Get Your Tickets to the Gun Show

Larry Horrigan showing off his homemade birchbark vessel.

          Hello everyone! My name is Gretchen, I’m a senior at Western Michigan University studying anthropology and comparative religion. I hail from Saint Clair Shores, Michigan. Wednesday, July 18^th, was the second lecture in our series for this year’s Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project field season. Larry Horrigan, our speaker, came well-prepared in his full 18^th-century get-up and demonstrated much of his life’s work and homemade replicas to a full audience. Larry is well-versed in technologies used by the Native peoples and Europeans that would have inhabited Fort St. Joseph. He explained much of how technologies between the two cultures before contact were very similar and how after contact were incorporated in new ways.

          The audience was enlightened about many of the similiar technologies that Native peoples and the Europeans were using during the fur trade; tools were created differently but held the same functions. Europeans were known for their flint-lock guns and their many variations as Natives are recognized for their use of bows and arrows. The Europeans moved in on Native Americans when building their colonial forts in which they had to find a way to live together. The Natives and Europeans crossed cultures in many ways, while retaining some distinctive cultural traits.

Larry explained to us the different types of technology used by Native peoples and Europeans in every aspect of their lives. He explained different variations of firing mechanisms such as wheel locks used with pyrite, flint locks, round-face locks, and match locks. Some were more popular than others as suggested by  documents explaining that Europeans  sent over a hundred match locks to New France (the forts) in which they were returned and flint locks were requested instead. As for subsistence tools, Europeans used different recipes of copper to create copper/brass kettles. To create shelter, several different types of tools were employed for specific uses. For instance, they had axes made for scoring logs, shaving logs into square posts, and splitting them. 

A portion of Larry Horrigan's flintlock muskets.

Bows and arrows, Larry described, were used by Native peoples in a variety of manners for survival. They used different materials for projectile points such as bone or stone, and even dull, bulbous points for blunt blows. Often, Native peoples employed technologies created from natural elements (like animal bones) to complete tasks that the Europeans would have manufactured out of metal. Natives had many simple tools (requiring less parts needed to create and use the tools) to build their canoes and to collect rice with. As Europeans utilized copper/brass kettles, Natives utilized clay vessels for cooking.

The Europeans and Natives had much to learn from each other. The Europeans in a new environment of the New World were educated about snow shoes from the Natives. The snow shoes were intricately designed wood frames with thin-cut animal hide woven together as support. Native peoples had much to learn from the Europeans as well. They adopted the brass/copper kettles for their intended purpose, and then repurposed them many times to create new items. As Larry put it, Native peoples “used them to death, literally.” Natives repurposed metal objects for things like gun repair, making knives, and creating personal adornment such as tinkling cones. Guns were adopted from Europeans as well. Guns became so popular among the Natives that gun technicians and specialists were sent all around New France to facilitate the gun industries among them.

Overall, it is interesting to see the history of technology as well as how we can learn from one-another and see the same things in different perspectives. Once again, we would like to thank Larry Horrigan for sharing his passion with us. I hope to see you all at the next lecture!

Dr. Nassaney, Larry Horrigan, and Dr. Brandao at the site.