They sure did. My own interest is primarily the trans-Mississippi west of the 19th century, so I'll let the experts tell you about accoutrements further east or from an earlier time. However, here is a quote from George Frederick Ruxton's
Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, published in 1847:
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Note the reference to "
a little buckskin case containing a whetstone." This image of mountain man Jim Baker was painted in 1935, and the beadwork looks typical of the later 19th century, but the artist worked for a museum in Denver and had access to the collections. He probably used actual artifacts to copy in his painting. It illustrates what I believe is a whetstone case, attached to the front of that "pocket bag" hanging from Jim's belt:
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The western Indians carried whetstone cases very similar to the one in the portrait of Jim Baker. Here is a nice example from one of the auction websites:
Arapaho Beaded Awl and Whetstone Cases
I can't say for sure where they got the stones. Edwin Thompson Denig, the
bourgeois at Fort Union, said the typical trade knives were of "soft steel," so they were likely pretty easy to sharpen. This is from the Earl of Southesk's
Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains:
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We wonder just how "random" that stone might have been. Antoine may have known just what to look for. My brother has a razor hone that belonged to our grandpa, and it may have belonged to his father before him. It is a chunk of petrified wood, turned to a hard, dark stone. You can see the rough surface of the wood on one side, but the other was somehow worked flat and smooth. Not perfectly flat, but close enough. My dad said they got pieces of petrified wood out of the creeks in Alabama, but I have no idea how the stones were smoothed and flattened.
Interesting topic!
Notchy Bob