Realistic for 1800-1820?

Have posted this in the reenacting page as well but thought id ask here.

Just starting out and had some questions. Based on the rifle style i intend to build (early or late lancaster) it was suggested to me that the time period that would place me in would be 18-1820. That being said im wondering about a couple things. To my eye the non leather strapped possibles bags and powder horns look the best. The roach belly style of belt knives and the non-pipe style hawks catch my eye the most as well. Would these things fit well within the time period i am aiming to portray?

Thanks for any help
GB.

Where are you at, what do you do. What’s right in 1820 for a Nirth Carolina small farm is not right for a Missouri man who may have went up river toward the Rockies or in to the Great Lakes region and Minnesota to trap.
Pipe hawks were mostly a trade Item for Indians and not a white mans tool. A heavy military belt ax is a good choice. This is also the time that The Kentucky axe is coming into style. Your belt axe could well have a modren looking head and long thin eye.
Most knifes tended to be butcher knifes imported from England. True roach bellies were more popular among the French and Metis.
Bags are iffy paintings don’t show strapping well. The webbing with hemp or linen is popular, many commercial made bags tend to have leather straps.
Just a word on the side. We like to say shooting bag or pouch. A possibles bag is what the military would call a ditty bag. It was the place you stuffed your ”˜possibles’ your non shooting gear. Razor tooth brush wet stone firekit ect

One other thing to keep in mind, your age. Should you choose a Cr date, say Cr 1820 you could have daddy’s old gun, or die to your economics you could have traded for a twenty to thirty year old gun. The flip side of that is you go to work for a fur company and as part of your pay your forwarded a brand new rifle.
So, you can’t have a half stock Hawken or a late Leman but you could have anything up to fifty years old.

Thanks for that thinkin point. I guess my persona plan is that of an arkansas teen that went north.

Ill keep in mind that correct term or a shooters bag. :wink:

Looking at it specifically at a "man that looks nice to me" these were the two i was looking at.

There is a lot of history in the ozarks at this time frame. Arkansas was still the wild frontier, it would not become a state until ”˜36. Deer hunting and Indian trade were still big deals. Buffs were still to be found on the western lands. The popular myth of the free trapper in a mountain cabin with his Indian wife was infact being lived in Arkansas at the time. White and buffalo river valleys were home to such men. In the Petit Jean there still stands an 1819 cabin. Much of the state was more open grass land then today. At 25 there is a good chance you would have been born in Tennessee or North Carolina maybe Kentucky or Virgina. Arkansas may well have been your goal.

Interesting. I hadnt considered the time frame of state development. So if a person was born in Tennessee and went toward the wilderness that would later be Arkansas, then what exactly would that person be considered? It certainly too late in the times for a longhunter correct?

Honestly this has gotten me rethinking everything. Lol. So would a frontiersman of Tennessee be more likely armed with a southern style rifle like a Tennessee or Early Virginia style rifle?

Since you seem interested in historical calibers, you might use this as some background in making your decision. In 1822-23 the Englishman Wm. Blane spent time getting to know, shooting and hunting with backwoodsmen in Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois territory. He wrote a fair amount about the rifles in that area at that time. Here's what he had to say about the calibers of guns he saw in use. They measured caliber in terms of balls per pound of lead then.

"The usual size of the balls for shooting squirrels and wild turkeys, is from 100 to 150 to the pound. For deer and bear, the size varies from 60 to 80, and for larger animals, as the buffalo and elk, from 50 to 60; though a rifle carrying a ball of a larger size than 60 to the pound, is very seldom made use of. For general use, and for shooting at a mark, the favorite size is from 60 to 80."

Conversion of balls to the pound to modern decimal calibers and weight.

per pound-caliber-weight.
150 = .315------ 46.7 gr.
100 = .36------- 70 gr.
80 = .388-------87.5 gr.
60 = .427------ 116.7 gr.
50 = .454-------140 gr.

I'm as interested in being historically accurate as the next man, but I'm with Black Hand on this choice. I won't go after game with too small a caliber just to be historically correct, a quick, humane kill trumps history every time, if a choice has to be made.

Spence

Above all as an ethical hunter i want a quick and humane kill. The game deserves that. I feel like .50 is going to be the way to go for me. Primary game will be deer. Coyote and hog will be much less frequent.

Grizzly Bar said:

Interesting. I hadnt considered the time frame of state development. So if a person was born in Tennessee and went toward the wilderness that would later be Arkansas, then what exactly would that person be considered? It certainly too late in the times for a longhunter correct?

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That person would be considered a Frontiersman, or a Settler or a Farmer.

Gus

What time period should i be looking at for something like that?

My heart says thats what i should focus on now. Especially since there is a lot of ozark culture within easy driving of my home.

Grizzly Bar said:

Looking at it specifically at a "man that looks nice to me" these were the two i was looking at.

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Images don't work for me. Are these the two blades you are looking at? https://www.trackofthewolf.com/Categories/PartDetail.aspx/464/1/KNIFE-COURIER-L
https://www.trackofthewolf.com/Categories/PartDetail.aspx/473/2/TOMAHAWK-IR

If so, the knife is a thoroughly modern design and bears little resemblance to any period piece, apart from the five pins in the handle.

The tomahawk I'm little bit more ambivalent about, but I think that style is a modern hybrid - the poll looks like that of a "kentucky" style axe with a square head and a narrow eye, while the handle and blade look like that of a pipe tomahawk. The closest period counterpart I can think of is a pipe tomahawk that has lost it's bowl - there are a couple like that out there - and I suspect that was the inspiration for that design...

I don't think that Track of the Wolf, admirable as it may be in other respects, is really a good source for cutlery part from the Russell blades, which apart from maybe their new North West Cartouche knife are too late for your period. I don't know where else to send you, though...

We don’t have a word for some reason for this time. There is the long hunter period or the cour de bois or mountain man. This time frame is very open, from the north to the south people were going forth for a new life. Transient hunters, independent Indian traders, the Santa Fe trail opened in ”˜22 and about the same time Austin’s 300 entered Texas. After the war of 1812 most of the woodlands east of the plains was reasonably safe. Men brought families and often squatted, moving on when it got full. Men looked for a place to build a town. There were surveyors, roving preachers and barkers ect. Goods transported down the Mississippi left boatman afoot in new Orleans. They walked north on the Natchez trace, there were public houses and pirates along the way. Skins and fur was still big business. The hunters life was not far removed from the longhunter.

Good to know. Is there a better source for correct cutlery that doesnt break the bank? Im fine with reproduction as long as they are well made.

So is there a good way to narrow down the Fronteirsman time frame for the TN/MO/AR area?

Grizzly Bar said:

So is there a good way to narrow down the Fronteirsman time frame for the TN/MO/AR area?

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Please don't take this as a negative:
Go to the library/Google books/Internet and do research. There is a vast amount of information available that will help you narrow to the time, place and person that interests you...

Ultimately, YOU will need to narrow the time, place and person.

I plan to do just that, didnt know if there was a known time period that could shorten the learning curve though.

Schoolcraft of the ozarks is good, bio of Crockett and Moses and Stephen Austin, and let’s not forget Bowie, after all Black made ol Jim’s knife :haha:. Commerce of the prairie by Greg is real good. It just a little later then your time but the paintings of Brigham are real good of what life looked like.
More in-depth it there are lots of books on ozark exploration from Sixteenth century on.
Go to a few local library and look up some local stuff. Most every county has some history nerd that publish a history of the county. The books are not avalible on line as they only had a hundred copies or so. Often they were run off a miniograph.
Don’t get overwhelmed here. Look up what people wore then, and variations of that time. Dress right for a general Western american and learn along the way. And start there. If you get drop front pants, weskit shirt hat and coat you can do alright. Later you can adapt as you narrow stuff down. I would suggest you contact the Early Arkansaw reinactment association in Little Rock