native americans

[zak1]

Can you get information for my school project about bows and arrows

[Mikeyd2]

Here's a little bit of info to help you along ......Use google etc to find more ....

On the American continent the woodland Indian tribes of the East, the buffalo hunters of the West and the coastal tribes used the bow to battle nature for their food and shelter. Bow wood was limited to what the land could supply�shagbark hickory, ash and white oak in the East; osage orange and cottonwood in the West. Bowstrings were usually made from deer or buffalo tendons or the skin of a snapping turtle's neck.


Early settlers found out the painful way that the Indian was a skillful adversary, but not because of the quality of his bows and arrows. The Indian's skill lay in woodcraft�no modern archer can approach him in the ability to stalk his quarry and kill it. Although some Indians, like the Seminoles, had powerful bows that were almost young trees, the weapons of many tribes were short-ranged and inaccurate by modem standards.

[Octavius]

Archaeologists believe that Native American hunters began using the bow and arrow relatively recently, that is, around 1200 years ago. While 1200 years ago may seem like a very long time, consider that there have been people living on the North American continent for at least 13,500 years. At about 1200 years ago, the atlatl (a sort of spear-throwing stick) was replaced by the bow and arrow. This weapon gave hunters even more accuracy, distance, and speed in their shots. It also allowed hunters to be more secretive. They could move up on and shoot their prey while crouching behind a bush or from within a prairie of tall grass. This was a clear advantage over the old-style hunting method: hunters using an atlatl could hurl a dart or spear only when they were standing erect, revealing their position to an easily spooked herd of deer. Hunters could also carry many more arrows than darts on their hunting trips.

Bow and arrows differed in size and shape, as well as the materials used to construct them. Early bows were often 1.0 � 2.0m in length�taller than a man, in some cases! After Spanish explorers brought horses into the New World and Native Americans began hunting on horseback, shorter bows were developed for ease of handling. The mounted hunters and warriors were skilled with their weapons, whether hunting buffalo or engaged in battle. Texas Ranger Noah Smithwick recalled that Lipan Apache Indians could shoot a dozen arrows in the time that it took for a man to load a muzzle-loading gun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlatl


http://www.deepcreektimes.com/kids/november200 3.html

[heathfield]

If, as many now believe, the Solutreans from Europe were the first people to arrive in America some 20,000 years ago, they would have made full use of the bow and arrow. They were expert at making fine flint arrowheads, even multi-barbed ones.