Europeans and Asians had discovered metals approximately 12,000 years ago and progressed from the Stone Age and into the Bronze and then Iron age. But not so for the Native Americans who were still using stone tools and weapons when the first Europeans arrived. But why, when John Smith landed at Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims about fifteen years later, did they find Native Americans using iron axes? Those native to the Americas had no concept of smelting to produce metals for use. The answer can be attributed to first Spain and later France.
Prior to European explorers and settlers, axes and cutting tools, including war clubs, were of flint and stone similar to European Stone Age design. When the Spaniards arrived at the end of the fifteenth century, they ‘cashed in’ on a wave of destruction, conquering native cultures and taking all they found, including precious gems and stones. To ensure this new found wealth continued, they enslaved and wiped out large swathes of the population. In doing so, they also ‘contaminated’ the Americas with the European culture – many of the local population having acquired clothing, tools, and metal weapons traded by soldiers and religious followers. In 1540, Hernando DeSoto lead an expedition through the American Southeast. When he came upon native settlements, many never having had contact with a white person, he found numerous Biscayne iron axes. The axes had already filtered inland from earlier Spanish tradesmen and settlers in the Caribbean Islands and along the mainland coast – particularly Florida and South Carolina by 1526.
With the Spanish military came explorers and tradesmen. They learned quickly that knives, axes, and tools, basically anything metallic, had great value to the Native Americans. A stone age population was enthralled with the ease in which metal tools could make their life easier – from construction of wigwams, scraping hides for clothing and footwear, carving and cutting, making bowels and cooking utensils, hunting game, and in war. With a stash of ‘cheap’ and inexpensive implements and weapons on hand, Spanish tradesmen quickly discovered that they could garnish a wealth in furs and other goods highly profitable in Europe. Among these early explorers and traders’ supplies were large quantities of Biscayne iron axes. We know how important these early Biscayne axes were to the Native Americans because archeological digs often find them at burial sites.
A Biscayne axe was based on the European hatches similar in design to the early Franziska and Fokos of short handles which were worn at the belt. These Biscayne axes were mass produced entirely for trade in the New World. They weighed from one to two pounds with a round or egg-shaped eye (top of the blade into which the handle was fitted), short bit (opposite blade), no poll (opposite the blade edge) as the metal was wrapped around the handle, and, like the European models, a short handle. The iron used to make them was mined in the Bay of Biscay region of northern Spain and southwest France, hence the name. The handles were usually a simple rounded sapling or branch that fitted through the eye. They first appeared throughout southern and southwest America, but by the mid 1500’s, had made their way all along the American coast and into the interior by way of Basque and French fishing fleets visiting Newfoundland. By the late 1500’s and early 1600’s, the Biscayne axes would morph into what was known as the Hudson Bay axe or French trade axe.
The Hudson Bay axes were supplied by Frenchmen throughout the St. Lawrence region and Great Lakes and gradually filtered south into the Ohio region and beyond. Native tribes traded amongst themselves therefore many Native tribesmen acquired these hatchets or hand held axes without ever meeting a white trader. Though produced for trade with the Native Americans, these axes soon became a familiar tool for all voyageurs, trappers, hunters, and later into the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – recreational canoeists heading into the north woods. Like the Biscayne axes, they had no poll as the metal was wrapped around the handle. Later examples developed flat or spiked polls as a counterweight from the single blade and used for hammering or digging. More elaborate polls had ceremonial purposes such as the pipe axes. Hudson Bay axes were known by their approximate two-pound weight, tear drop shaped eye, later flat polls, and swept back design. These axes were usually hung on a 20 to 28-inch handle. They got their name from the Hudson’s Bay Company which dominated the fur trade in the Americas from the time of its royal charter in 1670 until the late 1800’s.
Tomahawk became the general term applied to all hand held hatches used in the Americas. In Virginia the tamahak or tamahaac, Algonquin in origin, referred to any stone cutting implement. Axe historian Alexander Chamberlin also wrote in 1902 that the Lenape called them tamachicun, in Massachusetts they were tomhegan, further north the Abanaki called them temahigan, and the Mimac, Algonquins of Nova Scotia, knew them as tomehegen – all meaning a striking instrument. By 1620, tomahawk became the common term for these axes – the French calling them cas-tetes. It mattered not if they were old Biscayne designs, Hudson Bay axes, or even those eventually made in the Americas by blacksmith settlers – whether they were traded to Native Americans or used by white settlers and later colonial militiamen, all hatchets in America came to be known as tomahawks.
Though the earliest hatches traded in the Americas had no poll, later axes eventually developed a ‘tomahawk’s poll’, which consisted of a hammer or spike. Like the European models, these hatches could also be thrown. By the mid 1700’s, some of the trade tomahawks were designed for ceremonial use and had a pipe bowl hollowed with a small-bore hole for the poll including a hollowed-out shaft to draw the smoke. Though ceremonial in design, the blade was still used for chopping and in war. Smoking a pipe was a sacred practice among the native Americans having spiritual powers. When combined with the blade, it symbolized both peace and war.
Henry J. Kaufman wrote in 1971 that Part of the problem of focusing attention on the American axe arises from the fact that the earliest ones used here were made in Europe, and certainly the first ones made here were European in character. Therefore, in the earliest colonial times, a dividing line could not be drawn between the two categories. As a matter of fact, the object was really a European-American axe. Short of some identifiable maker’s mark, the manufacturers of most of these early tomahawks remain anonymous.
Blacksmiths who settled in the New World soon began to make local hatchets and tomahawks. At the start of the trade among Native Americans, axes made in Europe exclusively for the trade in the New World dominated those weapons found among the native population. Trading companies began to bring in blacksmiths to their centers of trade or exchange to repair and sharpen axes. Because iron was readily found throughout the colonies and smelting operations began to spring up, gradually, these smiths began to make and supply their own axes or tomahawks for trade. As more and more settlers populated the eastern seaboard and moved westward and southward, it became necessary that their needs for metal tools, including their repair, had to be supplied locally.
Blacksmiths became one of if not the most important artisan for every established community. These blacksmiths soon set up operations which made and supplied the metal tools necessary for settlers to clear and farm the land, including livery and weapons for protection. Towns’ blacksmiths were active in producing specific axes for felling and cutting wood, including the local production of tomahawks used for trade and to be carried by trappers, hunters, and militiamen. In 1762, John Miller, a blacksmith working in Lancaster, PA recorded his axe production for the year: Steeled 9 axes including a Dutch broad-axe, 60 Ditching axes, upsett one axe, a post (mortising) axe from an old one, one meadow hoe, two hatchets.
Though the tomahawk was used in war, colonial settlers exagerated the ‘savage’ use of the tomahawk by Native Americans in writings both period and later in romantic novels. The St. Claire Papers was an example, making reference to Native American and loyalist attacks on the American frontier: “All along the borders, the venturesome pioneers were either killed or driven away, those surviving only remembering the momentary gleam of the tomahawk or scalping-knife, from beneath some leafy covert, as the first or only notice of the avenging foe.” Often, these attacks were conducted with the use of muskets and notably war clubs – the tomahawk was used far more infrequently than portrayed. Later, twentieth century hollywood film productions propagated the falsehood of the tomahawk’s importance during Native American attacks on settlers. The tomahawk was not solely a weapon of native tribes, but also welded by whites as the St. Claire Papers noted: scoundrels and highwaymen on the fringe of settlements “were all well-armed with guns, tomahawks, pistols and clubs.”
By the mid 1700’s and the time of the French and Indian War and later the American Revolution, many militia and riflemen corps of frontiersmen carried tomahawks attached to their belts. So too did British light infantrymen and German Jaeger riflemen carry European hatchets which when used in the Americas, were referred to as tomahawks. Later on, Western Native Americans used what were called Missouri War axes which had large thin bladed heads around a polled wooden staff. The staff was usually six to ten inches long and often used on horseback. Tomahawks continued to be used for trade and diplomatic purposes throughout the mid and late 19th century. To this day, tomahawk production continues strong among recreational campers, backwoodsmen and hikers, including a resurgence of hand held hatchet and tomahawk throwing competitions.
Hatchets & Tomahawks: Part 1 of 3 – Early History of Axes and Battle Axes.
Tomahawks & Hatches: Part 3 of 3 – Military Use & the American Revolution
Forgotten Warriors of the American Revolution: Major Benjamin Whitcomb of ‘Whitcomb’s Rangers’
SOURCES
Brant & Cochran Axes from Maine. www.bnctools.com/blogs/news/development-of-the-american-axe-part-1 and www.bnctools.com/blogs/news/development-of-the-american-axe-part-2-the-hudsons-bay-axe
Chamberlain, Alexander F. Algonkian Words in American English: A Study in the Contact of the White Man and the Indian, The Journal of the American Folklore, Vol. 15, No. 59, (Oct-Dec 1902) pp 240-257.
Brief History of the Axe, USDA Forest Service. www.fs.fed.us/eng/pubs/pdfpubs/pdf99232823/pdf99232823Pdpi72pt02.pdf
Kaufman, Henry J. American Axes, A Survey of their Development and Their Makers. 1972: By the Author. Reprint – Gasthof Press, Morgantown, PA.
Mike Miller at Fur Trade Axes & Tomahawks. www.furtradetomahawks.com
Smith, William Henry. The St. Claire Papers, the Life and Public Services of Arthur St. Claire. 1882: Robert Clarke & Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.