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I Forge Iron

History of American Indians and Forging


Alan DuBoff

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IIRC the Vikings in Nova Scotia were primarily farmers and traded furs and supplies to "norse" explorers and traders. They also integrated with the local natives. I THINK I recall the smelting and forging sites found so far were primarily a bit more than what any farmer or small village needed for it's own needs. I haven't seen any reports of iron tools being trade items though I have no doubt the Native American members of the village owned iron tools, they were family after all.

The impact of Great Lakes copper on the Bronze age is an eye opener and is a clue to why the natives welcomed the Norse like old friends. Phoenician, Mycenaean, Viking, the ships all looked alike, Rowed gally, long low with high prow and stern shallow draft, the shape and seaworthiness goes back to reed boats. Including shields hung with oar locks between them, to shield the rowers from enemy arrows? Nope, because it was the best place to store your shield, it was handy and blocked sea spray, wind, etc.

Spectral analysis done on copper ingots found in ship wrecks turned out to be largely Great Lakes copper. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Considering that the earliest removals of the Cherokee in the 1820s were well after their first contacts with Europeans in the late 17th century, it's not particularly surprising that they would have adopted blacksmithing as part of their material culture over that century plus.

Interestingly, Sequoyah (c. 1770-1843) was a blacksmith, and was inspired to develop his syllabary for the Cherokee language in part by the difficulty he had keeping track of his customers' accounts. He is the only person known to have invented a functional writing system without himself being able to read or write.

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CRS:  You mean besides the well documented use of meteorites for cold ironworking before European contact?

It's interesting that some of the early Spanish explorers claimed that SW Indigenous tribes were smelting iron, (incorrectly it seems.)  IIAC I read it  in "The Coronado Expedition 1540-1542" G.P.Winship.

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1 hour ago, TWISTEDWILLOW said:

Not really ancient history but There’s some Cherokees here in Eastern Oklahoma that have been forging frog an fish gigs for several generations

there’s a couple Cherokee smiths that were or are national treasures to the nation,

Good video about them:

 

(Check out his anvil, too.)

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Yes I’ve seen that video, and I did notice his anvil, 

i don’t personally know him but his shop is somewhere over on the other side of tahlequah,

I thought about running over there for a visit sometime, I’d like to meet him an watch him make a gig 

I tried making some gigs from mild steel awhile back but they didn’t turn out to good,

I was trying to forge weld the barbs, i got a couple done but they were way to small and the sockets were terrible so I threw them in the scrap pile lol,

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In the Museo National de Antropologia de Mexico they have a whole room full of copper, brass, bronze alloy axes called Tlaximaltepoztli that have been found down there. Most people skip the room or just breeze on through without so much as a thought of when, where, or how they came to be. There were copper mines being mined in the area of Michoacan pre Spanish era. The Aztecs, Maya, Purepecha and Mixtec's all knew how to work copper, bronze, gold, silver etc before the Spanish arrived.

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35 minutes ago, FlatLiner said:

copper, brass, bronze alloy axes called Tlaximaltepoztli

I made a hatchet for a Mexican American client that was very loosely based on one of those axes. 

 

27 minutes ago, George N. M. said:

tin for bronze?

From the Wikipedia article on tlaximaltepoztli: "Metallurgics were introduced in West Mexico via maritime trade during the Classic period [300-950 CE], since most found objects are near the coast during this period." It cites a book entitled "The Sounds and Colors of Power: The Sacred Metallurgical Technology of Ancient West Mexico" by one Dorothy Hosler (MIT Press, 1994), which sounds quite interesting.

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Apparently there were/are tin deposits in Guerrero, Mexico close to some copper deposits there. They had some knowledge of making copper alloys Cortez stated that in the markets if Tenochtitlan "hatchets were sold made of copper alloyed with tin" there are other Spanish accounts of them alloying copper with gold. One ancient Mexican copper chisel was analysed and it came back as 97.87% copper and 2.13% tin not enough to be what we call bronze. A different Aztec chisel was analysed and it came back as 91.40% copper, 3.07% tin, .82% lead, .53% iron, .08% cobalt, and .82% sulphur. They have excavated a site in western Mexico where all points and arrowheads are 90% copper  and 10% tin. There are Spanish accounts about how the natives knew how to use blow pipes to smelt gold, silver, and copper. It's all pretty interesting stuff.

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I will say that the recent postings on this thread are much more accurate and informative than the 2006 postings.  I don't know if the IFIers are more knowledgable and more articulate but whatever it is IMO it is a good thing.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

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In 1990 something I watched an old Godzilla movie that said by the year 2020 we where gonna have daily rockets flying back an forth to the moon base, 

they are two years late an ain’t even started construction yet…

An here MR Mighty Musk says he’s gonna colonize mars!

How’s he gonna do that when he ain’t even built a Tesla charging station on the moon yet? :rolleyes:

i bet ford will beat him to it! :lol: Lol

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