Axe Heads

Might want to post in fur trade artifacs if answer does not turn up. Having touch marks puts you way ahead of locating original source,given time many of the artifacs left by your dad can be i.d.ed. Matter of time and right people .Congrats.
 

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That type of tomahawk dates at least to the 1700's, but they are still being made today. There is a fellow that lives in Oregon that is hand forging hawks exactly like yours, forge welded and all, for sale. He's made a lot of them. Hopefully the marks on the blade of yours will help. I'm enjoying your posts, keep it up.
 

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Well, I really don't believe these axe heads are fake... My father explained to me that his uncle excavated these and several other items from the Lewis & Clark Expedition. He had found some in Montana and others at Fort Bragg.
 

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I'm not saying the axe head is fake, but because there were thousands of them carried by both Indians and whites, provided by the British, French and American trading companies, and the fact they are still being manufactured today in exactly the same way they were then, folded and forge welded, and the fact that the Lewis and Clark trail is a couple of thousand miles long going and coming, and was traveled by thousands of people carrying tomahawks that look exactly like that one, it's a tough call to even say for sure that it is even old, let alone carried by anyone associated with the L&C expedition. I didn't know your father's uncle, don't know the year he found it, don't know how old he was, don't know where he found it except somewhere along the trail. All that being said, I wish I did know your fathers uncle, I'd love to be able to sit and talk with him, he found some great stuff, and no doubt had great stories to go with it. All I'm pointing out is it's definitely a tough call to link the axe to anyone, except to say this, if the tomahawk was found at Fort Bragg, it's definitely, positively, not possible for it to have been lost by anyone on the Lewis and Clark expedition, they were never there. Fort Bragg is a town on the northern California coast that had an army garrison prior to the Civil War, and it's several hundred miles south of Fort Clatsop on the mouth of the Columbia River where Lewis and Clark wintered over in 1805/06. Again, I'm not saying the axe head is not the real thing, anything is possible, it's just that I'm trying to point out the "what if's" that are involved.
 

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Hand axe ,or hachet. Both are very old, and were hand forged using the folding method. You can still see the seam on the edge of the hole. Could have been a trading axe. The iron in the one with the marks looks looks softer and is probably the oldest. Tony
 

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