page_title: Tomahawk
section_title: Composition
hierarchical_section_title: Tomahawk / Composition
caption_attribution_description: Tomahawk produced by the Hudson' Bay Company in the 1830s, listed on the FBI's database of stolen art: [1]
context_page_description: A tomahawk is a type of single-handed ax native to the many Indigenous peoples and nations of North America, traditionally resembling a hatchet with a straight shaft. The term came into the English language in the 17th century as an adaptation of the Powhatan word.
  Tomahawks were general-purpose tools used by Native Americans and later the European colonials with whom they traded, and often employed as a hand-to-hand weapon. The metal tomahawk heads were originally based on a Royal Navy boarding ax and used as a trade-item with Native Americans for food and other provisions.
context_section_description: Pre-contact Native Americans lacked the technology for the hot-forging of metal, so tomahawks were not fitted with metal ax heads until they were obtained from trade with Europeans. The tomahawk's original designs were fitted with heads of bladed or rounded stone or deer antler.
  The modern tomahawk shaft is usually less than 2 ft (61 cm) in length, traditionally made of hickory, ash, or maple. The heads weigh anywhere from 9 to 20 oz (260 to 570 g), with a cutting edge usually not much longer than four inches (10 cm) from toe to heel. The poll can feature a hammer, spike, or may simply be rounded off, and they usually do not have lugs. These sometimes had a pipe-bowl carved into the poll, and a hole drilled down the center of the shaft for smoking tobacco through the tomahawk. There are also metal-headed versions of this unusual pipe. Pipe tomahawks are artifacts unique to North America: created by Europeans as trade objects but often exchanged as diplomatic gifts. They were symbols of the choice Europeans and Native Americans faced whenever they met: one end was the pipe of peace, the other an ax of war.
  In colonial French territory, a different tomahawk design, closer to the ancient European francisca, was in use by French settlers and indigenous peoples. In the late 18th century, the British Army issued tomahawks to their colonial regulars during the American Revolutionary War as a weapon and tool.
caption: A pipe tomahawk dating to the early 19th century
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