The Fur Trade Revisited: Selected Papers of the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference, Mackinac Island, Michigan, 1991

A Newly-Discovered Trade Gun Type

A Newly-Discovered Trade Gun Type James R. Duncan The archaeological record throughout the eastern United States supports a picture of keen competition between Great Britain, France and, to a lesser degree, Spain, for control of the North American fur trade. Distinct smallbore gun barrel fragments, gun parts, and lead shot and bullets from the Plattner site (23SA3) in western Missouri are proof of this competition, and they provide much of the data for research on what appears to be a new and previously unidentified English trade gun type. It is the purpose of this article to reconstruct and identify small-bore trade guns-guns with bores of .50 caliber (one-half inch) and less-out of a substantial archaeological assemblage of gun parts from several Osage Indian villages in Missouri. In so doing, the discovery of a new trade gun type will be proposed. The primary site, known as the Plattner site (23SA3) (figure I), was the Little Osage village on the Missouri River in Saline County, Missouri. Today this site is on the National Register of Historic Places. Several archaeological excavations have been conducted at the Plattner site and at least two more collections have resulted from amateur surface collecting when the site was under cultivation. These collections have been the subject of several monographs (Chapman 1959; Hamilton 1960; Bray 1978). In 1717 the Little Osage (Petit Osage) lived in a village near the historic Missouri Indians and actively engaged in a brisk trade with the French (Chapman 1959: 2; Mathews 1961: 169). By 1723 the French had built Fort d'Orleans near these villages of the Little Osage and the Missouris. Most archaeological materials recovered from the Little Osage village (23SA3) are of European origin, and limited amounts of Native American artifacts indicate that the Little Osage were by this time reliant upon goods of European manufacture (Chapman 1959: 14). Included among these artifacts are bottle glass (Bray 1978), numerous gun parts, lead bullets and shot, and gunflints. 349 JAMES R. DUNCAN 4, I s SOli , i 23VE4 • , • Hayes Site 23FR379 ~ Rommelman Sit 23VE~ 23VE3, Brown Site Fort Don Carlos del Rey Carrington! Site , . , ~.-.-.-.-.-.-.-., , . . L.· ,· ,· ,· ,· I .}· .J I Figure 1. The locations of historic Osage villages and associated archaeological sites in Missouri and Illinois. BACKGROUND By 1770 Spanish authorities in Missouri were alarmed because of hostile activities of the Osage, who were using English guns to attack Indians loyal to the Spanish. The Osage had succeeded in driving several groups of these Indians into the area around San Antonio, Texas. The Spanish established Fort Don Carlos del Rey at the mouth of the Missouri River near St. Louis to discourage English traders from ascending the river with their trade goods. Neither the fort nor an associated mission survived very long. A covert action of the Spanish in 1773 resulted in the destruction of the Little Osage and Missouri villages in Saline County and ended the Indian occupation of the Plattner site. DATA Of eight (8) measurable gun barrel fragments from Plattner (23SA3), three (3), or 38 percent of the total, are of .50 caliber or less. A check of measurable barrel sections from the archaeological collections from three other historic 350 A NEWLy-DISCOVERED TRADE GUN TYPE Osage sites disclose comparable percentages of small bore barrels: from the Carrington site (23VE1), 35 of 89 (39 percent); from the Brown site (23VE3), 3 of 13 (23 percent); and from the Hayes site (23VE4), 1 of 4 (25 percent) (Hamilton 1960, 81). These figures suggest that small-bore guns were of importance to these Native Americans. One problem with reconstruction of smallbore guns is the absence of complete guns for comparative purposes. To date, none have been recovered by archaeologists, and until recently none were known from private collections. From the archaeological record it is apparent that several types of trade guns manufactured during the eighteenth century were standardized types specifically intended for the fur trade (Hamilton 1980: 29). At least two French types and one English type are currently recognized and seem to have been manufactured solely for trade with Native North Americans. Other types are also represented in the archaeological record, including military guns and some exclusively for civilian use. Also evident is the presence of "grades" of quality in the finished products. Moreover, the probability of various grades of trade guns is supported by a number of historic accounts which mention "fine guns" and...