American Traditional Weapon

When people think of American Indian weapons, the bow and arrow is usually the first thing that springs to mind-- and for good reason. Nearly every Native American tribe used some form of bow and arrow as a weapon for hunting, war, or both. Some tribes, particularly in South America, even used bows and arrows for fishing. Bows and arrows have been used in the Americas since the Stone Age, so different tribes had plenty of time to perfect this weapon technology. Scientists have learned that the oldest Paleo-Indian arrowheads discovered in North America are more than 13,000 years old! Some arrowheads made by Native American ancestors were even found together with the bones of extinct prehistoric animals like woolly mammoths and giant bison.

Most Native American bows were made of wood. The most powerful wooden bows were backed with sinew (animal tendons) to make them springier. Some tribes in the Rocky Mountain area used composite bows made from animal horn and layers of sinew. These were the most powerful American Indian bows of all, able to shoot an arrow completely through the body of a buffalo. Some tribes originally preferred longbows, while others preferred short bows. Once horses were introduced to the Americas, most Native Americans began to favor short bows, since they could be fired from horseback. Most Native American bowstrings were made from sinew, although some tribes wove bowstrings from yucca or other plant fibers. Most Native American arrows were wooden with arrowheads made of flint or another hard stone, although some tribes used copper or bone arrowheads, and hunting arrows intended for small game like birds often had no arrowhead at all and were simply sharpened shafts of wood. American Indian arrows were nearly always fletched with feathers to make them fly straighter, whereas the arrows of the Inuit and other polar cultures did not use feather fletching