Anishinaabe Scout and Bow

[Marc St Louis]

My wife and I went to Ottawa last weekend to visit her family and while we were there we went to see a bronze statue of an Anishinaabe Scout that was made in the late 1800 or early 1900, he no doubt had a live model.  It depicts an Anishinaabe scout holding a bow with a quiver on his back, he used to have a spear in his other hand but that is gone.  He used to be at the feet of a statue of Champlain but the natives got restless.  The bow is pretty neat and I'll probably make one at some point.  I took some pictures

[Pat B]

That's pretty cool Marc. Thanks for posting it.

[DC]

What do you think about the notch around the top? I thought it might just be something the sculptor added but you'd think he would have put one at the bottom too. You wouldn't think a bow would last to long with a notch in the back like that.

[Traxx]

I wonder,if the artist used a photograph or drawing,as a model and mistook the upper string loop,on an unbraced bow ,as a groove of some kind?

[DC]

There ya go! Good thinkin'

[Marc St Louis]

It's hard to tell but the bow was actually reconstructed as it was broken at some point in the past, I don't know if the reconstruction was exact.  My wife comes from Ottawa and she says she used to sit on his knee when she was a young girl and she says that there was a spear back then.

[bushboy]

I have a little elm bow in the works that is very close to that one.And all this time I thought it was my design!lol!

[bradsmith2010]

yes very nice bow,, I bet the when the bow was fixed it got that groove in the top limb,,
back then it was probably more common to work from a model than photo,,hard to see the 3 d on a photo when doing sculpture,,
I think it would make a great bow,,

[Hrothgar]

Interesting sculpture, one picture is worth a thousand words for sure. Thanks for posting these.

[Prarie Bowyer]

Cool bow but is it historically accurate?  Artist are famous for getting the details wrong.

[Marc St Louis]

I'm sure that if one was made to those physical dimensions it would pull well over 100# but besides that I see no reason this bow would not work.  It actually looks a bit like a Mohegan bow, except for the bulbous handle

[bushboy]

Maybe the scout was only 5' tall,hard to tell the dimensions for sure