on plains indian shafting material.

[beartail]

hay yaw.i have been thinking on how important arrow shafting must have been to the plains tribes.i don't know much about the plains but I hear that a tree was a rare thing back then.was or is there a lot of shrubbery that don't ever get mentioned.whene ever I think about the plains,i see miles and miles of hills and grass,like dances with wolves,you know what I mean?i bet you could get a mess a stuff if you was ta go back and take you 4 or 5 hundred port offord cedar shafts with ya!!I bet shafts where traded far like flint was here.and I bet after a fight or a hunt shafts weren't just left behind.i bet ther has been many a time where a few warriors have had ther arrows jacked!10 or 12 comein up on 3 or 4 whom witch didn't get along well. well that's what I was thinkin.what thoughts yaw got on it?

[JW_Halverson]

Remember, where that movie was filmed there has been 130+ years of cattle grazing.  The creekbottoms looked much different, as did the draws and coulees.  Buffalo have a radically different grazing behavior than cattle. 

The creekbottoms and such were wooded with apex growth trees and plenty of underbrush.  Creeks also held beaver, and beaver dams interrupted flow while the critters clearcut.  New growth chokecherry and other shrubby growth from long established rootstock provided acres upon acres of high quality arrow shafting. 

Cattle, on the other hand are drawn to the woody draws and creekbottoms.  Between the hooves and the browsing, new growth hardly has a chance. 

[JEB]

I think a hundred years ago the landscape was a bit different as well. We metal detect along the Mexico border in New Mexico where Black Pershing and his crew hung out chasing Poncho Via around and we found a few old Army camp sites.  In the camp sites we found 6" long aluminum tent stakes.  We found   them in the sand but the fact that they used them would lead one to believe that the areas were grass lands rather than sandy desert land.
 

[Newindian]

Well while many places in the plains were just flat grass lands with no real land marks (such as northern Texas, although natives there lived in the canyons which have plenty of vegetation) it is important to remember that many plains tribes could cover huge distances in short times so they could draw the resources from a massive area. For example when the Comanche owned the plains people living in Austin Texas would be in immediate danger of Indians as far away as Oklahoma City, if memory serves the trip only took them a day or two. So a trip over to the next state for some arrow shafts may not of been out of the question.

[autologus]

I think a hundred years ago the landscape was a bit different as well. We metal detect along the Mexico border in New Mexico where Black Pershing and his crew hung out chasing Poncho Via around and we found a few old Army camp sites.  In the camp sites we found 6" long aluminum tent stakes.  We found   them in the sand but the fact that they used them would lead one to believe that the areas were grass lands rather than sandy desert land.

I don't think they would have used aluminum tent stakes because in 1884 aluminum was $1 per oz. that is the equivalent to a full days wages, aluminum was more expensive than gold.  If you found aluminum tent stakes they are more than likely from modern times from a camper that stayed in the same area and lost them in the sand.

Grady

[JackCrafty]

I don't know much about the Northern Plains area but in the Southern Plains there are reeds and weeds that make good arrows and the stuff grows fast... wherever there is water.  And it's true that buffalo graze in a different way than cattle, goats, horses, and sheep but there were lots of wildfires back in the day they wiped out everything on a regular basis.  The Spanish encountered mainly grasslands and savannahs with sporadic forests of conifers in the highlands and cottonwood/sycamore in the lowlands.

So, I think some arrow shafts were harvested during certain times of the year and from remote areas... and some from local sources.  It all depended on what properties you wanted in your arrows.  For example, if you wanted very straight hardwood shoots, you were in for a long journey.

[Oglala Bowyer]

I don't think nice arrow shafts were all that hard to find in those times. I'm a plains boy and just cut a bunch of arrow shafts behind my house the other day. The black hills was the Home Depot for a number of tribes in the area. I was told that the old Fletcher's at that time cut shafts whenever they could.

[tipi stuff]

   There was certainly arrow shaft material within the range of all Plains tribes. As Newindian describes, these folks could and would travel far and wide. It was common for Kiowa and Comanche raiding parties to go deep into Mexico. There are even several stories of war parties going as far as South America. They were not nearly as restricted in their movement as we are today. They didn't worry about cutting on private, or federal property, etc. Chokecherry, red osier dogwood, rough-leaf dogwood, current and even plum were available along various waterways that ran through the Plains. As Patrick mentions, there were also reed shafts that were being made in some of the marginal areas of the Plains. I make most of my shafts from rough-leaf dogwood. It is easy to find in my area. I have also made some phragmites shafts. I have a Cheyenne friend in Oklahoma that uses the same type of dogwood, but also uses chokecherry. A friend in Southwest Kansas makes his exclusively from chokecherry, because that is all he has around him. He has to drive an hour to collect shafts, but this is right in the middle of an area that was heavily travelled by Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa and Comanche people. Travelling farther to the east, still in Kansas, another friend has used a type of wild plum for shafts. None of the plum in my area would make a shaft, but his is a different type of plum and works quite well. Further north, red osier was used, which is a different type of dogwood than I use. Oglala Bowyer, I am guessing you are using red osier.
    Oglala cutting shafts whenever they could. I agree with that. Back in the old days, I think they probably cut and bundled shafts when they were in a good area for collecting, and then worked the shafts down as they moved from place to place. There are numerous of descriptions of cutting and bundling the shafts, and hanging them up in the lodge until they were ready to be worked. Keep in mind, these people had to always camp near water, and this is the likely place to find good shaft material.
    Bear tail, your mention of collecting arrows after a hunt or a battle is correct. Good arrows were extremely valuable. The reason for cresting the shafts was for identification of your arrows. After a battle, the victors collected arrows and returned the ones that belonged to their own people. The ones that were collected from the slain or routed enemy were kept by the one who found them. In a hunt, the cresting marked your kill as well as assuring you would get your misses back. You didn't take the arrows from a member of your own group; that was theft. Since everyone marked their arrows, everyone would immediately know you had stolen from your own people. This didn't go over very well in the old days, so would not have occurred too often. Unlike today, you could get more than a mere slap on the wrist for this type of indiscretion. On the other hand, taking arrows from someone that was not in your tribe was considered a worthy thing. There was a distinct difference between taking things from your own people; stealing, and taking from anyone else; capturing.
                                                                                                                               Curtis Carter

[JW_Halverson]

Red osier?  Everyone keeps asking if we have Red Osier here in South Dakota.  The only thing I have ever heard called osier around here is a scrubby willow that grows along creeks, but I have never seen any of it thick enough to make an arrow, and they zig-zag like a sidewinder in convulsions!

Can I get a Latin name?  Common names are about as reliable as the cable guy's service window times!

And instead of googling a Latin name for red osier, please start with the plant you are calling red osier and determine what IT'S Latin name would be.  I am betting we may be talking about several different plants here.

[tipi stuff]

Well made point JW. The stuff is also called red willow, but it is not a type of willow. The scientific name is Cornus sericea. The dogwood in my area is Cornus drummondii. Cornus drummondii is supposed to grow in North and South Dakota also, but I haven't been up there looking for it.   CC

[Dharma]

There were also extensive trade routes and shaft material could have been something traded. But walking quite some distance to obtain shafts would be no big deal for many peoples. You should see how far tribes here walked to obtain salt from a salt spring in the Grand Canyon.

[Oglala Bowyer]

JW the stuff that is commonly called red osier does grow and I've made some decent arrows from it. I didn't notice any of the zig zags you mentioned. In lakota we identify it as cansasa (chun sha sha). Tipi I use choke cherry but really favor June berry.

[tipi stuff]

    Meant to put June berry/ service berry on my list. Thanks Oglala. That is another one that I haven't used!
    JW, I run into the same problem with the zig-zag sticks down here. There are some places, and some years that I can cut really nice sticks; other times and places, I may not find a piece worth cutting.
     Oglala, I'm guessing you use the thin inner bark layer of that osier also.   CC

[Oglala Bowyer]

Tipi, you're right!  We do utilize the inner bark as well. You'll enjoy June berry.

[BarredOwl]

i don't know much about the plains but I hear that a tree was a rare thing back then.

I was at a seminar a couple years ago where there was a couple hour presentation about where trees were and their relative abundance in Kansas historically.  Basically what I took away from it was that the mostly treeless views of Kansas may have been created by whites moving through the prairie.   This speaker said there would have been several massive groves of cottonwoods in several places in Kansas.  Most of the white settlers that made it to Kansas were headed for the west coast and people later settled on the prairie.   But, as settlers heading to the west coast moved through and needed wood to repair wagons and the first few settlements were developed most of the trees had been sawn up for lumber and burned for firewood by the time this part of the country was very populated and the treeless pictures of Kansas where largely white man made at least in the eastern half to 1/3 of Kansas.   I am sure even before these events took place there were relatively large expanses of treeless prairie but I would bet the creeks and drainages and cottonwood groves would have had thickets of rough leaf dogwood and sandhill and American plum around the edges and scattered throughout these groves of trees.  If those areas had enough moisture and lack of fire to allow cottonwood to get established there were surely other shrubby species present.   It was a very interesting topic that really changed the way I pictured pre-white settlement Kansas.