Faca De Ponta.

[Atlantia]

Originally Posted by Chris Evans

Hi Gene,



First, a big thank you for publishing all this terrific work on a very little known subject.

I think that to answer to your question we must first look into the agricultural and slaughtering/butchering practices of the region. Given the by the then strong proliferation of firearms, these huge knives must have had some utilitarian application; I read somewhere that they were known not as faca de ponta, rather as fish butchering knives, but I haven't had the time to follow this up.

Also, as blacklacrau said, they probably were status symbols too, much like officers swords are in modern times. I think it is fair to say that the absence of a handguard suggests that these were not intended for serious fighting, rather to facilitate carriage. The gaucho saddle facons often had full size sword blades but rarely a handguard; Now why would a weapon be stripped of such a valuable feature? IMHO because ease of carriage was the first concern and they were not intended to be weapons, rather slaughtering tools. In contrast, the shorter and nimbler fighting grade facons were often fitted with cross guards.

Cheers
Chris

Hi Chris,

You're welcome. I've really only 'borrowed' from the work of others and tried to put it all into one place. The difficulty is wading through the mountain of inormation about the outlaws etc and trying to find snippets of info or pictures showing the knives.

Here are a couple of the better pictures. I've digitally cleaned them slightly.