Hudson's Bay Camp Knives

[sethwyo]

Well you two dropped lucky perhaps as in sorting out my old stuff and theres three pages of HB camp knives & the Blackfoot dags the sizes I had made one being for Geoff Flint of Ingle wood Ontario .Been many moons since but hope Geoff wont mind you see the Wolstenholme's knife was a supeiror knife compared to the Coulson article Freddy James & Think his wife Ivey worked & latterly Freddy ran" Washington" works such was the Volume of the US trade .They where up a passage on Broomspring lane When Freddy died, Ivey still kept working was always good to see them like a time warp great character's just Maybe Stan Shaw has a little place up Garden Street near Pettys old works . The potential was huge bur few young people would get into the trade I knew a lot of the old cutlers But the Communist Counsel regarded such trades an embarrasment & the Cutlers Hall hosted Steel works executives who could'nt make a knife if they tried '.Big Cutlers Feast 'complete sham.whlle the real Cutlers worked in garrets & dingey holes Like Colin Sampson who mostly made Sykes Fairburn,s in an alley off West street. Bloody Rickarts a German ruined the trade with cheep rubbish & the Mighty' Cutlers Hall' did nothing to stop them .Richards ' Gas lamp ' brand of tack . Still I'le never see Sheffield again I've about run my run Oh but what a run If they shot me tomorrow


Ide have still lived multiple ordinary lives . Pics tomorrow.
Rudyard


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Thanks for sharing

 

[Rudyard]

Thanks for sharing

Your Welcome. Rudyard

 

[Rudyard]

The topic of Hudson's Bay Camp knives came up in the Classified section, and rather than divert attention from the forum member's ad, we can move the discussion over here.

Just to be clear, we are talking about knives like this one:

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I don't remember how I first heard about these, but it was some time in the early seventies. Maybe from Carl Russell's book, Firearms, Traps, and Tools of the Mountain Men. There was an illustration of an HBC camp knife in that book, and a long paragraph of text discussing it. Not long after, I met a fellow who owned one, and he was kind enough to trace it and fill in the tracing with a very detailed drawing of the knife. I wanted one of my own after that. I narrowly missed getting an original at a very good price a few years ago, and as a consolation, I bought one from Dean Hazuka of Montana Americana. Dean makes a very good reproduction. This is the picture he took of my knife before he mailed it to me:

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This is a big knife. She weighs 20 ounces without her nightgown, and the blade is 8-3/4" long by two inches wide at the choil. The blade is .232" thick, or just under a quarter of an inch. The handle is five inches long. The walnut scales are pinned on with iron pins through very large (3/4") sheet brass washers. The originals, when new, were typically hafted with water buffalo horn, imported from Asia to the cutlers of England. You occasionally see these with other materials for handles, like this one in the McCord Museum:

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This one reportedly has a "bone" handle. I suspect the original handle split or came off somehow, and was replaced in the field. You sometimes hear that these knives, as well as butcher knives, were sold as blade "blanks," to be hafted by the end users, but I haven't found anything in the primary source material to corroborate this. In my opinion, the "country made" handles were replacements.

The best information I have indicates these were first introduced by the HBC sometime in the mid-19th century. This was from a short article in Canada's History magazine (December 2012 - January 2013 issue), Spectacular Knife. Also, in an article entitled "Collection Corner - The Buffalo Knife," apparently by Charles Hanson, in the Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly (Vol. 13, No. 3, Fall 1977), the author said, "During the last half of the nineteenth century a very spectacular knife was popular with the buffalo hunters on the western plains of Canada." If you are a hard-core reenactor, dates like this are important. The point being that you probably would not have seen one of these at a pre-1840 rendezvous. However, just today I found a listing online for a knife that may have been a direct ancestor of the camp knife. This one is dated 1834. It differs from the camp knife in some particulars, but you can see some similarities, too:

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In any event, these knives were very popular with the native and Metis hunters. In Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains (published in 1875), author James Carnegie wrote:

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In The Great Fur Land, published in 1879, Henry Robinson wrote:

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So, these knives were used for skinning and butchering animals large and small, and for cutting wood. John Ewers wrote that Blackfoot raiders carried "heavy knives," and these were used in construction of war lodges, which were A-framed structures of logs and poles used to provide shelter for men out on the trail. In the book, Piegan, by Richard Lancaster, it was recorded that large knives were used for digging "foxholes," or rifle pits. In his book, On Snowshoes to the Barren Grounds, Caspar Whitney reported his Dogrib companions carried similar knives:

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I have not really found any indication that the Anglo hunters or trappers used these much. You see frequent references in the literature to "butcher knives" and "scalping knives," but it appears from the reading I have done that the white fellows preferred hatchets for chopping. Dick Wooton said, "In a belt, which he [the typical trapper] always wore, he carried a couple of pistols, two large knives and a tomahawk. What we called a tomahawk was a kind of hatchet which we used to chop our meat up with, and in fact to do all the chopping that we had to do" ("Uncle Dick" Wootton, p.55). In My Sixty Years on the Plains, Bill Hamilton said, "Each man had his tooth-pick or large knife in his belt, besides a trapping hatchet. The latter contained two pounds of steel, a sharp and dangerous weapon in the hands of determined men who were contending for their lives" (p. 151).

So, what we have here is a very useful, multi-purpose wilderness tool that came into being sometime in the mid-1800's. This was a unique type of cutlery, specifically developed for the fur trade, and used for skinning everything from ground squirrels to buffalo. I think of it as primarily a Canadian knife, but we know for sure a few of them were carried south of the Medicine Line on the belts and in the hands of native and Metis hunters. The people who used these knives seemed to appreciate them, and more than one 20th century writer called them "spectacular."

Best regards,

Notchy Bob

Notchy Bob. You put that very well One Customer in Alberta had one made that had a drooping rear hilt .& the Coffin hilt one was a style I had made in Sheffield All the old styles Half Horse Half Alligator Tooth pic ect mostly J E Middletons Mark Made by Ron & Roy his sons out at Halfway near Sheffield though they where primarily surgical equipment grinders. If they where etched two old ladies used to do that. Every body in the trade knew each other . Well the'' Little Mesters' did .I've been out of the picture 25 years Most was for North America but some came down here I think I've one Ivey James made in a drawer not the sort of knife you would use perhaps a photo of my hunting knives might be of interest Ile dig some out . generally I went for sharp & light. We don't have any Buffalos (Aus does ) my knife I had as a Culler was just a rusted broken carving knife in a paper sheath ! Cobblers kids is always poorest shod !. The old broken sword Ivory hilt is a showy exception .
ile explain them but the last pic shows a horn I wore on the descent of the Klina Klini River in BC the axe worn slant wise so I could bend double to get under obstacles same plan with the knives & the By knives & often as not a flat file . aIl bends the horn would hit the axe so the scrimshaw scene of a Beaver pond rubbed off the trees & looked like mist in the back ground trees , The photo I copied was up Meldrum creak famous for Eric Colliers book' Three against the Wilderness ' I passed the turn off to reach the small settlement of Klini Kleen .took me 17 days to reach Hoodoo creek & the logging claim in Night Inlet famous for its Grizzley sightings . I carried a double 16 bore ml shotgun . The right for shot & small game the left had a ball in case met any potentially dangerous game .Considering the Black & Grizzley Bears, Mountain Lions, Wolverines, snakes & amorous Moose it's remarkable I didn't meet any but I wasn't hunting and always had a big fire camp .It hardly stopped raining Hence the rageing Hoodoo Creak. Did stop off at Shilling Lake guest of the Meyers couple who had a fine log home . this was 1973 or4 Iv'e still got the gear but not the energy! note their all worn at the angle the tommy hatchet was an old much altered Scots hatchet . My later in Māori style I gave to a friend no real need in NZ for an axe Pics to follow. Ok L to right

 

[Rudyard]

Old skinner with steel .Middleton knife ,Old sword with By knife next two light weight current use .Dudgeon & By knife Plug B net never used Cutlery hilt Middletons , common Scinner not used . next same mix but showing the files & steel & By knives inc the 6 rupee common Kukeri I Used to make hides to decoy UK Wood pigeons .inc pipe back not finnished .. lastly the Axe & flask showing Beaver dam scene & wear caused by Klina Klini trip . seems I missed my culler & Prosumers rusted broken carveing knife found in scrap when Possum ing .on the West coast near Seddonville winter of 1968.
Regards Rudyard