Persona with a Wilson Trade Gun

[medicine_duck]

I know I'm working backwards here, but I would l like to build a persona and add to my "kit" based on my guns that have appealed to me.
I have a Wison pattern trade gun and a NW canoe gun. What time period and locations would these fit in?
I dont want to go too late and I would like to get a new horn and make sure the time period and geography is correct.

 

[Grenadier1758]

The NW canoe gun dates to about 1980. Yes, Pontiac had a number of guns shortened to be hid under blankets during Pontiac's War in 1763. Yes, buffalo hunters used a shortened smooth bore to shoot buffalo from horseback. Purpose built smoothbores for carrying in a canoe there is no documentation other than some modern gun builders who called a shortened smooth bore a "canoe gun".

The Wilson pattern trade gun should date from late 1780's on through the percussion period. There are others on this forum that can give a better answer.

 

[Rat]

Having spent many years in a canoe, which involved much hunting with and from the canoe, (have now graduated to sea-kayaks) I can say that a long gun works fine, in said canoe. Hunted many a duck with a 30" barreled double barrel, from a canoe. From that experience, I don't see how a "canoe gun" would be any handier or more easy to use, in a canoe. Only makes sense superficially.

However, it does make sense to me that any musket with a badly damaged barrel would be cut down, and be quite handy in a tent, teepee, or small cabin. Having owned a few horses, I can just imagine how many muskets wound up with badly bent barrels when the horse got some bone headed notion that it was being attacked by ghosts, or any other notion that causes a horse to go out of control when horse back and pack horse was the main means of transportation.

Perhaps we should call them "Tee Pee" guns. "Purpose built" probably not, but I don't think we should "poo-poo" the existence of such guns, or those who include them in their "persona". (I don't have a persona, but my Brown Bess does)

 

[tenngun]

I know I'm working backwards here, but I would l like to build a persona and add to my "kit" based on my guns that have appealed to me.
I have a Wison pattern trade gun and a NW canoe gun. What time period and locations would these fit in?
I dont want to go too late and I would like to get a new horn and make sure the time period and geography is correct.

exactly how long is the barrel? Although Canoe gun is modern 30” barreled guns were sold, and of course any gun could get cut off.
We read of NWG being sold in great numbers mostly to indians, but also to French Canadians and French trappers and fur workers from the States, while ‘Americans reached for a rifle’.
English workers for HBC were encouraged to get a smooth bore as it shot as well as a rifle to sixty yards.
However lots of them were in the west so plenty of men could have had one. Even as a back up. Then too corrected vision was rare. A smoothie will do as well as a rifle as far as a nears man could identify a deer or an enemy.
A mountain man, company worker, Santa Fe trail man, poor farmer on frontier edge, all could have had one.

 

[Artificer]

I know I'm working backwards here, but I would l like to build a persona and add to my "kit" based on my guns that have appealed to me.
I have a Wison pattern trade gun and a NW canoe gun. What time period and locations would these fit in?
I dont want to go too late and I would like to get a new horn and make sure the time period and geography is correct.

Here is some info you my enjoy on Richard Wilson:

http://americansocietyofarmscollect...content/uploads/2012/11/85_bailey_wilsons.pdf

Gus

 

[spudnut]

According to Caywoods website, his Wilson dates to the 1750s. In the book Trappers and Mountain men in the American Heritage series, theres a picture of a shortened nwtg pictured though it is a percussion lock, about as big as the modern named canoe gun.

 

[medicine_duck]

By reading the above article, it seems that the Wilson would fit from the F&I war to after the war of independence. And also could have been used all along the colonies, north to south.

 

[Artificer]

By reading the above article, it seems that the Wilson would fit from the F&I war to after the war of independence. And also could have been used all along the colonies, north to south.

Yep, Richard Wilson was a very prolific gunsmith/factor/contractor, though of course he did not personally make all the guns sent here during the 18th century. Since your gun is Pre FIW, it is good for that and AWI reenacting/shooting.

Gus