Randy Hedden Eastern Style Buffalo Powder Horn on the blog

[Ken G]

Hey Randy.  That's a neat looking buffalo horn you have on the blog.  Were they used in the east a lot? 
very clean looking. 
Ken

[G. Elsenbeck]

Nice looking horn Randy!  I dare say a wandering hornsmith from the east probably transplanted hisself to St. Lou and using locally available horns, e.g., buffalo, promptly set up shop and conducted business as usual.  At least that's my opinion.  'Course, I could be wrong. 
Gary

[Robby]

Real nice horn Randy. There were herd buffalo on the niagara frontier (Buffalo, N.Y.), and woodland buffalo as well.

[Randy Hedden]

Hey Randy.  That's a neat looking buffalo horn you have on the blog.  Were they used in the east a lot? 
very clean looking. 
Ken

Ken,

I don't know how much they were used in the east, but there are documented examples of buffalo powder horns made in the eastern style and used in the east. I believe they are under represented in powder horn collections.  This may be because buffalo horn tends to deteriorate faster then cow horn if not given proper care.

A couple of years ago there was a thread on another message board about eastern style buffalo powder horns.  We were able to isolate five or six eastern style buffalo powder horns in various museums. There was also a guy who was at Curt Johnson's Longrifle Collectors Show a few years ago that had several of the, what I like to call, "St. Louis School" powder horns on his table.

Randy Hedden

[Randy Hedden]

Nice looking horn Randy!  I dare say a wandering hornsmith from the east probably transplanted hisself to St. Lou and using locally available horns, e.g., buffalo, promptly set up shop and conducted business as usual.  At least that's my opinion.  'Course, I could be wrong. 
Gary

Gary,

There certainly were buffalo powder horns made at St. Louis.  Probably the best known are the buffalo powder horns with the bone inlays in the butt plug as well as in the body of the horn. William Clark, of Lewis And Clark fame, carried one of these "St. Louis School" powder horns on their 1804 Corp of Discovery.

Tecumseh carried an eastern style buffalo powder horn that is now in a museum in England, having been taken off his body at the Battle of the Thames, also known as the Battle of Moraviantown, in 1812.

History records that the last buffalo killed in Pennsylvania was in 1803. Buffalo in other states west of Pennsylvania, but still east of the Mississippi, had free roaming buffalo at times later than 1803. There were buffalo horns available in several eastern states where there was also a shortage of cow horns.

Randy Hedden

[Tim Crosby]

 Nice looking horn Randy, well done, nice work.

Tim C.

[Brian]

Where is it?  I want to see it.  Randy's stuff is always so cool.  What's the site address?

[Ken G]

Brian,
Here's the link.  Sorry, I took it for granted everyone knew it by now.  If you don't check the blog every morning you are missing a treat! 
Ken


http://contemporarymakers.blogspot.com/

[Ken G]

I did a google search on the last buffalo.  I'm surprised that post 1800 there were still some buffalo East of the Mississippi.  I'm sure they were not in any large numbers but they were there.  A great horn and I learned a little more history.
Cheers,
Ken

[Larry Pletcher]

I did a google search on the last buffalo.  I'm surprised that post 1800 there were still some buffalo East of the Mississippi.  I'm sure they were not in any large numbers but they were there.  A great horn and I learned a little more history.
Cheers,
Ken

I did google search for "Buffalo Trace Indiana" .  The following links provide more info. 

The trace was a migration route from the salt licks in KY across Indiana to grazing areas farther west.  In places the "trace" was 20 feet wide.  One of the sources below lists 1830 for the last buffalo in Indiana.

http://www.usi.edu/hsi/resources/IHP.asp

http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/hoosier/docs/history/buffalo_trace.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Trace_(road)

http://www.millersofwashingtoncounty.org/indiana01.html

Before I retired I actually got to teach this stuff to 4th graders, and they paid me too.

Regards,
Pletch

[G-Man]

I have always suspected that there would have been quite a few used in places like Kentucky and the Illinois country in the early period.  There are some examples surviving.

Here is a link to a buffalo horn attributed to John Small, the early Vincennes, Indiana gunmaker, in the Indiana State Museum:

http://museumcollections.in.gov/detail.php?t=objects&type=browse&f=maker&s=John+Small&record=0

Ted Belue's "The Long Hunt - Death of the Buffalo East of the Mississippi" has a lot of good information on timeframes for when the buffalo disappeared in the east, and some photos of (I think) of the Tecumseh horn and other items.

I think also (not positive) that Peter Houston might reference making buffalo powder horns while he was a teenager, out hunting near present day Paris Kentucky, around 1780.   I'll have to check.

Guy

[Swampman]

My friend Mark Hubb's family has an original buffalo(bison) horn that was carried during the Creek Wars & at The Battle of New Orleans.  It has a pweter spout.