions that might be asked.

I'm gonna miss this forum till I can check it again. Take care everyone, and thanks for being a great bunch of forum friends. I've learned a lot, and hopefully I've passed a bit of it on. See you again maybe in March.
 
Good Luck Ryan. Play all the silly bootcamp head games and have fun with it.

I wouldn't trade my time in service for anything.

Send me the hawk when its convienient and I'll permanently attach the head for you. I'll pay for the shipping.

Mark
 
Was woundering if any of you guys have heard of Harold Hess ? He Apparently produced a variation of ths Vietnam tomahawk in the late 60's early 70's.
 
Can someone sticky this so it stays at the top? I think it needs to be. Just a thought.
 
I've got an interesting observation-and-question that I've been interested to bounce off of those familiar with historical tomahawk use. I'd been reading a book on mountain lion attacks (we're getting more and more reports of stalking by these animals in rural and semi-rural areas here in Arizona), and I happened to notice a couple of accounts of attacks in which a victim attempted to defend himself with a tomahawk or "hatchet"--and failed, fatally. I began keeping my eye out for mentions of tomahawks/hatchets used for defense, and ended up reading not fewer than three accounts of people trying to stop cougar attacks with tomahawks, in none of which the defense was successful. I did see a goodly number of incidents in which people successfully fought cougars with knives--but the low reported success rate with tomahawks made me think, as it seems to me to point out some of the unique weaknesses of the tomahawk. The 'hawk is obviously very impressive at imparting great cutting force in an arc a couple of feet out from the user's body--but it's a tricky thing to get that arc to intersect with the straight-in (and often high) line of attack of a pouncing predator. Also, unless you're holding it in full-choke position, your 'hawk is going to deliver suboptimal performance once you're at really close distances.

Anyway, I was interested in sharing that with the forum--and, relatedly, in soliciting from the learned experts here any accounts they had encountered of successful tomahawk defenses against cougars (or, for that matter, other four-legged attackers.)
 
Hmm... I'm glad you said something about this J.D. as I am currently in Arizona as well and enjoy hiking in our mountains. I always carry my hawk and a bowie with me for protection, and always figured I'd use the hawk before the bowie in an encounter with wildlife. I'm anxious to see if anyone can elaborate on this, especially from a historical point of view. I'm sure there must be recorded reposts of mountain men and the like encountering dangerous wildlife.
 
FSCJ: The lack (as far as I've been able to tell) of stories of people who've tried a tomahawk defense against cougars and lived to tell about it brings to mind an observation of my uncle. My uncle is an extremely experienced hunter (and professional hunting writer). One of the animals for which he has the most respect and concern is the wild boar (and his experience includes a Boone & Crockett Kodiak bear, as well as a number of the nastier African big game animals.) In describing why boars can be so dangerous, he pointed out that when one is charging straight at you, given the increasingly-downward angle at which you're shooting, there's a tendency to put your bullet through the space that the hog has just vacated. "That hypoteneuse gets shorter real quick," were his words, I believe.

I could see that phenomenon being a real issue with a tomahawk: if your target closes with you any faster than you're expecting, you're likely to end up giving it only a diminished-effectiveness blunt blow with the midshaft of the handle--which is traveling more slowly than the head end that you were counting on to have the impact.
 
Another question for the experts, while I'm here: has anyone mined Japanese/Okinawan kama technique for use with tomahawks? It seems to me that there'd be a good deal of cross-over potential. This would be especially true where people are sharpening the bottom "hook" part of the tomahawk blade--an interesting example of adaptive convergence, if ever I saw one, since that kind of makes the tomahawk into a short-bladed kama.
 
Return of the J.D. said:
Another question for the experts, while I'm here: has anyone mined Japanese/Okinawan kama technique for use with tomahawks? It seems to me that there'd be a good deal of cross-over potential. This would be especially true where people are sharpening the bottom "hook" part of the tomahawk blade--an interesting example of adaptive convergence, if ever I saw one, since that kind of makes the tomahawk into a short-bladed kama.
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You know, it's funny that you should say that. When I first started looking for printed/filmed material on training with the tomahawk as a weapon a few years ago, I considered buying a couple manuscripts on kama fighting as I saw what you see - a nice cross-over potential. In an email I sent Dwight McLemore a few days ago, I mentioned this to him and he said he hadn't even thought about it till I said something and that he had an old kama manuscript and was going to check it out. He said it made perfect sense for a tomahawk practicioner to find useful techniques in another weapon's form. An exact quote of his was,
Dwight McLemore said:
I have Obata's book on the kama, but I never thought about using it. I'll have to check it out. You know, much of it should work.
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Great minds... ;) :cool: :thumbup:

Oh, by the way, I just sent him an email to see if he's had a chance to check out his book and asked him to maybe stop by and offer some insight.
 
Thanks, FSCJ--I, too, went out and got a kama book, just to explore the possibilities. (It's sat unread on the shelf for many months, too, I've got to confess.)

Hey, on the subject of cross-over techniques, W. E. Fairbairn's book Get Tough has a very good and informative section on use of a baton or nightstick--which has some very interesting potential for tomahawk technique. Some of the techniques--e.g., abdominal rake from a low, "resting" stance--would be straightforwardly applicable with the 'hawk handle alone; but the head adds interesting twists to all of Fairbairn's maneuvers.

One thing that's interested me about baton-to-tomahawk cross-over is what the head does to the balance: now instead of having balance at roughly the center of the baton, it's right below the head of the 'hawk. I've found that a full-choked grip on the 'hawk gives you the opportunity of a surprisingly-fast, long-range strike with the opposite end of the handle. The weight of the head acts a little like the weight on the short end of a trebuchet arm, and it can help get the opposite end going very fast. It's also a bit deceptive: a very quick transition from a full-choke hold that's geared toward a cut with maximum range about 5 inches out from the user's fist--to a handle strike with a maximum range maybe 12-15 inches farther out. You'd have to be careful about the possibility of being disarmed, but it's an interesting trick to add to one's bag.
 
Mrnatural2006, Dr. Van Horne, and anyone else who might know:

Can you provide maybe one historical account of tomahawks being used in each of the various major wars since the F&I War? Perhaps using hyperlinks (when available) to link to the info page so as not to create a super long thread?

Also, of side note for others on here, here is a link to a first-hand account of a member of the Boston Tea Party who stated that they used tomahawks to assist in the splitting of chests and dumping of tea. The tomahawk was used in one of the catlyst events that lead to our independence! haha

Here's a pic from that site. Check out the bottom right corner...
teaparty4.jpg
 
Return of the J.D. said:
Hey, on the subject of cross-over techniques, W. E. Fairbairn's book Get Tough has a very good and informative section on use of a baton or nightstick--which has some very interesting potential for tomahawk technique. Some of the techniques--e.g., abdominal rake from a low, "resting" stance--would be straightforwardly applicable with the 'hawk handle alone; but the head adds interesting twists to all of Fairbairn's maneuvers.

One thing that's interested me about baton-to-tomahawk cross-over is what the head does to the balance: now instead of having balance at roughly the center of the baton, it's right below the head of the 'hawk. I've found that a full-choked grip on the 'hawk gives you the opportunity of a surprisingly-fast, long-range strike with the opposite end of the handle. The weight of the head acts a little like the weight on the short end of a trebuchet arm, and it can help get the opposite end going very fast. It's also a bit deceptive: a very quick transition from a full-choke hold that's geared toward a cut with maximum range about 5 inches out from the user's fist--to a handle strike with a maximum range maybe 12-15 inches farther out. You'd have to be careful about the possibility of being disarmed, but it's an interesting trick to add to one's bag.
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If you read my review of James Keating's first tomahawk fighting dvd, I mention that some of his moves look like they came from PR-24 techniques. I actually toyed with this idea as well, once upon a time. I found that it really did work well when used for arm-bars of different types, but usually required you to be holding the head instead of the haft.
 
I have another question about sharpening tomahawks and axes. From a historical perspective, what did the mountain men and other trail blazers use to sharpen their tomahawks? Did they wait till they came to a small town and have them shapened on a water wheel? Carry loaded leather strops? Rectangle or puck-shaped sharpening stones?
 
wyrm said:
Can someone sticky this so it stays at the top? I think it needs to be. Just a thought.
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I'd like to second this motion, if I may. There's been enough activity on this forum to knock this to the second page (out of sight, out of mind...) fairly quickly w/o even giving some of our experts a chance to answer any of the questions.

Just a thought.
 
FSCJedi said:
If you read my review of James Keating's first tomahawk fighting dvd, I mention that some of his moves look like they came from PR-24 techniques. I actually toyed with this idea as well, once upon a time. I found that it really did work well when used for arm-bars of different types, but usually required you to be holding the head instead of the haft.
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I attended a Riddle of Steel in 2001 where we spent some considerable time with the hawk, and hawk and knife. The simplicity of the weapon first struck me. Having a right angle that can trap, move and pull changed the whole dynamic. Of course those who wielded war hammers and axes before steel even made it to the New World knew all of this beforehand.

The second thing was how quick and simple the techniques were, and basically, you can look at Last of the Mohicans and The Patriot and pretty much wrap up the basics. It's a much more instinctive weapon than a sword or bayonet, requires little training, and can be transferred to hammers, hatchets, and any other pounding tool that has a right angle at the top.
 
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