Hawken Sidearm?

[Smokey Plainsman]

Back when men were traveling the west with their Hawken plains rifles which were around as early as the later half of the 1830s and could be expected to have been in use throughout the early 1860s until the advent of unmentionables around 1865, did the mountain men and scouts ever carry a sidearm?

Traveling through indian country with just one shot from their Hawkens would seem to leave a man awful vulnerable. Maybe they carried one of the early Colt revolvers when they came around such as the Dragoon?

I tried to find any period references to mountain men carrying sidearms but came up short. Surely a few of them with the means got ahold of the newfangled caplock revolvers and carried them for defense, or maybe used older styled single shot pistols for the task.

-Smokey

 

[sourdough]

I think you are a couple of decades too early. The beaver trade pretty much dried up by the 1840's. The Dragoon was a "holster" pistol to be carried on the pommel of the saddle, not on the person. I think, if anything, they may have carried percussion (or even flinter) single shot pistols. The trappers were an aloof breed unless at a yearly Rendezvous.

Jim

 

[tenngun]

As said large horse pistols are known. HBC provided handguns similar to military arms.
The brothers Hawken made some big bore pistols.
Kit Carson did have a Patterson revolver in 1839, they were just three years old andColt would soon go bankrupt.
Certainly in the Plainsman period revolvers and pepper boxes would be seen as Sam was making guns along side the more successful second company of Colts

 

[Sam squanch]

I think Pattersons would be very rare out in the lonely places, An expensive gun when it came out. I think more pepperboxes were used more than people think, 5 or 6 fast shots, cheap enough to carry 2 or more. Not much stopping power, but you could slow down an enemy enough to get away. I would think a good revolver, Patterson or later, would be worth its weight in gold on the frontier.

 

[Hawken1980]

According to the book “The Plains Rifle”
Plains Rifleman had side arms.

Of course this could cover the later years of trading and more the Oregon Trail days but it is hard to say.

 

[Treestalker]

If it wasn't too much extra weight, I can see mountain men packing some 'difference'. It would be easier to pack when one is running the traps, a tradition continued to this day. What kind? A reliable caplock single shot would have been easily available. The Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith was killed in 1844 in Illinois while defending himself with a pepperbox revolver; his brother Hyrum was with him and died fighting with a large bore percussion single shot in his hand. Both of these weapons had been around a while. Surely some made their way out west.

 

[Notchy Bob]

I think Smoky Plainsman's question is a good one. It is important to note that mountain men did not disappear after the last rendezvous. Many of them continued to live on the plains and a surprising number continued trapping. Theodore Roosevelt described meeting several old mountain men into the 1880s. There are plenty of references to pistols and revolvers in the hands of early plainsmen in the literature of the period. Way to many to cite chapter and verse for every one, but a few are worth mentioning.

For starters, Charles Hanson wrote an article about fur trade handguns for the American Society of Arms Collectors: Fur Traders' Pistols Apparently, Mr. Hanson believed handguns were very common among the trappers and traders during the height of the fur trade.

This page from Harper's Weekly form November 1879 shows an older gentleman named Antonio Lopez, who doggedly clung to his "old-fashioned St. Louis rifle" well into the 1870s, and the article mentions "pistols in his holster."

The image is very clear, and appears (to me) to show a holstered revolver mounted on Antonio's belt. It is not surprising that he continued using his old rifle, though. Captain Marcy had this to say about the mountain men and their rifles in 1859:

Tenngun's post (above) mentions Kit Carson having a Paterson revolver as early as 1839, and we know Kit used a pistol in his famous mounted duel with "Shunar" (actually Chouinard), the French-Canadian bully at the rendezvous in 1835. Just for fun, here is a recent image of that duel, by artist Bob Boze Bell:

Jedediah Smith was carrying a brace of single-shot pistols when he was killed by Comanches in 1835. We have a photo of one of them, which was unfortunately stolen from the museum where it was on display a few years ago:

Supposedly, Jed's pistols were recognized when the Indians who captured them tried to trade them in. The Comanches were unfamiliar with the percussion system, being accustomed to flintlocks, and had no use for guns they could not shoot. The image shown above was from the Summer 2011 issue of Castor Canadensis, the Newsletter of the Jedediah Smith Society.

George Brewerton reported "six-shooters" in use in Santa Fe in his book, Incidents of Travel in New Mexico, which was published described a journey he took in 1848. Josiah Gregg, a well-known trader and author of The Commerce of the Prairies, reported having "...one of Colt's repeating pistols" at some point during his years in the trade, between 1831 and 1839, and at one point in his book (page 105), he described having a pair of them. He reported that a "horseman's pistol" was the preferred arm for buffalo running by Americans, but he was probably referring to single shot muzzleoaders in that statement, although there is ample documentation of revolvers being used for buffalo running after they became available.

Captain Randolph B. Marcy authored The Prairie Traveler: A Hand-Book for Overland Expeditions, which was published in 1859. By that time, both Army and Navy revolvers were well known on the plains. Marcy devoted space to discussions of firearms at several points in his book. Here he comments on the relative merits of the Army (Dragoon?) and Navy revolvers (page 165):

So, there is plenty of documentation to show that handguns of various descriptions were known and used "in the mountains" even during the pre-1840 timeframe. I doubt every trapper had one, but Charles Hanson seemed to think handguns were more common among the fur trappers and traders than is generally realized. Colt's revolvers were very well received by civilian and military plainsmen, evidently as soon as they were available. I think a .44 caliber Dragoon revolver would make a great companion for a later-styled Samuel Hawken rifle of the 1850's. For something representative of the period a decade earlier, that M1842 Aston horse-pistol that sold recently would have been perfect... I'm still kicking myself for not buying it when I had the chance!


Best regards,

Notchy Bob