Juniper Bow Stave Trees

[ArchyGene]

Greetings.
I'm not sure under which heading to post this, but here goes:

I live in Wyoming and have recently been able to visit a couple of locations where Native Americans "marked" Juniper trees with notches to apparently season a bow stave on a tree.  I have read about this same procedure being used in California and Nevada, but there is painfully little documentation that I've been able to hunt down.  The foremost one being the Wilkes paper.

So aside from the juniper trees around the Great Basin (Wyoming, Nevada and California) was this done elsewhere and on other kinds of trees in the USA or even elsewhere?

[DC]

There is 2-3 threads on here about that practice. Not sure how to find them. Maybe someone has them bookmarked.

[loefflerchuck]

  Juniper is a soft conifer wood. There are also scar trees in Colorado, Utah and Idaho. I have yet to find one but have always been looking. A few reasons why this was probably only done on juniper and incense cedar. 1 these woods have about the same SG weight and it is very low. In the 30s I think. So with a stone chopper it just takes a few minutes to cut out the notch. Also because it is such a soft wood and a conifer it can be split out pretty easy with a lever. Try that with a hard, ring porous or worse yet interlocking grain wood and it would not go so smoothly. I have removed juniper staves this way and it works quite well. I hammer in a axe from the sides to make sure I get a good split too. It works better for some reason if you leave the notches for a year before splitting. This is not because the stave seasons on the tree. It does not. Even with a notch cut below the stave the wood is still as alive as the rest if the tree. Some people do not understand that conifers are not like other trees and even removing half of a trunk will not kill the tree if it can still stand on it's own. The edges will scar over and the tree will go on living for hundreds of years. Some junipers are over 6000 years by the way.
 All woods are not the same. Just because one thing does or does not work with a kind of wood you know, do not assume woods you don't know about need to be treated the same way. It's a lifetime of learning about how woods work and it's never over.

[wstanley]

Chuck, I have removed two juniper staves within two hours off a trunk. Like you said I also hacked in along the edges. Came off nicely.

I have often wondered about the seasoning for one year after the notches are made. Is this really happening or an assumption made today? What’s the difference in waiting a year if the wood is still alive/ green even if it is notched? So why not just hack it out right on the spot? Just never really adopted the idea they weee on the tree for a year and then split off? Thoughts?

Thanks

[ArchyGene]

Apparently leaving the stave on the tree is just part of the process, according to what one elder told a co-worker they further bury the stave in the ground for a year or more.

I haven't had the chance to speak with elders myself, but provided we all survive the plague I am in the process of setting up a consultation to take some elders to a spot that I have recorded.  I hope to learn more about what they think and remember.

As for woods and staves, I know nothing, personally, and have only read through intermittent issues of Primitive Archer, and the Laubin book...so I'm fairly open and assume nothing.

[WhistlingBadger]

Welcome, Archy.  Whereabouts in Wyoming are you?  I am currently working on my first bow, but once I have a few under my belt I want to try that very thing.  I know just the place for it, too.  I don't know how many elders you'll find that are knowledgeable about archery; none of my Shoshone or Arapaho friends seem to hunt with bows or know much about archery.  If you do find someone, treasure them!

Thomas

[PatM]

Aren't we getting to the point where even the elders currently living are too young to remember those times?

[loefflerchuck]

 I think most of these bows were shaped green and finished in weeks. The Coso bows may have been an example of shaped bows put in a dark dry place to season for a couple weeks to make sure they did not warp before sinew backing.

Wes, seems natives used long wood sticks to pry the stave from the tree. I tried this first time right after making the notches and the stave split off only half way to the bottom notch

[wstanley]

Second that: stone tool tech. cultures I argue worked wood green. Those Coso bows were nearly complete  minus the sinew when they were found tucked under a rock shelter. I almost think most of their tillering came before  sinew backing. As thin as these bows were there was not much meat left for tillering after the sinew dried. I think they wanted the sinew to reflex as msuch as they could. Chuck same thing goes with the bow I showed you from my buddy, the thing looked complete minus the sinew

I often think about this when it come to Osage, is in not harder than heck? Never worked it. Is there any ethnographic accounts on how they worked Osage - green or seasoned? .


Arch Gene. When I worked in eastern Oregon we would find on our surveys  what we called Cambium bark trees. Trees scraped down to the wood to remove cambium for food. Their appearance increases with the introduction of metal  tools (or so we were told). They were on ponderosa pines, sugar pines, and white fir. Very obvious scars and not from  logging equipment damage or anything else. Often notches were found in  them as they hacked off the bark with an axe. When I would record these I had no idea of “stave removal trees”  but looking back now I could see how a CBT tree could be confused with a stave removal tree. Just a thought from  archy to archy : )

[ArchyGene]

Hey Whistling, I'm down in Rock Springs.

On your next visit down here to see the White Mountain Petroglyphs I can show you what I've found.

None of the elders themselves may have made their own bows, but perhaps their grandfather passed on down to their father stories from the old days.

That's how it is with consultation, and why it's crucial that all cultures find open minded youngsters to listen and learn and perhaps put what they learn into written documentation.

Stanley, I've found tons of documentation of the cambium trees in Wyoming.........and the scars from those are look much like the bow stave scars....however, I don't think that the inner bark from Juniper is edible (although it is great for soft fiber).

I've started looking into museum collections to find out if any of the collected bows are juniper and have met with no success at the present time.

[wstanley]

Good point, don't think they would be eating the inner bark but using it for making sandals or other such things. Good luck with the search!

 I had an appointment with the Yosemite curator to look at some Mono and Miwok bows - one of which is supposedly juniper with sinew backing (Eastern Mono).

On another cool note (I cant tell you where other than it occurred California) my friend on a survey found a juniper bow tucked under a rock shelter/site. Still waiting to date it. It was not a stave but a fully formed bow waiting to be sinew backed.

[Traxx]

Aren't we getting to the point where even the elders currently living are too young to remember those times?

Unfortunately Yes,,concerning Archery and its manufacture,especially in the region of "Juniper Stave Tree's" are concerned..I would be considered an Elder these days and i can tell you,i know of no other person other than myself,In my age group or older,that took the opportunity to talk to the Elders when we were young,about archery..As a kid,i was teased about it,by many and called Ishi boy,which i took as a compliment,even though they didnt intend it as such.....When the Elders,at that time saw my interest and effort,Some of them started talking to me about it..One Elder in particular,was close to 100 at the time and told me of making bows with his father...Firearms were in use at that time of course,but only to those that could afford them...He said his family used the bow more often than not..His father knew life before immigrants,to the area...He passed in the mid 70's..People of My Grandparents age had retained some of that knowledge but those of my parents age and younger,did not and really didn't have interest,in that aspect of the culture..It has not been until the last 20 or so years,that young native people have had that interest,rekindled..

[ArchyGene]

Good point, don't think they would be eating the inner bark but using it for making sandals or other such things. Good luck with the search!

 I had an appointment with the Yosemite curator to look at some Mono and Miwok bows - one of which is supposedly juniper with sinew backing (Eastern Mono).

On another cool note (I cant tell you where other than it occurred California) my friend on a survey found a juniper bow tucked under a rock shelter/site. Still waiting to date it. It was not a stave but a fully formed bow waiting to be sinew backed.

I look forward to seeing the reports about the bows from your neck of the woods.   But if you happen to have some measurements and photos of any juniper bows, I would be very greatful.  I'm in the process of changing the History display in our Rock Springs BLM office from historic trails to emphasize how one can do "experimental" archaeology and make the things people like to collect.  This has the benefit of being legal, as 90% of the natural materials one needs are indeed free to take from public lands.  (Provided you're not doing it at a commercial level venture.)

To this end, I have a replica Plains Woodland pot and I am working on a steatite bowl, and possibly a straight pipe or two.  I am also a passable flint knapper and dart thrower (atlatl).  But I would like to rough out a bow blank of juniper, and have very little to go on for measurements and photos.  My copy of the Coso report has problems and is missing pages.

[ArchyGene]

Aren't we getting to the point where even the elders currently living are too young to remember those times?

Unfortunately Yes,,concerning Archery and its manufacture,especially in the region of "Juniper Stave Tree's" are concerned..I would be considered an Elder these days and i can tell you,i know of no other person other than myself,In my age group or older,that took the opportunity to talk to the Elders when we were young,about archery..As a kid,i was teased about it,by many and called Ishi boy,which i took as a compliment,even though they didnt intend it as such.....When the Elders,at that time saw my interest and effort,Some of them started talking to me about it..One Elder in particular,was close to 100 at the time and told me of making bows with his father...Firearms were in use at that time of course,but only to those that could afford them...He said his family used the bow more often than not..His father knew life before immigrants,to the area...He passed in the mid 70's..People of My Grandparents age had retained some of that knowledge but those of my parents age and younger,did not and really didn't have interest,in that aspect of the culture..It has not been until the last 20 or so years,that young native people have had that interest,rekindled..

It is indeed sad.  Most of the archaeologists I know mean well, but our imaginations are colored by our culture and what we have experienced in the field.
There are no empirical studies for what we do, and the attempts to do so, have no choice but to face the same issue....we're modern (white, black, red, yellow..etc) soft civilized type, who NEVER had to do what the old ones did to survive.  We can replicate tools, but not the experience or history.

[Black Buttes]

I've really enjoyed this thread. I'm going to have to keep my eye out for these Juniper trees.
I live in Wyoming as well, near Sundance.