Native American arrows?

[trail walker]

ok, thanks guys that helped clear some things up.
do you think that having the 9 - 12 inch flechings on the short plains bows might have been to stabilize the arrow within that 10-20 yard mark? because even though they didn't always hunt from horse back, when thy did they would need the arrow to stabilize in like 20 feet or less right?

[Pat B]

I think the surface area is what helps straighten out the arrow and not necessarily the length. A 9"x1/2" arrow vs. 5.5" by 3/4". I haven't done the math so it's just a guess.
 Some folks bare shaft tune their arrows. If a bare shaft flies well from your bow the fletching only helps when a broadhead is used.

[trail walker]

amount of surface area makes sense Pat B, but why go do you think to the trouble of making the feathers longer then? because if you have 1 arrow fleched with 10 inch skinny feathers with the same ones you could do 2 arrows with 5 inch wide ones?

[bjrogg]

Trail Walker this is just a guess, but I suspect a nine inch fletch cut from 3/8 to 1/2" would be quiter than a 5" fletch 1"to 1 1/2" . Just st a guess though. I do know tall fletch is noisy
Bjrogg

[Pat B]

With Native arrows tradition probably plays the biggest role. With modern man, personal preference rules.

[txdm]

From Ishi in Two Worlds , I don't recall any mention of how accurate Ishi was from great distances, but many examples noted how stealthy and patient of a hunter he was. This gave me the impression that his shots were within a relatively close range with 40-45lbs bows.

I haven't learned if the same is true for Eastern woodland tribes, yet.

[JW_Halverson]

amount of surface area makes sense Pat B, but why go do you think to the trouble of making the feathers longer then? because if you have 1 arrow fleched with 10 inch skinny feathers with the same ones you could do 2 arrows with 5 inch wide ones?

Ok, to broaden your questions, why did Siouxan people use long and low fletching when Cherokee peoples used full feather two fletch?  I am going to hazard a W.A.G. and say that "style" had a lot to do with it.  That and tradition.

Boy howdy, did you ever hit a sore point with me!  It really is a pity that ethnography is a modern concept and came into the picture very late in the game. There is so much information that would come in handy from medicinal plants, to philospophy, to culture, to food ways, to technology, etc....we are often left guessing because while much was stamped out, quite a bit was simply abandoned along the way as well. We often forget that culture is never truly static, it is dynamic and ever evolving, too.

Wish some ethnographer had interviewed about 500 to 1,000 Native Americans and wrote what they did regarding archery and hunting.   

[DC]

Just thinkin' out loud. If you had feathers that you could only get one fletch out of why not use the whole feather. If a little is good a lot must be better, right.

[Pat B]

DC, fletching steers the arrow with drag. Ideally you want as small of feathers as you can get away with and still get good arrow flight.
 I sometimes make 3 and 4 feather tangential fletching using whole 4" feathers tied around the shaft, with the inside of the feather facing up.

[DC]

I was trying to think like a Native would have, they may not have known all that stuff. Longer feathers would straighten flight quicker but at the expense of cast. For hunting they may not have cared about cast.

[JW_Halverson]

I was trying to think like a Native would have, they may not have known all that stuff. Longer feathers would straighten flight quicker but at the expense of cast. For hunting they may not have cared about cast.

And when hunting bison, they were on horseback, inside or alongside the herd, shooting at very close distance (sometimes measured in feet).

[SixRabbit]

Ishi used hazel shoots for arrows. I've made 5 arrows from hazel. They were not matched by weight, spine, diameter or even perfectly matched by length. I was still able to shoot tight groups at 10 yards.

[Pat B]

I agree SixRabbit. Most of my hardwood shoot and cane arrows are like yours. If they shoot well at hunting distance they go in my quiver.

[Jim Davis]

In the 1960s, early '70s, arrows were sold as "for bows up to" some poundage--35, 45, 55 etc.

No one even used the term spine before the 1920s and then they didn't mean only stiffness. The term came to it's current meaning sometime after the mid 1930s, when Klopsteg and Hickman and their fellow experimenters were threshing out the concept.

Howard Hill is said to have shot a new batch of arrows to see which ones went where he wanted them. The ones that didn't, he broke so they wouldn't get mixed in with the good ones.

With no spine tester, Horace Ford set a record in the York round in 1857 that was not beaten until 1943! Spine, swine, wish his score was mine, to hark back to Charlotte's Web.

[Black_Water]

 I know I'm a little late to reply but my 3 tribes are all within regions of discussion I've seen here, Klamath (Californian) Apsaalooké ( northern plains bordering the sioux) Chiricuaha Apache (Southwest sometimes southern plains). Through the older members of my family oral tradition has consistently shared the motif that you just find the arrow shaft that shoots best and when you find it you look for as many similar shafts on that same plant or shrub etc. and that there is no specific science to it. You sort of just go by instinct and what feels trustworthy. As for long fletching on plains style arrows I cant speak for every one, but the men on my grandfather's side (apsaalooké) just said that the fletching was long to account for the lost height and that you didn't want the fletching to be to tall because in the majority of cases the arrows are designed to pass through your prey and if the fletching was tall then it would likely break or get ruined. As for the southern style like the cherokees and others I havent had as much experience so I cant answer why they kept the fletching tall.