Starting Them Young. Keeping Pioneer Skills Alive.

This video was produced by one of our group members and a good friend of mine known as Mopoke. I hope you enjoy watching this as much as I did.

18th Century Childrens Tomahawks.

I have seen these tomahawks/axes refered to as toys, and they may well have been called toys back then, but I prefere to call them tools or a child's tomahawk/axe. These were and are real small sized tomawks/axes, and they were made for children. The round poll tomahawk below belonged to one of my sons, it was later passed down to my youngest son. All three boys learnt axemanship and tomahawk throwing with this tomahawk. There was another exactly like this one, but it got misslaid out in the forest somewhere! I will have to check out their old camp sites sometime just in case it is lying close by.

The other tomahawk is a spike poll type. I have no idea of its date of manufacture. It was given to me many years ago. According to "Fur Trade Tomahawks" https://www.furtradetomahawks.com/ a child's tomahawk/axe is distinguished by the head being less than 5 inches long from the poll to the cutting edge. Both these tomahawks below conform to that size. I am not claiming that these two tomahawks are exact copies of originals, just that they are the same size as a child's tomahawk.

Here you can see a comparison between my wife's belt axe and the smaller tomahawk/axe.

My youngest Son when only very young. You can just see the tomahawk helve sticking out by his left hand. The knife in his belt is real too.

Links to records and museum images.

http://www.fortvan.org/files/teachingthevillage-web.pdf

http://www.nps.gov/fova/historyculture/upload/Research%20Guide.pdf

http://www.nps.gov/museum/treasures/html/A/fova28308.htm

17th & 18th Century Education.