I see a lot of English and German rifles and we see the fusil de chasse. With there being french west in Arkansas and Louisiana. What rifles would they have carried? Sorry about my ignorance on the subject.
The French weren't big into rifles, especially for the export market. St Etienne was a large producer of export fusils, both for the colonial civilian trade as well as the fur trade. These guns varied widely in workmanship, decoration, and finish and were always smooth bored. Popular calibers were in the .60-.66 range, some being as large as .69.
Kevin Gladysz wrote a detailed book titled
The French Trade Gun in North America 1662-1759 which is unfortunately out of print. If you can find a copy somewhere on the used market, get it. Otherwise there's always interlibrary loan. (The book is in English, so don't worry about that.)
In his book he lists the categories of trade guns found in merchants ledgers, estate inventories, the King's Storehouse, and various Canadian archives. Some of the descriptions he found were
- fusil ordinaire (common gun)
- fusil de Saint-Etienne
- fusil de traite (trade gun)
- fusil à l'ancre (anchor gun, so called for the anchor engraved on the lock plate)
- fusil fin and demi-fin (fine and semi-fine gun)
- fusil de façon, demi-façon, and fusil de maître (fashionable, semi-fashionable, and master made guns)
He thus dispenses with the old, confusing C, D labels which archaeologist T.M. Hamilton used to classify and categorize his findings. Fragments of these guns have been found from Michigan to Texas.
