The Evolution of the Tomahawk

Many articles, essays, and books have been authored on the topic of the tomahawk, all of which have tried to define what a tomahawk is. These writings have created a host of definitions, categories and sub-groups, geographical trends, and, coupled with modern connotations, the waters are quite muddied. There’s a need for clarification. Thirty-five years of studying extant examples – museum pieces, private collections, and barrels of trade axes recovered from shipwrecks of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – and reproducing hundreds of the same as a blacksmith and knifemaker have yielded some insights that may help clarify the definition of that iconic object. 

The origins of the word itself are murky. The term “tomahawk” is an Anglo attempt at pronouncing an Algonquian word for tool or cutting utensil, tamahak or tamahakan. It is believed that the word entered the English lexicon by way of Captain John Smith when Jamestown was settled in 1607. At first, he used the word to describe an axe, though later he expanded the definition to include war clubs. Yet more meanings were added as history progressed, with writers describing stone tools such as celts, grooved axes, ball-headed war clubs, and iron axes under the umbrella term tamahak. The word came to mean virtually anything that could be swung with one hand.[1]

American Indians’ first exposure to the iron axe likely occurred when Vikings landed on the North American continent, though it would be more than five centuries before the object became more widespread. Once explorers and fishing expeditions began working the coastal waters of the New World, eventually pushing inland, the importance of the iron axe took hold. By the settlement of Jamestown in 1607, iron axes had made their way south from trade with the French in Canada, covering a region including the Great Lakes and reaching as far west as the trans-Mississippi. The Dutch and English also conducted trade in the New England area. The Spanish presence in Florida and the Southwest was less impactful in the introduction of iron axes to Native economies owing to the lesser degree to which forests covered those areas and the relative lack of furs.[2]

The great concentration of iron hatchets and tomahawks in the Northeast, the Great Lakes, and the Pacific Northwest in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had a significant impact on Native American cultures, their economies, and even the environment, contributing to the depletion of furs in the Northeast and Great Lakes. Indeed, by the end of the eighteenth century, blacksmiths could be found in Native towns.[3]

Lists of trade goods and treaty gifts during this span of time show that hatchets or tomahawks were among the most desirable trade goods, more so even than firearms. As many as three hundred axes could be handed out during a single treaty negotiation. In 1765, Sir William Johnson estimated that the Indian Department would need 10,000 axes for trade, a figure that doesn’t account for what would be needed for European colonists. The overall number of axes and tomahawks on the continent, between those locally manufactured and those traded in the colonies by the French, English, and Dutch, could reasonably be estimated in the hundreds of thousands.[4]

Between 1700 and 1730, variations on axes and tomahawks made appearances. One of the earlier modifications was adding a spike to a hatchet, producing what is known today as a spike tomahawk. These were more than likely derived from the larger British boarding axes of the period. Smoking pipes were then added to axes. Generally, early examples were heavier implements useful as weapons, tools, and ceremonial pieces, but by the end of the French and Indian War, smaller, lighter hatchets and tomahawks, more useful as implements of war than as working tools, were prevalent as well.  

Perhaps surprisingly, there are references to these smaller, lighter tomahawks being thrown in combat. Several accounts of American Indians doing so survive. In 1777, for example, Thomas Anburey, a British officer in General John Burgoyne’s campaign, said, “In pursuing an enemy the Indians threw their tomahawks with utmost dexterity and seldom failed striking it into the skull or back of those they pursue.”[5]

Owing to its importance and its constant use as a weapon, the tomahawk emerged as a symbol for both war and peace, giving rise to the phrases ‘burying the hatchet’ and ‘taking up the hatchet’ for making peace and going to war, respectively. Following the defeat of the Algonquins by the Iroquois in 1670, a council was held in which six tomahawks were buried, one for each of the Five Nations of the Iroquois and one for the defeated Algonquins, with the latter being lowermost. Thus, were the Algonquins ever to ‘take up the hatchet,’ or resume the war, they would be reminded of their defeat by the Iroquois.[6] The addition of the pipe bowl to the hatchet and its subsequent proliferation for ceremonial use only added to and cemented the symbolism. 

Pipe tomahawks became coveted items in the late eighteenth century, even if their production numbers were small compared to simpler hatchets. It is unknown who invented the implement, but the merit of the idea can be seen in the importance attached to it. The fine examples of these objects that survive and captivate modern audiences were likely spoils of war or heirlooms that contemporaries also treasured. 

The most common variation of the pipe tomahawk was a standard hatchet with a pipe bowl added. These were made in several different ways. Some were fashioned from a single segment of a gun barrel. This technique required little skill and forging and was often crude. Most, though, were of two- and three-piece construction, with a rapped eye (a reinforced handle socket), a bit of steel for a cutting edge, and a pipe bowl made separately. Pipe bowls were usually threaded and screwed in, though some were strapped and brazed on. Some pipe tomahawks were also cast in brass with a piece of steel dovetailed and brazed in for a cutting edge. 

The finer examples of pipe tomahawks had architectural elements such as panels and columns filed into them. They were most likely to be made by highly skilled blacksmiths and gunsmiths. These specially made examples, adorned with silver-inlaid blades and hafts and engraved with meaningful inscriptions to commemorate events or people, were commonly presented to influential political and military leaders, European and Native American alike. 

A whole host of variants of pipe tomahawks existed. Most notable is the spontoon type, modeled after the espontoon, a pole arm carried by commissioned and noncommissioned officers of European and American armies of the period. These pipe tomahawks were spear-shaped affairs with curled flanges near the handle portion of the blade. They were also referred to as dagger blades or the French type, though it should be noted that the French were not the only ones who made them. 

The tomahawk’s importance during the period extended to European and American militaries as well, being widely used by European settlers, militias, and the British and French armies. By the time the English arrived in the New World, the axe had become obsolete in European warfare. Up until approximately 1700, colonial military formations were typically armed with guns and swords. The French and Indian War changed this trend, however, with tomahawks replacing swords and complementing bayonets in the ranks of the British army’s infantry on the continent.[7] By the outbreak of the American Revolution, the Virginia Convention recognized that some settlers had access to and a preference for tomahawks when they passed the militia law in 1775 requiring “That every militia man so to be enlisted shall furnish himself with a good rifle, if to be had, or otherwise with a tomahawk, common firelock, bayonet, pouch, or cartouch box…and appear with the same at the place appointed for mustering.”[8]

The tomahawk’s use has extended into the present day, with the weapon being carried by American combatants in conflicts all the way to the Global War on Terror. I have personally sent two overseas: one for a participant in the Persian Gulf War and one for the war in Afghanistan. There is perhaps no greater testament to the tomahawk’s significance in American warfare and culture than this centuries-long relevance.

GREG BRAY is the Executive Director of the Pricketts Fort Memorial Foundation at Pricketts Fort State Park, a Revolutionary War era civilian refuge fort near Fairmont, West Virginia. He is also a blacksmith and knifemaker, and the owner of Bray’s Knifeworks.

[1] Harold Leslie Peterson, American Indian Tomahawks (Museum of the American Indian: Heye Foundation, 1965),4. 

[2] Ibid., 12.

[3] Eugene Bliss, ed., Diary of David Zeisberger: A Moravian Missionary Among the Indians of the Ohio, Translated from the Original Manuscript and Edited (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1885), 153.

[4] Peterson, American Indian Tomahawks, 13.

[5] Thomas Anburey, Travels Through the Interior Parts of America, by Thomas Anburey, a Lieutenant in General Burgoyne’s Army, Vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company), 238. 

[6] Peterson, American Indian Tomahawks, 16.

[7] Fred Anderson, The War that Made America: A Brief History of the French and Indian War (New York: Penguin, 2005), 129-130. 

[8] William W. Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619, Vol. 9 (Richmond: J & G Cochran, Printers, 1821), 27. 

Cover image: Trade Tomahawk, ca. 1800. (National Museum of American History)