Who would have imagined that in the past 130 years, the short time during which we have been aware that ancient Homo sapiens existed, we would experience a great need to re-learn their ways of life as a means to rescue ourselves from ourselves. Many elders of the native American cultures are preaching for a return to tradition but it is not exclusively their tradition. It is the tradition of us all. We can and should listen to and study what they are saying, and apply it in our lives to whatever degree possible. If each person does something, an ever-growing world awareness truly can alter the collective consciousness.

To Ralph Waldo Emerson’s question, “Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past?” we can answer, “Because our ancient cousins knew a few basic things about life and living that we have forgotten and will have to re-learn if we are to have any future at all, let alone a future that will allow us to evolve further and realize our as yet undreamed-of human potential.”

MAN’S WORLD IN ICE AGE TIMES (beginning with Homo sapiens (archaic) about 250, 000 years ago) extended from the crown of Eurasia to the Cape of Good Hope, and from England across Siberia. Later Homo sapiens (modern 10, 000-35, 000 years ago and Neanderthal 32, 000-125, 000 years ago) spread farther—peopling northern Europe and Siberia and by about 50, 000 years ago moving on to Australia by sea and later across the Bering Strait to the Western Hemisphere.

Source(s): Epic of Man. Courtlandt Canby, ed. (New York: Time Incorporated, 1961) pp. 15-16. Brian M. Fagan, The Journey From Eden (London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1990) p. 235.

Steve Watts

The Ultimate Weapon

The Southeastern Indian Rivercane Blowgun

In the summer of 1954 I stood wide-eyed in the cool shade of the big trees and watched an unnamed Cherokee man shoot a thistle fletched dart from a rivercane blowgun.

It sped from the muzzle in a blur, and before I could blink or think or try to understand, it was there-stuck firmly in a softwood log target.

To the Cherokee man, I was just another nameless seven-year-old boy. I was one of hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of seven-year-old boys who had witnessed his demonstration that summer on the Qualla Boundary in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. But to me, he was a magician. With a few sticks and a tuft of dried plant fibers he had opened a door.

A man, a boy and a rivercane blowgun—tied up tightly forever in a bundle of childhood memories.

The Legacy

To the historic Cherokee, Creek, Houma, Catawba, Yuchi, Choctaw, Seminole, Natchez, Chitimacha, Biloxi and other native peoples of the North American Southeast, the blowgun was an important and valued hunting weapon in the pursuit of small game. To the Catawba, Choctaw and Cherokee, it remains to this day a symbol of traditional values and cultural pride.¹

Old guns are carefully curated and even venerated—being passed down through extended families generation after generation. Recently, I was privileged to inspect (and shoot!) a 150 year-old Cherokee gun. The patina of its surface (literally golden) was surpassed only by the glass-like smoothness of its bore—the result of the passage of countless numbers of darts through its interior. Its owner had just recently obtained it. It was the blowgun that he had shot as a young boy under the tutelage of a man who hunted with it regularly in the 1920s and ’30s.² To the new owner, it represents not only a piece of the Cherokee spirit and passion, but the memory of a valued teacher and friend as well.

Contemporary traditional Choctaws and Cherokees highly prize the blowgun’s use as well as its survival. Blowgun competitions are fierce at annual fall and summer fairs and gatherings. Shooting long rounds of competition (often lasting several days and involving hundreds of shots at distances up to 60 feet), blowgun champions take great pride in their accomplishments. Their shooting skills and the craftsmanship of their guns and darts are common topics of conversation and debate.

Though few today rely on the blowgun as a means of providing meat for the table, Southeastern traditionalists are very conscious of the blowgun as a cultural trait—almost a standard. Some, such as the Catawba, who no longer manufacture blowguns on a regular basis still cling to it as a treasured tribal symbol. Others, such as the Waccamaw, who have no record of blowgun use in their written history, see it as essentially “Southeastern” and purchase guns of Cherokee manufacture for use, display and demonstration. Its importance as a living tradition, connecting the present with the aboriginal past, can hardly be overstated.

The Lineage

The prehistoric tradition of the blowgun in the Southeast is unclear. Some doubt the blowgun’s antiquity in the region. Archaeology has not yet provided us with a pre-contact example. The fragility of the materials used in the manufacture of blowguns and darts makes their survival in the archaeological record difficult at best. Perhaps some southern cave or wet site will someday yield a prehistoric specimen. Accidental or intentional burning in the past could provide us with a charred fragment. There are questions yet to be asked. For instance, how would a charred rivercane blowgun fragment differ in attributes from a charred cane fragment used in wattle wall construction, or bench seats in a burned house, or freestanding cane within or near an occupation site burned in a clearing operation?

Kroeber (1948) believed the blowgun to be a late introduction from South America. Some have argued that its presence in the earliest historic accounts speaks of more ancient roots.

Whenever and however the rivercane blowgun came to the Southeast, it was firmly entrenched as an important part of the small game hunting arsenal by the Historic Period:

“The derivation of the blowgun in the Southeast remains for the present, after all, an open question. To my mind the case in favor of its being a diffused trait from South America is no stronger than that for its local invention. ” NASH 1963

“(The Choctaw) are very skilful in the use of the blowgun . . . when they see something which they want to hit they blow it, and they often kill small birds. ” BOSSU 1768

“The young savages . . . blow it so expertly as seldom to miss a mark fifteen or twenty yards off and that so violently as to kill squirrels and birds therewith. ” ROMANS 1775

“(The Cherokee children) at eight or ten years old, are very expert at killing small animals and birds with a sarbacan, or hollow cane, through which they blow a small dart, whose weakness obliges them to shoot at the eye of the larger sort of prey, which they seldom miss. ” TIMBERLAKE 1765.

“This (the Yuchi blowgun) was almost exclusively used for bringing down small animals, squirrels and birds. ” SPECK 1909.

“With other peoples of the Southeast the Catawba shared the trait of using the blowgun or blowpipe exclusively for the purposes of hunting small animals and birds. It has had a desultory survival down to the present generation of older men, and is known by the designation wa’sa pu’he, ‘cane blowing,’ or ‘dart blowing. ’” SPECK 1938.

Historic Manufacturing Techniques

Although elderberry stems are sometimes used in the manufacture of blowguns by the Houmas of Louisiana, it is rivercane (Arundinaria gigantea) that is most often associated with the traditional weapon made by most southern native peoples. It is the material of choice both from a utilitarian and a cultural point of view. Called swamp cane in the western southeast (Choctaws, Chitimachas, etc.) and rivercane in the eastern southeast (Cherokees, Creeks, Catawbas, etc.) Arundinaria is found growing most often in bottomlands along rivers and streams.