Native American weaponry was used by Native American warriors to hunt and to do battle with other Native American tribes and Europeans.
Native American weaponry was used by Native American warriors to hunt and to do battle with other Native American tribes and Europeans.
Weaponry for Native American groups residing in North America can be grouped into five categories: striking weapons, cutting weapons, piercing weapons, defensive weapons, and symbolic weapons. [1] The weaponry varied with proximity to European colonies, with tribes nearer those colonies likelier to have knives and tomahawks with metal components. [2]
Native Americans used many variations of striking weapons. These weapons were mainly used for melee combat with other tribes. In some cases, these weapons were thrown for long-range attacks.
English soldier and explorer Jonathan Carver described another striking weapon, the name of which he did not give, that, he said, was unique to the inhabitants of the Great Plains:
Having great plenty of horses, they always attack their enemies on horseback, and encumber themselves with no other weapon, than a stone of a middling size, curiously wrought, which they fasten by a string, about a yard and half long, to their right arms, a little above the elbow. These stones they conveniently carry in their hands till they reach their enemies, and then swinging them with great dexterity, as they ride full speed, never fail of doing execution. [11]
Cutting weapons were used by the Native Americans for combat as well as hunting. Tribes in North America preferred shorter blades and did not use long cutting weapons like the swords that the Europeans used at the time.
Piercing weapons consisted of both short and long-range weapons. They were used for hunting and combat.
Some Native American tribes carried shields into battle for extra protection. These shields were mostly made from leather stretched across a round wooden frame.
Many of the weapons that the Native Americans used served a more symbolic purpose.
Indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica and South America used many weapons similar to those in North America, including spears, bows and arrows, atlatl, clubs, daggers, and shields. However, several additional types of weapons were also used in combat.
A spear is a polearm consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with fire hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastened to the shaft, such as bone, flint, obsidian, copper, bronze, iron, or steel. The most common design for hunting and/or warfare, since ancient times has incorporated a metal spearhead shaped like a triangle, diamond, or leaf. The heads of fishing spears usually feature multiple sharp points, with or without barbs.
A spear-thrower, spear-throwing lever, or atlatl is a tool that uses leverage to achieve greater velocity in dart or javelin-throwing, and includes a bearing surface that allows the user to store energy during the throw.
A tomahawk is a type of single-handed axe used by the many Indigenous peoples and nations of North America. It traditionally resembles a hatchet with a straight shaft. In pre-colonial times the head was made of stone, bone, or antler, and European settlers later introduced heads of iron and steel. The term came into the English language in the 17th century as an adaptation of the Powhatan word.
Aztec warfare concerns the aspects associated with the militaristic conventions, forces, weaponry and strategic expansions conducted by the Late Postclassic Aztec civilizations of Mesoamerica, including particularly the military history of the Aztec Triple Alliance involving the city-states of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, Tlacopan and other allied polities of the central Mexican region. This united the Mexica, Apulteca, and Chichimeca people through marriages.
An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, or sometimes for special purposes such as signaling.
Knowledge about military technology of the Viking Age is based on relatively sparse archaeological finds, pictorial representations, and to some extent on the accounts in the Norse sagas and laws recorded in the 12th–14th centuries.
A ranged weapon is any weapon that can engage targets beyond hand-to-hand distance, i.e. at distances greater than the physical reach of the user holding the weapon itself. The act of using such a weapon is also known as shooting. It is sometimes also called projectile weapon or missile weapon because it typically works by launching solid projectiles ("missiles"), though technically a fluid-projector and a directed-energy weapon are also ranged weapons. In contrast, a weapon intended to be used in hand-to-hand combat is called a melee weapon.
Darts are airborne ranged weapons. They are designed to fly such that a sharp, often weighted point will strike first. They can be distinguished from javelins by the presence of fletching and a shaft that is shorter and/or more flexible. Darts can be propelled by hand or with the aid of a hand-held implement such as a blowgun. They can be distinguished from arrows because they are not used with a bow.
The term macana, of Taíno origin, refers to various wooden weapons used by the various native cultures of Central and South America. These weapons were referred to as a hadzab or hats'ab in Yucatecan Mayan.
The throwing stick or throwing club is a wooden rod with either a pointed tip or a spearhead attached to one end, intended for use as a weapon. A throwing stick can be either straight or roughly boomerang-shaped, and is much shorter than the javelin. It became obsolete as slings and bows became more prevalent, except on the Australian continent, where the native people continued refining the basic design. Throwing sticks shaped like returning boomerangs are designed to fly straight to a target at long ranges, their surfaces acting as airfoils. When tuned correctly they do not exhibit curved flight, but rather they fly on an extended straight flight path. Straight flight ranges greater than 100 m (330 ft) have been reported by historical sources as well as in recent research.
A woomera is an Australian Aboriginal wooden spear-throwing device. Similar to an atlatl, it serves as an extension of the human arm, enabling a spear to travel at a greater speed and force than possible with only the arm.
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of eastern North Africa, concentrated along the northern reaches of the Nile River in Egypt. The civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh, and it developed over the next three millennia. Its history occurred in a series of stable kingdoms, separated by periods of relative instability known as intermediate periods. Ancient Egypt reached its pinnacle during the New Kingdom, after which it entered a period of slow decline. Egypt was conquered by a succession of foreign powers in the late period, and the rule of the pharaohs officially ended in 31 BC, when the early Roman Empire conquered Egypt and made it a province. Although the Egyptian military forces in the Old and Middle kingdoms were well maintained, the new form that emerged in the New Kingdom showed the state becoming more organized to serve its needs.
A javelin is a light spear designed primarily to be thrown, historically as a ranged weapon. Today, the javelin is predominantly used for sporting purposes such as the javelin throw. The javelin is nearly always thrown by hand, unlike the sling, bow, and crossbow, which launch projectiles with the aid of a hand-held mechanism. However, devices do exist to assist the javelin thrower in achieving greater distances, such as spear-throwers or the amentum.
The gunstock club or gun stock war club is an indigenous weapon used by many Native American groupings, named for its similar appearance to the wooden stocks of muskets and rifles of the time. Gunstock clubs were most predominantly used by Eastern Woodland, Central and Northern Plains tribes in the 18th and 19th centuries.
A macuahuitl is a weapon, a wooden club with several embedded obsidian blades. The name is derived from the Nahuatl language and means "hand-wood". Its sides are embedded with prismatic blades traditionally made from obsidian, which is capable of producing an edge sharper than high quality steel razor blades. The macuahuitl was a standard close combat weapon.
Mughal weapons significantly evolved during the ruling periods of its various rulers. During its conquests throughout the centuries, the military of the Mughal Empire used a variety of weapons including swords, bows and arrows, horses, camels, elephants, some of the world's largest cannons, muskets and flintlock blunderbusses.
Many different weapons were created and used in Anglo-Saxon England between the fifth and eleventh centuries. Spears, used for piercing and throwing, were the most common weapon. Other commonplace weapons included the sword, axe, and knife—however, bows and arrows, as well as slings, were not frequently used by the Anglo-Saxons. For defensive purposes, the shield was the most common item used by warriors, although sometimes mail and helmets were used.
During the American Indian Wars of the mid to late 19th century, Native American warriors of the Great Plains, sometimes referred to as braves in contemporary colonial sources, resisted westward expansion onto their ancestral land by settlers from the United States. Though a diverse range of peoples inhabited the Great Plains, there were a number of commonalities among their warfare practices.