The Indian's tomahawk was a brutal and effective weapon.
Native Americans used a variety of tools and weapons in their daily lives. They employed tools for preparing and storing food. Creating and maintaining shelter required tools. Their transportation depended on tools. Even the construction of their musical instruments demanded tools. Weapons were used for both hunting and for fighting their enemies.
Hunting and Killing: The Tomahawk
The tomahawk is the weapon most associated with Native Americans. The term "tomahawk" is a derivation of the Algonquian words "tamahak" or "tamahakan." The original tomahawks date back to the 1600 and were stone-headed devices used as tools and weapons. Subsequently the tomahawks came to mean a variety of striking weapons such as wood clubs, stone-headed axes and metal hatchets. Today the common understanding of a tomahawk is an metal hatchet-type instrument.
Hunting and Killing: Bow and Arrows and more
The Native American bow was shorter than the longbow used by Europeans, making it easier to use on horseback. The arrows were fashioned from flint and bone. The weapon could be fired phenomenally faster than a single shot musket; An experienced warrior could fire twenty arrows in the time a rifleman could fire and reload once.
Other weapons included spears, lances, and knives. The spears and lances were decorated with feathers.
Tools for Everyday Life
Pots and baskets were used for gathering water, storing grains and liquids, and cooking. Particular shapes and decorative styles of the pots and baskets became associated with individual tribes.
Native Americans made musical instruments such as flutes and drums. The flutes were made from redwood, cherry or walnut. The drums were made from log wood. It could take months to make a single drum.
They also made sports equipment. The lacrosse stick is a Native American invention.
Transportation
Native Americans didn't have wheeled vehicles, but they did use sleds, toboggans and dog-drawn travois. They traveled over water using dugout canoes, log rafts, kayaks and bark canoes. Birch bark was the most popular material for canoe construction. Although canoe construction was generally uniform among Native Americans, it was still possible to identify a canoe as belonging to a certain language family by its appearance. Algonkian designs are considered to be the finest and are still used as patterns for modern factory built canoes.
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