Flintlock Guns at Fort Victoria

Photo by Nancy Anderson

 

 

There were a number of times when fur traders in the interior needed to defend themselves when they were faced with a crowd of armed Natives, and this was probably true in early Fort Victoria, too. Certainly every man in or near the fort, whether fur trader or settler, owned a flintlock gun.

The flintlock guns the fur trader were cleaned, primed, and loaded on a regular basis, especially when they were riding through country inhabited by Natives who far outnumbered them. Flintlocks got their name because they used flint, a hard, silicized-quartz found naturally almost everywhere and used for thousands of years to light fires. The gun-owner knapped a small piece of flint from the larger stone, and inserted it into the gun where it would be driven by the force of the striker against the frizzen. The flint was hard enough to knock a piece of steel off the frizzen and cause a spark, but the flint lost a bit of itself as well and would eventually need to be replaced. The Natives used flints they picked up everywhere, but the fur traders imported the best flints from the Dover cliffs in England.

You are probably familiar with the common expression, “Lock, Stock, and Barrel.” The stock of the flintlock is the part that the fur trader held to his shoulder, and remains more or less the same in the modern rifle. The barrel is the metal part that the ball (bullets in later rifles) travels down. The lock is the metal part in the middle, where the guns workings are – the chamber for balls and the various working parts including the trigger. This part differs markedly from the modern-day rifle.

The flintlock guns were all smooth-bored muzzle-loaders. To load the gun, the fur trader poured black powder from his waterproof powder-horn into a measure he carried with him, and that might have formed a part of his powder-horn. He poured the measure of gunpowder down the barrel of the firearm, and with a sharp tap of the gunstock on the ground, he forced the black powder down the barrel to the lock where it would be ignited by the flash of the gunpowder in the pan. Next the fur trader wrapped the ball in a piece of tallow-soaked cloth, and inserted ball and cloth into the barrel of the gun. He cut away the extra cloth with a knife he always carried with him and, removing the ramrod from the holder where it travelled as part of the gun, he rammed the ball all the way down the barrel to the lock where the black powder lay.

But the gun was not yet ready to fire. Next the fur trader primed his gun by tipping a little black powder into the pan of the gun and snapping the steel frizzen over it. At this point the gun was ready to fire, but would not until the hammer was fully cocked and released from its sprung position by a strong pull on the trigger.

These firearms were accurate, and at 80 yards the fur trader could put their ball into a target about the size of a saucer. But once fired – or if the gun misfired – it took an experienced man twenty seconds to reload his gun with powder and ball and make it ready for the second shot. In a confrontation with the Natives, a fur trader would always choose to negotiate, holding fire until it became absolutely necessary to shoot.

The Natives also owned flintlock guns. The trade guns were never as well-built as the fur traders’ guns. However, they were always decorated with a brass serpent on the side, and a seated fox engraved on the back of the lock. These animals had a spiritual significance for the Natives, who also believed that the symbols would bring them good luck in the hunt.

Natives in New Caledonia and other places were creative in their use of guns. James Anderson, son of Alexander Caulfield Anderson, wrote that “My father … relates how he found the Indians obtaining fish by exploding their guns in the water. This was done by submerging the barrel of the gun up to the breach, otherwise the gun would certainly burst. How the Indians discovered that fish would be stunned by the explosion or that the gun would certainly burst if only the muzzle were immersed, could not be discovered.”

Photo by Nancy Anderson

If you want to see these guns in action, attend one of the fur trade celebrations at Fort Langley or Fort Nisqually. Re-enactors at these fur trade celebrations will demonstrate the guns and answer any questions you might have.

 

Submitted by Nancy Anderson