Tlingit Double Dagger

[tom hyle]

Originally Posted by aiontay

Is it possible that cut down sword blades were made in to daggers? On the southern plains we used sword and bayonet reconfigured as spear heads.

Apparently as people who were already metal smiths, the North West coastal peoples preferred to reforge rather than regrind their source materials, so it's much harder to tell. Word of mouth is that they used such things as worn out tools, iron tires, and even barrel hoops. Certainly a large chunk of carbon steel like a foreign sword blade might be in danger of getting reforged in such a community.
The Maori use a wooden sword ("club") with a rounded or squared tip, that has on the back end of its handle, a dagger blade. There is a resemblance. (also to a certain African type though on those the backspike isn't actually a blade)
I notice cultural and artistic resemblances do not seem to be contained by supposed barriers like oceans to anything like the extent that is sometimes supposed.

[Tim Simmons]

The item that started this thread does indeed look as if it could be from the 19th century. It can be bit of a minefield Native American stuff "I have learned at my cost" but it is out there. Perhaps you are lucky. Much like the British Museum which has massive totem poles in its atrium. Picked from the source just at the time, late 19th century when the use of local art was at its most weak in a cultural sense.

This will sound a rather "erich von daniken" but I am begining to believe that iron work was happening in the Pacific North West well before official Western/European/USA contact.

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by Tim Simmons

The item that started this thread does indeed look as if it could be from the 19th century. It can be bit of a minefield Native American stuff "I have learned at my cost" but it is out there. Perhaps you are lucky. Much like the British Museum which has massive totem poles in its atrium. Picked from the source just at the time, late 19th century when the use of local art was at its most weak in a cultural sense.

This will sound a rather "erich von daniken" but I am begining to believe that iron work was happening in the Pacific North West well before official Western/European/USA contact.

Indeed it was, from contact with China and Siberia via trade networks operating in the regions to the north.

[Tim Simmons]

Just happen to find myself in town today making a delivery so I took a few snap, Japanese lunch and two or three beers.

[Tim Simmons]

This one too.

[David]

Originally Posted by Tim Simmons

This will sound a rather "erich von daniken" but I am begining to believe that iron work was happening in the Pacific North West well before official Western/European/USA contact.

I could be mistaken, but i believe it has already been established that iron working was taking place in the PNW before European contact. Nothing van Daniken about it as i don't think this skill has much to do with space aliens...

[Jim McDougall]

Thanks Tim, as I was noting when I mentioned that iron working was already established was that your observation was astute and quite far from the von Daniken malady. Thank you for the pictures!

[Battara]

Wasn't von Daniken an alien?

[David]

Originally Posted by Battara

Wasn't von Daniken an alien?

That all depends on where you are from...

[fearn]

Ummm,

Unless we're talking iron ground from a meteorite (as in the Cape York meteorites), I'm pretty sure that the Pacific Northwest Indians didn't make their own iron.
Here's why:

1. Geology. As a west-coaster, I know a little about the geology here. It's great for gold. Copper too, in the interior. Iron? Not so much. I looked online, and I could find only one iron mine in British Columbia. The geologic environment's not very good for it. If we were talking about the area around the Great Lakes, I'd be more of a believer, because there's a lot of iron in the ground around there. Oddly, they didn't work iron there.

Anyway, iron is comparatively rare in the PNW.

2. We're missing all the other infrastructure that goes with iron working and smelting. The most important is that you can't do it in a wood fire. You need a forge, which needs charcoal, to produce the heat required to smelt iron (or even to work it).

Such heat is good for other things, like ceramics and high quality pottery, and these often come first in the archeological record.

Did the PNW people even use pottery? I don't think so. I'm also pretty sure they didn't know how to make charcoal either.

Since the infrastructure to work iron is missing and the ore is rare, I'm pretty sure they weren't making iron pieces prior to contact. Again, they may have obtained bits of meteorite and ground them into useful shapes, but that's a different kind of iron use.

My 0.0002 cents,

F

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by Battara

Wasn't von Daniken an alien?

One thing for sure he sold a lot of books! Kinda reminds me of the time I went into a book store and was trying to find a history of Africa.....after browsing through it, I looked at the store clerk and said, 'what kind of history of Africa is this? there's not a single word about Tarzan!!!! The guy nearly fell off his ladder.