This also explains the terms used when refering to the woodsman's tools being the gun, the knife and the axe. I have always thought of an axe being large, certainly not the size of a tomahawk, and I was wrong. Also I have always thought of the tomahawk using the particular helve or haft that does not require a wedge to secure the head, and the axe requiring a wedge, wrong again!
From what I have read so far, a tomahawk is a tool/weapon that has a specific type of poll, that with a spike or a pipe bowl. But it can also have a hammer poll. Anyway, read the following and see what you think. Personally I am still finding some grey areas! But I now know more than I did before reading this article.
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Trade Rates in 1812 at Fort Astoria, Columbia River
One half-axe = four beaver
Hatchet = two beaver
Yard of cloth = four beaver
Yard of cotton = two beaver
Large knife = two beaver
Five leaves of well-twisted tobacco = one beaver
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Trade axes of today were called 'Camp Axes' or 'Squaw Axes' or just plain 'Hatchets' in the records of the fur traders and in the words of Indians. We know they were distributed from at least 1570 to about late 19th C. although common axes of the period were traded to Indians before that. They came from Holland, France, England, Canada, Spanish colonies & America. They were used primarily as tools but also as weapons if the need arose (spike tomahawks also were used as tools at times although their main purpose was as a weapon). Trade axes have been greatly maligned by the collectors of the much more expensive pipe tomahawks who claim they were never used as weapons although in the same breath the lighter trade axe of 1lb or less is accepted as a weapon/tool by most. Is it the same as a tomahawk? That depends on your definition, but definitions have been changing through out the historical period and still are. Initially, during the earliest contact period, ANY hatchet or axe used by Native Americans was referred as a tomahawk.
The reality is they used what they had, what they could afford and what was available.
The above article and some of the images curtesy of:
