What Hawk style?

[Black Hand]

I can not speak historically but I can tell you from a medical standpoint. A tomahawk with either a pipe or hammer poll may not be as fast in a fight as one without, but I would not want to be on the recieving end. The pipe bowl or the hammer poll would allow the hawk be dual sided weapon and allow more weight upon impact. A blow to the head with either side of those kind of hawks would be deadly, to take a direct hit to a bone with the pipe or hammer poll could easily break them, or disable enough to make the strike with the blade side. DANNY

Wasn't there an account of some frontiersman (Kenton? Girty?) that had a depression in his head from the pipe end of a hawk?

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Just surmising, a poll ax like those shown on the first page of the TACA site would probably fit the bill.

I noted the very wide date range on many of the hatchets...., which means that the style was very widespread for a very long time, and I'd venture to say that indicates pretty widespread use, including by those on the frontier.

LD

 

[tenngun]

Most of the critics of tent stakes don't live in the Ozarks. For my ronnys I carried stakes made from 1/4" round mild steel. I pounded these through and around the rocks for my lodge using a Ft. Meigs hawk/axe. That same axe was excellent for making kindling and took a sharp edge for skinning and going through bone on deer and other game. Playing the survival game, if I had to go naked and take only one implement into the wilderness, it might well be the Ft. Meigs axe.

I would note that the axe carried by Otizi the Ice man was about the same size as the fort Meigs axe, with similar shape, made in copper.
Some times the use of a tool is in the knowledge and learned skill more then the shape or size of the tool.
Today we have learned modren hatchets, and look for an old style we can adapt our modren skills too. Back then they grew up with that tool, and knew how to use it.

 

[Danny Ross]

Wasn't there an account of some frontiersman (Kenton? Girty?) that had a depression in his head from the pipe end of a hawk?

1. In Allan Ekart's book "A Sorrow In Our Heart" Simon Kenton was trying to escape from the Shawnee on foot, he had been their prisoner for a while. If I remember the story right, he would have made it if a group of Shawnee warriors had not come along and saw him. One of the warriors caught up with him on horse back, he didn't want to kill Kenton, so instead of hitting him with the blade. he turned the hawk over and hit him on the top of the head with the pipe bowl of his hawk, fracturing Kenton's skull and knocking him out. DANNY

 

[tenngun]

1. In Allan Ekart's book "A Sorrow In Our Heart" Simon Kenton was trying to escape from the Shawnee on foot, he had been their prisoner for a while. If I remember the story right, he would have made it if a group of Shawnee warriors had not come along and saw him. One of the warriors caught up with him on horse back, he didn't want to kill Kenton, so instead of hitting him with the blade. he turned the hawk over and hit him on the top of the head with the pipe bowl of his hawk, fracturing Kenton's skull and knocking him out. DANNY

He also recalls the story in ‘The Frontiersman ‘ the first of his winning of America series, while Greathouse, Girty brothers and Boone were part of the story, it was mostly a bio of Kenton