"neck" knives

[Rifleman1776]

At ronny and woods walks I wear neck knife with a 4" blade. It is handy for many small tasks including as a patch knife. A larger knife will be on my belt for cross draw with right hand. If I'm strutting my stuff, my riflemans knife with 11 1/2" blade will also be showing. I don't subscribe to the notion we have to emulate native indians. I believe frontiersmen, of all kinds, did what they wanted and improvised for survival, not fashion.

Don't call him an NDN...

BTW, I have asked in the past but still don't know what that acronym actually stands for.

 

[Coot]

I think a "safe" assumption is: "Indian" (nn dee n) = NDN

 

[Rifleman1776]

I think a "safe" assumption is: "Indian" (nn dee n) = NDN

And why would that be offensive?
Oops! Silly me. :redface: I forgot, these days EVERYTHING is offensive.

 

[George]

I'm still not clear, were neck knives worn by whites? I've see a lot of re-enactors of the fur trade era with them, but is that correct?

Spence

 

[Black Hand]

Can't say I've seen a neck knife in a Miller or Bodmer sketch or painting. I'd say incorrect....

 

[LRB]

It has been my understanding that neck knives may have been somewhat popular with the French boatmen and trappers. I have read where some of the NDNs would only use their neck knives for war, and not for everyday use. I really don't know, but Ken Hamilton could probably give you the best info on the trade scalpers, which were the common neck knife.

 

[Ron LaClair]

I won't argue whether neck knives were used back when or not. I figure men back then were as practical as men are today so they probably used neck knives.

Some day I'm gonna count how many times I use a knife during the day and my neck knife is the handiest and most accessible.

 

[BrownBear]

Hang one on your belt at the same time and see which one you reach for most often.

That's the real test. And that's why all my neck knives have migrated to a drawer. :wink:

 

[Black Hand]

I won't argue whether neck knives were used back when or not. I figure men back then were as practical as men are today so they probably used neck knives.

And yet, that is exactly what you have done by making this post.

Regardless of what WE in the modern world find practical, we should try to emulate what WAS done rather than what we think may have been done based upon our modern mentality and preconceptions...

 

[Ron LaClair]

Regardless of what WE in the modern world find practical, we should try to emulate what WAS done rather than what we think may have been done based upon our modern mentality and preconceptions...

People don't change, from the time an ancient practical mind figured out how a lever would throw a spear farther and how bending a limb and tying a gut on each end would throw a smaller spear even farther, men have progressed to space travel.

Don't try and convince me that neck knives weren't used, I have too much faith in my forefathers intelligence.

And Brown bear, I DO wear a belt knife AND a folding knife but a neck knife is more easily accessible. Mine are NOT in a drawer. My favorite NK is one by Wick Ellerbe

 

[Rifleman1776]

I'm still not clear, were neck knives worn by whites? I've see a lot of re-enactors of the fur trade era with them, but is that correct?

Spence

I'm one that believes folks, white, red, whatever, over the years were innovative and made or did things that made life easier. It is incomprehensible to me that, somewhere along the line, a real mountain man or Indian never rigged up a neck knife for themselves. As for the painters, some historians put great value on what they depicted. I don't as I see in many of those paintings like horses taller than teepees, three pole teepees, etc. :td: Not accurate historical depictions, IMHO.

 

[Black Hand]

I'm still not clear, were neck knives worn by whites? I've see a lot of re-enactors of the fur trade era with them, but is that correct?

Spence

I'm one that believes folks, white, red, whatever, over the years were innovative and made or did things that made life easier. It is incomprehensible to me that, somewhere along the line, a real mountain man or Indian never rigged up a neck knife for themselves. As for the painters, some historians put great value on what they depicted. I don't as I see in many of those paintings like horses taller than teepees, three pole teepees, etc. :td: Not accurate historical depictions, IMHO.

By this logic, they should have had AR-15's in the 19th century and steam locomotives during the time of the Greeks. After all, they were innovative, had the technology and manufacturing knowledge and it would have made their lives easier.

Modern thinking and knowledge applied retrospectively makes certain people believe that ALL things were possible in the past. Historical facts have shown us this IS NOT the case.

BTW - we know they had horses and Tipis. Why? Because historians have collected the facts - the same facts so casually dismissed unless they support a person's personal bias. One can't just cherry-pick what they like and dismiss what doesn't agree with their preconceptions...

 

[George]

You really need to broaden your base of references, Black Hand. If you look in the right place, documentation for most anything is possible. In this instance I recommend Terry Johnston's 9-book series on the Rocky Mountain fur trade. I'll betcha old Titus "Scratch" Bass wore a neck knife.

For the naive and humorless among us, the above is my feeble attempt at irony. I sincerely hope no feelings were hurt by this post. Sort of. :grin:

Spence

 

[Kansas Jake]

In these discussions I will have to agree with Black Hand. We really need some evidence of trappers and non NDNs using them. We talk about innovating, but from experience, many times it is hard to get people to adopt innovation. The fact that most of us here use things that are long out of common usage is an argument against innovation. Think about how many industries or processes continue to be done in a certain way because "We've always done it that way."

 

[Loyalist Dave]

People don't change, from the time an ancient practical mind figured out how a lever would throw a spear farther and how bending a limb and tying a gut on each end would throw a smaller spear even farther, men have progressed to space travel.

AH BUT..., development is NOT universal, even when all of the resources and abilities to invent or adopt a technology exist. :wink:

For example in Australia and in New Zealand, the bow and arrow were not used by the indigenous peoples. Now the Polynesians were sea faring, and did come into contact with cultures with bows, but they did not adopt the bow, nor develop them independent of contact. Cherokees made use of the blowgun..., so do South American paleo peoples today, but it didn't become a universal tool to the Eastern Woodland cultures, even with those that traded with the Cherokee, and knew of its use.

Steel skillets, cooking oil, charcoal, all were known to Europeans and those on the British Isles. YET..., stir-fry in a wok didn't develop, and even after contact was made by sea with China, the wok didn't spread into anglo society until after WWII. By your argument, since all of the needed ingredients and tech were known to be present, some white person must have used a wok in the 18th century, so then Moo Gu Gai Pan might be served at a North American historic home site as an "authentic" colonial dinner dish. :shocked2:

The debate isn't that whites "never" used neck knives, or that "only Indians used them"..., it's simply that we find no evidence of white, English speakers, using neck knives. SOME use this as the basis for their abstinence on neck knives, and SOME like me use the neck knife and admit it may not have been common, or might be wrong, and SOME don't care... :grin:

LD

 

[crockett]

Well whites in Scandinavia used/carry neck knives- the Lapps. As I understand it, in the winter they find it more convenient than having a knife on a belt that may get buried in bulky clothes/parkas, etc.
What's even more interesting is the similarity of the sheath, with a center seam.

 

[Black Hand]

True - but from what I remember, the Scandanavians did not come to this continent in any number until the 19th century...

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I'm not sure Crockett was intending on offering that as a point in favor for 18th, or 19th century use of neck knives in North America by immigrants.

I took that as an example of people not going to war, and fully capable of wearing the same knives on a belt, wearing and using the knives as "neck knives" in a purely utilitarian application. The observation about the sheaths seems to point to independent but paralel developement.

LD

 

[Elnathan]

True - but from what I remember, the Scandanavians did not come to this continent in any number until the 19th century...

I don't know of any evidence for the use of the neck knife among whites, either.

However, it might not be wise to dismiss the possibility of Scandinavian cultural influence too quickly. The settlers of New Sweden were small in number but they did manage to introduce the log cabin, an architectural form common in Scandinavia but unknown in the New World prior to their arrival here. That is a pretty outsized influence on frontier culture for a small group.

The Swedes (or, more probably, Finns) may have really had quite an influence on white frontier culture - in Faragher's biography of Daniel Boone he suggests that the descendants of the New Sweden settlers were still an ethnically distinct group with a particular affinity for woodsrunning well into the 18th century, and that Boone's early training as a woodsman came from these men. Unfortunately he only mentions this in passing and doesn't provide a note on his sources, so I've never been able to track down anything more about more about the descendants of New Sweden.

 

[Elnathan]

A couple of more general points:

1) I'm not convinced that even the Indians used neck knives in the way folks here are assuming that they used them. There are certainly a large number of decorated sheathes in existence, but the knives that go into them are often either highly decorated in a manner inconsistent with everyday use (quilled handles) or of a design ill-suited for use as a tool (most notable, a push-dagger with a handle made from the head an unborn colt illustrated in one of the Books of Buckskinning).

In other words, neck knives among the Indians may not have been the tools that folks are assuming, but something more along the lines of a sword in Western culture - a weapon, a bit of male jewellery, a symbol of ritual or even religious significance, and often a mix of all three depending on the context in which it is worn. It is even possible that neck knives may have not have been worn on an everyday basis and reserved for warfare or formal occasions.

If it was more of a symbolic item of dress than a everyday tool, I think that makes it a lot less likely that the whites would imitate the practice - it wouldn't have the same meaning for them.

2) How much evidence do we have for belt knives among white frontiersmen? Probably sounds like a stupid question, but it would be interesting to see how much period evidence there is for knives being worn on the belt, which is (quite justifiably, I think) widely assumed to have been quite common among frontiersmen. If there are a lot of period descriptions of frontiersmen wearing knives on their belts, then the total lack of any sources for neck knives is pretty good evidence that neck knives weren't used. If, on the other hand, there just isn't much evidence regarding sheaths of any kind, then the silence of the sources on neck knives isn't as significant.

I'm not suggesting that belt knives weren't actually used, I'm wondering about how much evidence, written or otherwise, is available for something we know must have been used a lot, and how it compares to the lack of evidence of the same sort for an item that we don't know much about.