Answer to question one; Both.
Pipe hawks were often highly decorated adornments but they were also functional (probably not good wood choppers). Simon Kenton carried a dent in his head deep enough to hide a hickory nut due to being poped with a pipe hawk.
Answer to question 2:
Of course drilling a hole through the handle will weaken it! You are drilling a hole through the handle from one end to the other and removing part of the wood! Besides weakening the handle it is a really dificult task to accomplish!
Answer to question 3:
At ther alamo? While many things are possible they may not be probable. The white frontiersmen had developed better styles of hatchets by the beginning of the 1800s and the KY hatchet, or any other style polled hatchet, would have been prefered. The pipe hatchets had always been trade items for the NA market.
As an example:
Lewis and Clark got their "trade tomahawks" with the Harpers Ferry arms order, the better hatchets they intended to use for the unit, were purchased in KY as they traveled down the Ohio. (1803)
There was one unit of Chickasaw Militia that mustered during the Civil War armed only with tomahawks. (Don't remember where I read that! Civil War Guns I think.)
Were tomahawks at the Alamo? Not really something I have worried about to any length. I'm still wondering what happened to Bowie's big knife!
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