If you look at a modern recurve bow, you will see how short they are compared to longbows. I love longbows and simple bows but if you look at a Haida bow (I have seen a collection in the anthropoligy musem in Vancouver bc, go there if you get a chance) you will see that they had the best yew on the planet, they used sinews, they recurved the tips, there bows are highly refined works of art like everything they made. A price tag of $10 000 in today terms would not be silly.
They made the bow as short as they could, they made it as light draw weight as they could for its use. The reason for this is because as a people with LOTS of artistic value to their culture and ones with some of the most impressive art, homes, ... on the planet, they of course found the best design they could. It is also safe to say their arrows, in todays terms would be worth say $100 each if you imagine the time involved
They had a bow that lasted a lifetime so, like all their belongings it was a very valuable thing that had a very specialized person working on it for a very long time from harvest to finish. Not everyone had or needed a bow, as they had not effort needed to collect fish and shell fish, they only needed to hunt for extra food. Food on the Haidia Gwai (up by alaska) was overflowing up until it became a resource to be extracted in huge amounts for sale to city folks, they it was gone in a flash.
Compare these bows to English bows, and as far as war goes these are some of the best, the design is great for getting lots of bows from a tree, they were easy to make. But for the Haida these would be crude, ugly, primitive weapons made without the effort it takes to make one of beauty, made in a way that someone would have to spend their lives in service of it to the king, the Haidia were free people and did not really have people of authority above them to force them to shot all day, haida did many other things with their time, and when the picked up a bow they did not need to strain their bodies, they were looking for something automatic like a gun, that bow design came from thousands of years of finding the perfect balance.
But, I did see a slightly longer bow, thin, yew wood, very narrow, without recurve, this was a bow found in british columbia of unknown tribe. I was very beautiful too, but without he art work.
The west coast peoples were many diverse and they can not be talked about in the same sentence as some sort of group any more than the whole of Europe could be, but it seems the Haidia wanted there bows to be very easy to pull back, easy to carry and store and of course beautiful to the eye. They did not want to shot far or hard, they wanted to shot perfect and natural and instinctive.
If you imagine pulling back a light bow with the perfect balance, with a perfect arrow, so smooth and so nice to shot, with no hand shock and very little noise, and how fast and slick that arrow would go, it would be a very prized bow, compared to the english war bow.
I wouldn't imagine there was to many highly skilled archers compared to the peak time in English warbow history, but you have to remember a english archer shots bows eats and sleeps, goes along with his despirate life in service to his masters, he gets good at this on thing. Haida were free people, they had no rent, no royal duties, archery was one of many of their things they might do, and they were 1st and foremost artists looking for the most pleasing lines in everything they did, functional of course but funtion without form was crude and primitive to them.
I am sure they would find our ways of life today rather primitive too.
check out - to see some bows from he haida
http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/haida/
