All about the ancient tribes
Native Americans used many variations of striking weapons.
Striking weapons
What kind of weapons did Indians use?
Weapons and Tools of the Native American Indians. Indians had many types of weapons from guns, bows, lances, axes, war clubs and knives. Warriors carried their scalping knives, but they didn’t always take axes on war parties. Blackfoot warrior Weasel Head recalled, ”we carried no axes on war parties.
The Northwest Coast People had many different kinds of weapons. For example, they had spears, clubs, and daggers. Second they also had chisels, drills, and a stone hammer. Third, they also had darts, an atlas, a d-shaped adze.
The shafts for bows, arrows, and spears were also made of wood, while points for the arrows and spears were chipped from stone, as were many knives and other sharp-edged implements. A variety of bone tools were also made, primarily for processing animal hides into soft leather.
The weapons used by the Choctaw Native Indians included maces, war clubs, knives, bows and arrows and axes. The Europeans introduced muskets and then rifles. Their main enemies were the Chickasaw tribe.
A tomahawk is a type of single-handed axe native to the many Indigenous peoples and nations of North America, traditionally resembling a hatchet with a straight shaft. The term came into the English language in the 17th century as an adaptation of the Powhatan (Virginian Algonquian) word.
During the course of the war, the First Nations warriors used a wide range of weapons, including muskets, bayonets, rifles, pistols, bows, knives, tomahawks, clubs, swords and spears. These weapons were generally furnished by the American and British armies.
The principle Tlingit weapons were clubs, knives, and the bow and arrow, all of which were used by the other Northwest Coast Indians. The northern tribes used double-bladed knives with a long and a short blade on either side of a central grip.
Tlingit artists are known for their basket weaving, totem poles, and their exceptional Chilkat robes and other weavings. Here is a website about Tlingit artwork in general.
Their weapons were crafted from the resources around them: stone, horn, bone, wood and copper, and included bows and arrows, tomahawks, spears or lances, knives and war clubs. Blow guns were also used, but more for hunting than as weaponry.
Weapons that the Iroquois used include tomahawks (a small axe that can be thrown), bows (with string made out of sinew) and arrows (stone), war clubs
Shawnee hunters and warriors used bows and arrows, stone tomahawks, and spears. Shawnee fisherman used spears and nets.
The Choctaw relied a great deal upon corn, and also cultivated beans, squash, pumpkins and sunflowers. They gathered many wild plants, fruits and vegetables from the forests that surrounded their villages. They also relied upon hunting and fishing for subsistence.
The Choctaw observed many practices; one was called head flattening, which involved attaching a board to the heads of male infants in order to flatten them. This was a common custom among the southeast Indians.
Choctaws enjoyed the reputation of a peaceful, agricultural people. Their large numbers provided them with a measure of security from attack by their neighbors, and they are not known to have been disposed to seek military conquest. In fact, disputes among tribes in the region were sometimes settled by a game of ball.