NWTG in the Colonies?

[longcruise]

is either misattributed or shows that they were there in the time frame.

Where was this gun found? And is there documentation about where it was delivered to? There is a difference between “they existed somewhere in 1751” and “NWTGs were in the 13 colonies in 1751.”

They were called NORTHWEST trade guns for a reason. They were sold to fur trading companies in what was then the Northwest. Not called NETG New England trade guns. Not called MATG Middle Atlantic trade guns. Not named Virginia trade guns. You get the idea.

“Existing somewhere” and “ fairly commonly found in location X” are very different things.

Folks get a gun and then they want it to fit everywhere and in every timeframe. Very common.

“But they existed!” Haha

Don't know why you are quoting me here? I don't re enact and don't have any concerns about articles appropriateness to any period.

The discussion went to when and where they existed. My comment, quoted above, referenced that.

If someone acting out the rev war wants to carry a Remington 700 I don't care one way or the other.

 

[Clark Badgett]

HBC was making N.W. trade guns way before 1740 , and I said that in t you ...no , they did not come from a flat engraved side plate , there is not one example of one or any indication of a flat engraved side plate from any written records of the HBC ....where are you getting this BS from ? I would not be surprised if very early examples had a flat engraved side plate but the earliest example know , I posted pics , is from the 17 teens to 1720 ish and it is a cast side serpent sideplate .

Rob, do you own this book? You might want to get it if you don’t have it. It covers quite in detail the evolution of the early HBC trade guns to the later HBC trade guns.

 

[Rob M.]

I guy I met bought an original North west trade gun from a ware house in Winnipeg Manitoba a couple years ago and it was a percussion and the barrel was full of grease still .also it was 24 gauge 58 calibre that looked like it could be easily changed to flint .

That would be amazing to see ... certainly prefer a flintlock but being an original ...if it was originally made as a percussion I'd leave it in original shape ...

 

[WALT53]

That would be amazing to see ... certainly prefer a flintlock but being an original ...if it was originally made as a percussion I'd leave it in original shape ...

Yes sir it was an original apparently there were a few there that were all but forgotten about and he managed to get a few of them .

 

[LongWalker]

Hello. Were there NWTG’s in the colonies around the time of the AWI? I love my newly acquired NWTG and would like to think some were carried in that time and place. Thanks.

Before answering we need definitions. Let's define "colonies" as the 13 British colonies that became the original 13 states (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia), and "around the time of the AWI" as pre-1790. With those definitions, the last time I checked (2018 or so, I've done these searches periodically since 1981) I was unable to find any specimen of what we'd consider as North West guns with a provenance indicating use in the "colonies" during that time period. I was unable to find any mention of archaeologically-recovered specimens or components of North West guns from sites in the "colonies" with reasonably-secure dating to prior to 1790. In contrast, I found several instances supporting the use of matchlocks and snaphaunces in this region and time period.

NWGs start showing up in Ohio/Indiana/Ilinois by ~1790; possibly due to a combination of trade from the British and guns supplied by the British in support of the proxy war we know of as the Northwest Indian War.

Granted, my search to date has only covered about 3-400 books, 1,200 museum collections, 12,000 archeological site reports/analyses, and a few thousand pages of original records. I'm sure someone with more time could do a better job of it: I mean that in all seriousness, the last update of my search took a few hundred hours just with records published since my most-recent-prior search. But I think it is almost safe to say that there is no evidence that North West guns (a product designed and marketed at the time almost exclusively for the interior and northern fur trade) were in use in the "colonies" in the time prior to the AWI.

T.M. Hamilton , the great archeologist , uses the time line as such ... N.W. Trade guns with smaller bow trigger guards are pre1780 , N.W. trade guns with large " ox bow " trigger guard is post 1780 . This isn't a hard and fast rule but Mr. Hamilton was one heck of a archeologist and historian so.I bet its close . As the one gentleman mentioned ....there is a N.W. trade gun still in existence , which is amazing , that is dated 1751 , so that date for certain . I have pictures of the dug up parts of a NW trade gun from the 1740s ....So .... A couple things ... Were N.W. trade guns in the present continental U.S. during the Rev. War ? Yes ... Were they in the present continental U.S. during the F&I war or before ? ...I dont know . My guess , and as much as I love the N.W. gun I'm no expert ...my guess is they may have been in the Colonies but in very small amounts as the English fur traders were vastly outnumbered by the French fur companies.... that after the F&I War when the English moved from way up north , Hudsons Bay , and into what was once French Canada then the N.W. Trade gun were being seen and traded in abundance as the English took over the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River area for the fur trade ...

Hamilton suggested the enlarged (but smaller than later) trigger bows were an early characteristic, but as I recall he excluded conventional-sized trigger guards from the category of NWG.

There is the 1751-dated NWG at the MFT; there's a NWG in a British collection dated 1749 (having a triggerguard bow that is enlarged but still smaller than later NWG, cast dragon sideplate, no-bridle lock, octagonal-to-round barrel, but lacking the sitting fox/tombstone fox stamps), and a very similar gun in a collection in Scotland lacking a date but with provenance to the 1750s. There's another one in a British museum with a date to the late 1760s; again, no fox stamps.

None of these have the gracile dragon sideplate shown in the photos you provided of the archaeologically-recovered gun (almost makes me wonder if that is a transitional form). Where was this gun found?

Early NWG show up in the archaeological record after the F&I war in the areas of the Great Lakes (one early name in the literature relating to what is now the US is "mackinaw gun") and moving onto the plains (a 1777-dated gun from Wyoming, for example, and mention in the ethnographic literature of the Blackfoot having a few guns by the 1790s). But the form--the pattern--was out there earlier.

But none of this suggests NWGs were used--or even available--in the colonies that later became the first 13 United States.

 

[rich pierce]

Question answered.

 

[Clark Badgett]

Before answering we need definitions. Let's define "colonies" as the 13 British colonies that became the original 13 states (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia), and "around the time of the AWI" as pre-1790. With those definitions, the last time I checked (2018 or so, I've done these searches periodically since 1981) I was unable to find any specimen of what we'd consider as North West guns with a provenance indicating use in the "colonies" during that time period. I was unable to find any mention of archaeologically-recovered specimens or components of North West guns from sites in the "colonies" with reasonably-secure dating to prior to 1790. In contrast, I found several instances supporting the use of matchlocks and snaphaunces in this region and time period.

NWGs start showing up in Ohio/Indiana/Ilinois by ~1790; possibly due to a combination of trade from the British and guns supplied by the British in support of the proxy war we know of as the Northwest Indian War.

Granted, my search to date has only covered about 3-400 books, 1,200 museum collections, 12,000 archeological site reports/analyses, and a few thousand pages of original records. I'm sure someone with more time could do a better job of it: I mean that in all seriousness, the last update of my search took a few hundred hours just with records published since my most-recent-prior search. But I think it is almost safe to say that there is no evidence that North West guns (a product designed and marketed at the time almost exclusively for the interior and northern fur trade) were in use in the "colonies" in the time prior to the AWI.


Hamilton suggested the enlarged (but smaller than later) trigger bows were an early characteristic, but as I recall he excluded conventional-sized trigger guards from the category of NWG.

There is the 1751-dated NWG at the MFT; there's a NWG in a British collection dated 1749 (having a triggerguard bow that is enlarged but still smaller than later NWG, cast dragon sideplate, no-bridle lock, octagonal-to-round barrel, but lacking the sitting fox/tombstone fox stamps), and a very similar gun in a collection in Scotland lacking a date but with provenance to the 1750s. There's another one in a British museum with a date to the late 1760s; again, no fox stamps.

None of these have the gracile dragon sideplate shown in the photos you provided of the archaeologically-recovered gun (almost makes me wonder if that is a transitional form). Where was this gun found?

Early NWG show up in the archaeological record after the F&I war in the areas of the Great Lakes (one early name in the literature relating to what is now the US is "mackinaw gun") and moving onto the plains (a 1777-dated gun from Wyoming, for example, and mention in the ethnographic literature of the Blackfoot having a few guns by the 1790s). But the form--the pattern--was out there earlier.

But none of this suggests NWGs were used--or even available--in the colonies that later became the first 13 United States.

Then what are all those 1751-1780s examples sitting in a museum in Nebraska doing on this side of the pond. They came into the British colonies and got traded either to Indians within the boundaries of said colonies or taken into the border areas and traded. So yes, the Northwest gun was in the colonies prior to the AWI. To what extent should be the question.

 

[LongWalker]

The survival in Britain of early examples is due to partners or employees of HBC taking the guns with them when they returned to Britain. Until the NWCo started in 1784, NW guns were made on contract for HBC. HBC didn't do business in the 13 colonies, they mostly stuck to trading in the Hudson Bay basin. Post-1763, guns and other goods were shipped to Montreal and transported upriver, or shipped directly to York Factory. There was no transport through the colonies that became the 13 original states.

Traders in the pays de Illinois seem to have been trading English fowling pieces until around that date (~1784-ish). When the NWC started trading in Athabasca and points south, HBC moved in to protect their trade and the two companies eventually merged after some skirmishing and a brief war. NWCo also started contracting for NWG about that date.

The "examples sitting in a museum in Nebraska" are there because they were collected and transported there by Charles Hanson (in many cases, with very little provenance). They weren't originally traded in the area. Suggesting that presence in a museum in Nebraska somehow proves use in the colonies makes no sense.

 

[Rob M.]

Before answering we need definitions. Let's define "colonies" as the 13 British colonies that became the original 13 states (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia), and "around the time of the AWI" as pre-1790. With those definitions, the last time I checked (2018 or so, I've done these searches periodically since 1981) I was unable to find any specimen of what we'd consider as North West guns with a provenance indicating use in the "colonies" during that time period. I was unable to find any mention of archaeologically-recovered specimens or components of North West guns from sites in the "colonies" with reasonably-secure dating to prior to 1790. In contrast, I found several instances supporting the use of matchlocks and snaphaunces in this region and time period.

NWGs start showing up in Ohio/Indiana/Ilinois by ~1790; possibly due to a combination of trade from the British and guns supplied by the British in support of the proxy war we know of as the Northwest Indian War.

Granted, my search to date has only covered about 3-400 books, 1,200 museum collections, 12,000 archeological site reports/analyses, and a few thousand pages of original records. I'm sure someone with more time could do a better job of it: I mean that in all seriousness, the last update of my search took a few hundred hours just with records published since my most-recent-prior search. But I think it is almost safe to say that there is no evidence that North West guns (a product designed and marketed at the time almost exclusively for the interior and northern fur trade) were in use in the "colonies" in the time prior to the AWI.


Hamilton suggested the enlarged (but smaller than later) trigger bows were an early characteristic, but as I recall he excluded conventional-sized trigger guards from the category of NWG.

There is the 1751-dated NWG at the MFT; there's a NWG in a British collection dated 1749 (having a triggerguard bow that is enlarged but still smaller than later NWG, cast dragon sideplate, no-bridle lock, octagonal-to-round barrel, but lacking the sitting fox/tombstone fox stamps), and a very similar gun in a collection in Scotland lacking a date but with provenance to the 1750s. There's another one in a British museum with a date to the late 1760s; again, no fox stamps.

None of these have the gracile dragon sideplate shown in the photos you provided of the archaeologically-recovered gun (almost makes me wonder if that is a transitional form). Where was this gun found?

Early NWG show up in the archaeological record after the F&I war in the areas of the Great Lakes (one early name in the literature relating to what is now the US is "mackinaw gun") and moving onto the plains (a 1777-dated gun from Wyoming, for example, and mention in the ethnographic literature of the Blackfoot having a few guns by the 1790s). But the form--the pattern--was out there earlier.

But none of this suggests NWGs were used--or even available--in the colonies that later became the first 13 United States.

Nope .... N.W. trade guns weren't available anywhere near the 13 colonies and there were never any N.W. trade guns in any of the 13 colonies ever !! They outlawed their presence in the Colonies and were stopped at the border so none would ever be there . They were only used in Nebraska . In the original 13 colonies there were no French Type Cs, No French Type D ,no Fusil de Chasse , no Dutch Trade guns , No Belgium Smoothbores ( none of these folks had trade routes through the colonies ) No English trade guns .... Nope , just locally made fowlers . You are exactly correct !! Well done !

 

[Rob M.]

Yes sir it was an original apparently there were a few there that were all but forgotten about and he managed to get a few of them .

That is so incredible ! I love it . Years ago , it was my birthday and me and my woman visited the Campus Martius museum in Marietta .I was slobbering over this beautiful pre 1780 N.W. gun in their collection behind glass , darn near had my nose against the glass ! LOL ... The curator noticed my enthusiasm and ,I guess because of that and there were so few folks there he pulls out his keys , unlocked the case and hands the N.W. gun to me !! Puts in in my hands !! He's telling me the history of this unaltered original , where it came from , the family that donated it etc. Just amazing ...I was blown away to say the least ! Here is an original pre 1780 R. Wilson N.W. Trade gun in my hands !!! Happy Birthday to me !! It was so d@mn nice of him ! I couldnt believe it ! SO light , so thin ....just gorgeous ! Every time I get to hold an original one its a dream come true .... Love it !

 

[Fatboyz]

Well the debate continues! All I know fellas is that right now I’m sitting on the banks of the North Saskatchewan river, a half mile from the location of the original Rocky Mountain House, drinking a beer and reading this thread. Right where David Thompson headed out on his way to the HOWSE pass and a route to the Pacific Ocean. I can tell ya there were NW trade rifles here! lol. Maybe one day I’ll be able to find the $ to get me one of those Miller Muzzleloaders NW guns so I can hunt down a moose or deer along the banks of this fine river, in an area that is still very wild today!
Cheers fella’s!

 

[mikesto44]

One thing I learned a long time ago...Never say Never... Sooner or later it comes back to bite ya...

 

[Rob M.]

Well the debate continues! All I know fellas is that right now I’m sitting on the banks of the North Saskatchewan river, a half mile from the location of the original Rocky Mountain House, drinking a beer and reading this thread. Right where David Thompson headed out on his way to the HOWSE pass and a route to the Pacific Ocean. I can tell ya there were NW trade rifles here! lol. Maybe one day I’ll be able to find the $ to get me one of those Miller Muzzleloaders NW guns so I can hunt down a moose or deer along the banks of this fine river, in an area that is still very wild today!
Cheers fella’s!

D@mn kind thing to say Sir ... And you , living up there in that historic area get a 100 dollar discount ! CHEERS !!

 

[rich pierce]

Then what are all those 1751-1780s examples sitting in a museum in Nebraska doing on this side of the pond. They came into the British colonies and got traded either to Indians within the boundaries of said colonies or taken into the border areas and traded. So yes, the Northwest gun was in the colonies prior to the AWI. To what extent should be the question.

Umm, the old Northwest? When you say “colonies” I think of the eastern seaboard colonies. Do you mean the territory now occupied by states not in the 13 colonies? Ohio/Illinois/Indiana/Michigan/Wisconsin?

 

[Clark Badgett]

Umm, the old Northwest? When you say “colonies” I think of the eastern seaboard colonies. Do you mean the territory now occupied by states not in the 13 colonies? Ohio/Illinois/Indiana/Michigan/Wisconsin?

No, I mean the 13 colonies, where there have been archaeological finds of “Northwest gun” parts in 3 of them. Where they trying to entice the Indians in the border regions of the upper Ohio Valley in a little scrap in the late 1750s with trade fowlers or Brown Besses, or were they using the common trade gun already found to be popular with the natives, which just so happened to be in common production and looked exactly like the NWTG?

 

[mikesto44]

I'm not an "expert" historian....but didn't most items arrive through the Colonies..? Then we're taken elsewhere..?

 

[LongWalker]

No, I mean the 13 colonies, where there have been archaeological finds of “Northwest gun” parts in 3 of them. Where they trying to entice the Indians in the border regions of the upper Ohio Valley in a little scrap in the late 1750s with trade fowlers or Brown Besses, or were they using the common trade gun already found to be popular with the natives, which just so happened to be in common production and looked exactly like the NWTG?

Can you cite your sources for this? As I wrote earlier, I've not been able to find any authoritative source that places NWG in the 13 colonies that became the first states. Post-Revolutionary war, they do show up.

 

[Clark Badgett]

Can you cite your sources for this? As I wrote earlier, I've not been able to find any authoritative source that places NWG in the 13 colonies that became the first states. Post-Revolutionary war, they do show up.

Sure, just as soon as you use your real name so I know to whom I am speaking.

 

[oreclan]

Fowlers were very common during the rev war period. For militia use i don’t think expensive fowlers would have have been used not saying they were not used, just not likely, my opinion, rather more likely an older Fowler was more likely used than a higher quality English Fowler. A lot of New England Dutch Fowlers are often seen in Rev War museums, these were heavily built guns with large stocks, locks and higher calibers, some were even used as rampart runs. You’ll also see a lot of crude fowlers with dog locks and very early bridleless locks, sheet metal furniture etc. some folks reference these as trade guns too.

According to a Williamsburg gunsmith on YouTube the imported English fowlers were cheap to import, far cheaper than what they could charge for one they made in their shop.

 

[FlinterNick]

According to a Williamsburg gunsmith on YouTube the imported English fowlers were cheap to import, far cheaper than what they could charge for one they made in their shop.

Cheap to import does not mean cheap to own. Most of the colonial population at the time was extremely poor and what were the best quality imports being sent to the colonies? Imported goods from England to the colonies were often the least quality. If you review the types of fowlers used by militia in museum specimens and in private collections (actual physical evidence) you’ll see that the overwhelming majority of them are made with older locks and inexpensive materials such as sheet steel, sheet brass and copper. Some specimens don’t even have butt plates.

Also, the Williamsburg Gunsmith in the time of colonial Williamsburg produced the best and were of the most expensive and highest quality, not all colonists lived in Williamsburg. Lastly the term English Fowler does not always indicate its imported from England, it is a design, a specific style and pattern.