Archaeologists generally consider the evidence concerning the nature of the pre-Columbian Eastern Woodland bow to be limited to the following sources: archaeological evidence unearthed from scientific excavations, specimens collected and preserved while the bow was still in widespread use, and the descriptions and drawing of bows by contemporary observers.
Ethnologists, on the other hand, study the equipment and methods of living cultural groups. Since cultural traits tend to be relatively stable over time, some inferences can be made about equipment and methods that were used by a group in prehistoric times. During the nineteenth century, ethnological studies of the Native Americans were reported to the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. These studies preserved many cultural practices of the Native Americans that otherwise would have been lost. For example, ethnological observations of Native American flintknappers has prevented that art from becoming lost and has provided the information upon which the recent revival of flintknapping is largely based.
Seneca — western New York. A) Hickory recurve with grooves cut into sides of scallops. Note brass tack driven into right side of grip. Steve Allely, the artist who produced these drawings and who also wrote and illustrated the Western Indian Bows chapter in Volume 1, theorizes that the tack may have been used to ensure consistent hand placement on the bow. B) Scalloped edge painted dark blue or green, smooth edge painted red. Tips of scallops have drilled holes with thongs of buckskin holding bundles of split feathers (6 to 10 per bundle with 1" wide red ribbon). Tip of bow on top limb painted red, with small painted face. String is finely twisted two-ply rawhide. (National Museum of the American Indian)
Seneca arrows with painted hardwood shaft and short hawk tail feathers. Two feather fletch with whole feather at back, stripped down to single side of feather at front. Tied inverted at back of shaft, then bent forward and front tied. Feathers put on with pronounced twist, sinew wrap, no glue. (National Museum of the American Indian).
Alex England, Master Cherokee Bowyer
However, an examination of the nineteenth century Reports to the Bureau of Ethnology shows that ethnologists were evidently unaware that any Eastern Woodland tribes were still making and using bows and arrows. For example, T. M. Hamilton, who is well known and respected for his research in archaeology, wrote in his book. Native American Bows, "Since this area (east of the Mississippi) was the first to be settled, or, at least, invaded by the white trader, the bow, as a serious weapon, has long since disappeared." Most ethnologists concurred, and there is little mention of bows and arrows in their reports.
But the ethnologists were mistaken in believing the bow was extinct as a practical weapon! Unknown to them, the Cherokees continued to make and use their traditional bows and arrows and the knowledge of bowmaking continued to be handed down through the generations to the present day. This is the manner in which 1 learned to make traditional bows and arrows.
There are only a small handful of bowyers left among the Cherokee who learned to make bows from their elders. Their numbers decrease as the years pass; one day there will be no more. Fortunately, we do not have to let this valuable source of information be lost. By studying the methods and materials used by the present day Cherokee bowyers, the characteristics of the bows and arrows and the shooting methods used, we can gain important information concerning the Eastern Woodland bow and its use. More details about this later, but first we should examine the information on bows provided by archaeologists.
SURVIVING EASTERN WOODLAND BOWS
AND OBSERVATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY OBSERVERS
Archaeologists have found few Eastern Woodland bows and arrows in excavations. Usually all that remains are the stone arrowheads because the wood, skin, feathers, sinew, and other organic materials from which bows and arrows were made decayed rapidly in this region.
In 1963, a self bow, classified as early Caddoan, was recovered from a burial site in Louisiana which dated to the eleventh century. The bow was made from Osage orange wood with an overall length of 66 inches and a grip diameter of 11/4 inches. The bow's cross-section was circular, and it appeared to be a simple "D" bow with slightly recurved tips. A sixteenth century engraving of a war council of Southeastern Indians by De Bry shows some of the warriors with bows that appear identical to the bow recovered in Louisiana.
In 1956, a cane arrowshaft unearthed in Tennessee was dated as being over 2000 years old. The Cherokees and some of the other southeastern tribes were still using arrows of cane when first contacted by Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century.
Numerous Eastern Woodland bows are housed in museums, but archaeologists generally consider one of the best authenticated bows from colonial times to be the "Sudbury" bow, which is in the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. The faded inscription on the bow reads, "This bow was taken from an Indian in Sudbury, Mass., A. D. 1660 by William Goodnough who shot the Indian while he was ransacking the Goodnough house for plunder..."The bow is made of hickory and is 65 inches long, nock to nock. The limbs are basically flat in cross-section, about 1 3/4 inches wide and 9/16 inches thick at mid-limb and 3/4 inches wide at the tips. The grip or handle section is narrowed to about 1 inch in width with a corresponding increase in thickness to 1 3/16 inches. Museum officials list the bow as Wampanoag, who were the people who greeted the Pilgrims (a survey conducted in 1950 showed that only about 1000 descendants of the Wampanoag remained, while the non-Indian population of North America had grown to over 200 million. Look who came to dinner and stayed!).
Several drawings of bows and arrows from Eastern Woodland Tribes, including the Sudbury bow, illustrate this chapter. The Cherokee bows and arrows are from my own collection and were made by Cherokees within the past two hundred years. The other weapons are housed in museums and private collections around the country. I have not examined these latter bows and arrows personally, and so have depended upon their caretakers to authenticate their origins and ages.
In addition to surviving examples, there are some descriptions and drawings of Eastern Woodland bows which were made by observers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The first Spanish explorers who entered what is now Mexico, South America, and the Southeastern and Southwestern parts of the United States were more interested in finding gold and converting the natives to Christianity than in recording ethnographic details concerning the implements or lifestyles of the Indians. Even so, some information about bows and arrows was recorded because it was relevant to the military goals of the invaders. The English colonists likewise had more pressing interests than recording details
A) Algonkian (Kitchawank) — southern Ontario and Quebec, northern New York. Bow of hickory, collected in 1728 by Pierre van Courtland, a future Lt. Governor of New York (National Museum of the American Indian). B) Wampanoag hickory bow collected in 1660 in Sudbury, Massachusetts (Peabody Museum).
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A Warrior of Florida, a watercolor by John White, 17th century (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution).
The Manner of Their Attire, a ivatercolor by John White, 17th century (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution).
About their Indian neighbors except those things which related to military matters.
John White, governor of the Virginia colony in the seventeenth century, made water color paintings of Southeastern Woodland Indians. Two of his paintings, "The Manner of Their Attire" and "A Warrior of Florida", showed well proportioned Indians holding bows which appeared to be taller than the Indians and were probably close to six feet in length. The limbs of the bow carried by the men seemed to be rectangular in cross-section. The warrior from Florida holds an arrow which appears to be close to three feet in length and may have been made of cane with a wood foreshaft. The Cherokees lived near the Virginia colony, and the traditional bows made by Cherokee bowyers today are very similar to those shown in the White paintings.
Le Moyne painted a gathering of Southeastern Woodland warriors called "Saturiona Goes to War". Although his original paintings were lost, De Bry made the engraving which was referred to earlier while discussing the bow found in Louisiana. I have reason to suspect the accuracy of the De Bry engravings. Having examined his engravings of the White watercolors, it is clear he tended to add things to the originals, such as horn tips on bows thick enough to pass for clubs. Also, his "Indians" look suspiciously like Greek gods.
However, shown in the De Bry engravings are two types of bows; straight bows which appear to be more than five feet in length and double-curved bows of about five feet with recurved tips. The limbs of both types of bows show to be round in cross-section, an observation supported by the bow found in the Louisiana burial. The double-curved self bow was found only in North America, so De Bry was apparently accurate in depicting this feature.
In addition to drawings, written descriptions by early observers provide information about the early Eastern Woodland bows and their performance.
James Adair wrote about the Cherokees in 1775, "They make perhaps the finest bows, and the smoothest barbed arrows, of all mankind." Timberlake, in 1776, wrote that the Cherokees used oak, ash, and hickory for their bows. Based on my own knowledge of Cherokee tradition and my experience with making bows, black locust was the preferred wood of the Cherokees in our original
Saturiona Goes to War, a De Bry engraving from 1591 (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution).
Homeland and is a greatly superior bow wood to the three mentioned by Timberlake. He also mentioned that the bows were liberally coated with bear oil and warmed before a fire to increase the penetration of the oil. This practice is still preserved among Cherokees today, although hog lard is usually substituted for the bear oil.
The length of Eastern bows was recorded by several observers. Columbus reported that the Indians (Caribs) had bows as large as those in France and England. Six foot bows were also reported by the Narvaez expedition among Indians of the Gulf Coast. Some tribes around the Great Lakes, such as the Chippewa, Menomini, and Assiniboin used somewhat shorter bows, typically four to five feet in length, with arrows to match of 23 to 26 inches. Most Northeastern tribes, however, appear to have preferred bows of five feet or more in length, such as the 67 inch long Sudbury bow discussed earlier.
The effectiveness of the Eastern Woodlands self bow was recorded by numerous observers from the expeditions which faced these weapons in battle. The landing party of Columbus was greeted by showers of arrows which sent them scurrying back to their ships. Of the Narvaez expedition into the Gulf Coast area, only the famous Cabeza de Vaca, along with two others, survived to finally reach Mexico. He reported that ten soldiers were completely transfixed by arrows, this in spite of their armor.
A chronicler of the De Soto expedition through the Southeast and into Cherokee country wrote:
"(The Indians) never remain quiet, but are continually running, traversing from place to place, so that neither crossbow or arqubuse can be aimed at them. Before a Christian can make a single shot with either, an Indian will discharge three or four arrows: and he seldom misses of his object. Where the arrow meets with no armor, it pierces as deeply as the shaft from a crossbow. Their bows are very perfect; the arrows are made of a certain canes, like reeds, very heavy, and so stiff that one of them, when sharpened, will pass through a target.
Some are pointed with a bone of a fish, sharp like a chisel; others with some stone like a point of diamond; of such the great number, when they strike upon armor, break at the place where the parts are put together; those of cane will split, and will enter a shirt of mail, doing more injury than when armed."
In the second volume of the narratives, it says, "The Indians, on two occasions, killed three soldiers of the Governor's guard and wounded others, and killed a horse; and all that through bad arrangements, since these Indians, although they are archers and have strong bows and are skillful and sure marksmen, yet their arrows have no poison, nor do they know what it is." Up to that point, the expedition had suffered 760 arrow wounds.
In the account of another battle with the Indians, we read that Don Carlo's horse was shot in the breast with an arrow. Carlo dismounted to pull it out and was immediately shot through the neck and killed almost instantly. Later, 22 of De Soto's Spaniards were killed and 148 others wounded. There were a total of 688 arrow wounds. Seven horses were killed, three shot completely through both shoulders, and twenty-nine wounded.
A) Potowotomi flint point, B) Late period "5 notch" point, S W Iowa, C) Late Woodland stone point, D) Historic 18th century Cherokee stone point, E, F, and G) Stone points from Cahokia Mound, Illinois, H and I) Bone points from Cahokia Mound, ]) Seminole point made from antler, K) Sauk-Fox solid wooden point, L) Sauk-Fox solid bird blunt.
M) Copper point from Massachusetts, N, O, and P) Brass points from Ft. Shantok, CT, Q and R) Cherokee brass points cut from trade kettles, S) Fox iron point, T) Potowotomi iron point, U) Creek rolled iron point, V) Alligator gar scale point from the Texas coastal plain, W) Shark tooth point. East Coast, X) Stingray barb point. Gulf Coast region.
According to the chronicler's account, "The arrow shots were tremendous, and sent with such a will and force that the lance of one gentleman named Nuno de Tovar, made of two pieces of ash and very good, was pierced by an arrow in the middle, as by an auger, without being split, and the arrow made a cross with the lance."
De Soto captured an Indian and forced him to demonstrate his shooting of the bow. At 150 paces his arrow pierced a coat of chain mail. The Spaniards placed a second coat of mail on top of the first and the arrow pierced them both, but did not go completely through as it had with the single coat.
Armed with crossbows and primitive firearms, it is little wonder that the Spanish came to fear and dread the highly effective bows and arrows of the Woodland Indians.
CHEROKEE AND ENGLISH LONGBOWS
Several striking similarities emerge when we compare the pre-Colombian Cherokee longbow and the sixteenth century English longbow. There were, of course, some pronounced differences, such as the cross-sectional shape of the limbs and the wood from which they were made. But the similarities of design were certainly greater than the differences and a comparison of the two bows seems appropriate. We find that both were straight self bows with no sinewbacking. Their long length allowed them to shoot long, heavy arrows which resulted in greater accuracy, effective range, and penetration than is normal for a shorter bow.
It also seems appropriate to speculate that parallels in needs, lifestyles, and other factors led to the independent evolution of these similar bows in widely separated areas of the world. The climates of both England and the Southeastern part of North America have ample rainfall and humidity which would make it difficult to keep sinew on sinew-backed bows. Good bow wood was available in both areas so there was no functional need for a backing. Long, straight self bows were relatively easy to make and were stressed less than shorter bows, which made them longer lasting and trouble free. The archers of both areas used the bow on foot rather than from horseback, so the length of the bow was not a handicap.
The written records and legends of the English tell us that their longbow could be used as an effective hunting weapon, at least for Robin Hood and his men and the nobility, but the primary use, and the one which made this bow famous, was as a weapon of war. The accounts of battles in which the English longbowmen turned the tide with their long-range volleys of armor-piercing arrows, such as the Battle of Agincourt, leaves no doubt about the effectiveness of the English longbow as a weapon of war. Another recorded military use of the longbow was in long-range shooting from behind walled towns or castles at enemy soldiers besieging the fortress.
Records from sixteenth century England tell us that every able-bodied man was required, by the King's law, to possess a bow and arrows and to practice frequently at long range in preparation for war. The distances at which they practiced is indicated by the ancient shooting field at Finsbury, near the outskirts of London, where targets range from about 70 yards to over 250 yards, with most of the shots between 160 and 200 yards.
The early Cherokees probably used their bows and arrows in warfare in methods similar to those employed by the English. Every able-bodied Cherokee man and many women kept their bow and arrows nearby at all times. They were skilled at close range shooting at game, but there is evidence they also fired long-range volleys of arrows during battle. Part of that evidence comes from the Cherokee sport of cornstalk shooting which survives to the present day. The origins of cornstalk shooting are uncertain, but I believe this game came down from the pre-Columbian Cherokees who used it to practice long-range shooting for warfare just as the English archers practiced. In cornstalk shooting, the archers shoot at targets made from ricks of cornstalks from distances of 80 to 120 yards. The score in the game depends not only on hitting the target but also on the depth to which the arrow penetrates.
Modern Cherokee cornstalk shoot (courtesy Cherokee Nation). 72
Setting an Enemy's Town on Fire, a De Bry engraving from 1591 (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institute).
Further evidence that the Southeastern Woodland Indians used the bow as a long-range military weapon is provided by a sixteenth century painting by Le Moyne, depicting a group of warriors shooting fire arrows into a walled enemy town to set the houses on fire.
The walled defensive towns the Cherokees built allows us to speculate on another parallel use of the bow by Cherokee and English. The Cherokees, as did the English, cleared an area around the walls of their fortified towns. It is reasonable to assume that Cherokee warriors stood on the scaffolding behind the walls and shot arrows at oncoming enemy warriors while they were still at long range, just as English archers defended the walls of their towns.
Both bows shaped the history of the people who used them. It has been said that England was built on a base of iron arrowheads driven by the mighty English longbow. In even earlier times, Cherokee archers with their longbows established dominance over a mountainous area of about forty thousand square miles, an area almost as large as England.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EASTERN WOODLAND BOW
Among the many tribes living in Eastern North America, there were variations in the design of bows and the wood from which they were made, but there were some universal characteristics. In general, they were self bows, made
Quivers. A) Seneca — western New York. Hollowed branch with wooden plug at base and burned designs. B) Seneca. Woven basketry, (both from Museum of the American Indian). C) Potowotomi — western Michigan, northern Indiana, and northern Illinois. Buckskin belt quiver stained dark yellow overall, then painted with designs (Mills County Museum). D) Sauk — eastern Michigan. Tanned otter quiver and bowcase with appliqued silk ribbon on red cloth (National Museum of Denmark).
From a single piece of wood, five to six feet in length, with limbs of a flat or rectangular cross-section. Recurves were unusual but not unknown.
The woods from which bows were made included Osage orange, black locust, mulberry, sassafras, hickory, ash, cedar, elm, dogwood, birch, persimmon, iron-wood, black walnut, pecan, oak, sycamore, witch hazel, Florida snakewood, some palms, and others. Some bow woods were preferred over others, and prized wood, such as Osage orange, was distributed over a network of trade routes hundreds of miles from where it grew. The pre-Columbian Cherokees used several woods for bows but black locust was preferred.
I choose the Cherokee bow as representative of the Eastern Woodland bow but, before continuing our discussion in this section, I want to point out an observation concerning the length of Cherokee bows and a theory concerning the observation.
Among present day Cherokee bows, there appears to be two distinct lengths: a long bow of about six feet and shorter bow of about five feet. Today, the longer bow is preferred for the long-range sport of cornstalk shooting, and the shorter bow is preferred for hunting since it is easier to use in brush. The longer bows are often of heavier draw weight, 60 to 80 pounds or even more, while the shorter bows usually draw about 45 to 55 pounds.
I believe these two types of bows reflect aboriginal types which have been handed down from the pre-Columbians to the present day. The longer bows were used by the early Cherokees primarily for warfare while the shorter bows were used mainly for hunting. Even after the adoption of firearms and "civilization" by the white man in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and down to the present day, a combination of factors led to the preservation of the bow and the art of bowmaking among the Cherokees while these arts were lost among the other Eastern Woodland tribes. These factors were: 1) A love of warfare and the desire to preserve the bow as a token of their "beloved occupation", 2) The enjoyment of cornstalk shooting as a sport, and 3) The love of hunting with the bow and arrow, added to the fact that the bow was a silent weapon with which the hunter could evade detection by hostile white settlers, and, in more recent times, game wardens who take a dim view of the Indian's aboriginal rights to wildlife.
In any case, whether for these or other reasons, the Cherokee bow was preserved, and we can accurately measure the dimensions and the performance of the bows presently in use among Cherokees in Oklahoma. I, and the other Cherokee bowyers of today, prefer Osage orange wood and metal hand tools, but 1 believe the basic design is the same as that used by Cherokee bowyers before Columbus.
The longer bow, which I refer to as the "war" bow, is usually close to six feet in length and rectangular in cross-section. There is no handle section, and the widest part of the bow is in the middle. The bow bends throughout its entire length in a smooth arc, like the letter "D", from which comes the name D bow. The dimensions of the bow illustrated are as follows: Length between nocks, 71 inches; width at widest point, 1 9/16 inches; thickness at handle, 5/8 inch; width of tip at nock, 1 1/16 inches; thickness of tip at nock, 7/16 inch, draw weight, 65 pounds at 28 inches.
Cherokee 'D' bows, hunting bow (left) and war bow, both of Osage orange (author's collection). 76
Cherokee arrows (author's collection), A) Cane war or hunting arrow, flint point in short foreshaft of Osage orange, turkey wing fletch glued in center, B) War or hunting arrow, Osage orange shaft, redtail hawk fletch glued in center, C) War or hunting arrow, dogwood shaft, stone point, turkey wing fletch.
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Cherokee arrows (author's collection), A) Twofletch child or quickie arrow, whole turkey tail feather inserted into split cane shaft, wrapped with sinew at ends, tip of thorn from honey locust tree, B) Old corn stalk shooting arrow, shaft of black locust, redtail hawk tail feather fletch, steel spike tip made from buggy spring. Note notches cut in rear of shaft to improve grip of fingers.
The shorter bow, which I refer to as the "hunting" bow, is generally about five feet in length. This illustrated bow is also a D bow with rectangular limbs and no handle section. The dimensions: length between nocks, 60 1 /2 inches; width of limb at widest point (center of bow), 1 3/8 inches; thickness of limbs at handle, 9/16 inch; width of tip at nock, 7/8 inch; thickness at nock, 5/16 inch; draw weight, 50 pounds at 28 inches.
The Cherokees, and other Eastern Woodland tribes, also made another type of bow besides the D bow, which I refer to as a handle bow. These had a non-bending handle section a few inches long which was normally narrower and thicker than the maximum dimensions of the working limbs. The Sudbury bow, which we previously examined, falls into this category.
ARROWS
Historical records indicate that cane was used for arrows by the pre-Columbian Cherokees. Today, we still make arrows of River Cane with foreshafts of hardwood. We also use Rough-leafed Dogwood for arrow shafts. For cornstalk shooting, we like a tough, heavy arrow, so we split the shafts from billets of Osage orange or black locust and whittle them to size.
The traditional Cherokee Retching for arrows was three feathers with their quills wrapped front and back with sinew and the remainder of the quill loose from the shaft. No glue was used. The feathers were tied on at an angle so that the arrow would spin in flight. Today, in preparing feathers for Retching, the quill is scraped very thin, and a short length of quill is left protruding at each end of the feather. In attaching it to the arrow, we first tie down the quill on the back end of the feather with the feather upside down and pointing backwards on the shaft. Then the feather is folded forward, over the sinew wrapping, and the front of the feather wrapped to the shaft with sinew.
There is a misconception held by some that Cherokee arrows were typically Retched with only two feathers. Occasionally, cane arrows were Retched by splitting the cane and inserting a whole tail feather into the split, resulting in a two-feather Retch. However, these arrows do not spin in Right and therefore do not shoot as accurately as three feathers and are generally only used as children's arrows or quick "emergency" arrows. A few people who have seen these two-feather Retched arrows concluded that all Cherokee arrows were Retched in this way, but such is not the case.
Many of the details of the design and usage of the Eastern Woodland bow will always remain clouded by the mists of time. In one sense, this is sad because the knowledge is lost forever. But there is also a good side; the feeling of mystery is one of the things which attract us to traditional archery. The mysterious is always more interesting than the familiar.
Every day, more archers are discovering the fascination of primitive archery. This renewed interest, including making and using the bows, is the best hope we have of rediscovering and preserving some of the secrets and magic known by the bowyers and hunters of old. I believe you will find, as 1 and many others have found, that as you discover new things about this oldest form of archery, you will also discover new things about yourself. You can venture back through the mists of the past and live, at least for a little while, in the unspoiled world of the pre-Columbian Indian hunter.
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