Use of the Sword by American Indian Tribes

[David]

Originally Posted by Edster

David,

Well said. It would be interesting to learn how they got their raw material. Did they smelt and refine iron ore from scratch? Research suggests that iron was independently bloomed & smelted in sub-Saharan Africa from iron-rich sand. The techniques apparently did not arrive via cultural diffusion as had been previously believed.

Best,
Ed

I believe in most cases their iron source was from European sources, either as found scrap from ship wrecks and other abandoned resources or gotten in trade. Certainly some of their blades were re-dressed trade blades, but their are quite a god number that they obviously forged themselves.
Here is a link to a dagger in the Met that they date to 1780 which they say could have been either trade iron or from meteorite. I don't think iron/nickel meteorite requires smelting to forge it, though i could be wrong. I have yet to find any definitive information on who the Tlingit learned their forging skills from.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/717584
And the first article i posted above has this to say about material sources:
"The earliest record of steel blades on the coast comes from the Ozette archaeological site on the Washington coast, where 37 steel-bladed tools and but one beaver-tooth knife were found, indicating the ubiquitousness of the material. Prior to the advent of Euro-American trade, iron and steel would have arrived either via Native trade north from California and Mexico, or in the form of ship’s fittings in Asian wrecks that came ashore on the Pacific coast. Some such shipwrecks arrived as weather-beaten fragments of Chinese or Japanese vessels, while others arrived essentially intact, though dismasted and without their steering rudders, blown out to sea by typhoons along the Japanese coast and carried east by the prevailing currents. In some cases even some crew members survived, to be taken in by the resident populations*. In addition to ship’s fittings, woodworking tools were usually aboard these vessels for maintenance and minor repairs, and were also carried on some sailings as cargo. All of these materials and tools would have had a great impact on Native society and technology."