Butcher Knife

[Niederlander]

Gentlemen, How common was it to carry a regular butcher knife as a sheath knife?  I know we always think of people carrying custom made Bowies and such, but was it fairly common for frontiersmen to carry a heavy duty butcher knife instead?  I would think that was what was available all over the west.

[Reverend P. Babcock Chase]

Howdy N'lander,

What you refer to as "butcher knives" covers a wide range of knives of the type sold by the Green River Knife works. These simple blades with riveted on wooden scales were widely available, with good quality steel. Whether they were considered inexpensive at the time i don't know but I suspect that were considered a good value all things considered. They even had a pattern they called a "hunter" as well as a skinner and I expect other shapes as well. I don't believe they were sold with sheaths accounting for the many interesting variations we see.

Years ago, when I was working for CVA (when it was in CT), we put together a "Green River Knife kit". The first couple of years, the blade, scales and rivets came from the original Green River Works which was still making the same patterns from the 1800's. The prices was $9.95 with a do it yourself sheath! We sold the hell out of them but I haven't seen one in years.

Rev. Chase

[Major 2]

I carried a roach belly knife for years as camp knife.

[Tsalagidave]

A 'butcher knife' was more common vernacular since it pre-dated the 'Bowie Knife' fad of approximately the late 1830s into the 1870s. It was a variety of large meat-cutting knives (including the Bowie pattern) made by a variety of firms both in the US and in Europe.  I have seen articles from the 1880s implying that the carrying of a large blade was more of a rarity and this makes sense that easily reloadable metallic cartridges and a folding blade would be more convenient and practical. Still, here are a few period accounts on carrying knives which was clearly more common in the earlier decades going back to the colonial era.

"Over it (the shoulder) hung a powder horn and a bullet pouch, and around his body was a leathern belt in which was thrust a large formidable knife. A loaded rifle lay carelessly across the rider's shoulders."
-Rural Kentucky (ca.1800-10s) Pioneer Life in the West – J.B. Finley (written in 1857)

"A long butcher knife in the belt with tomahawk and a long, heavy rifle."
-The Great West (1851) Henry Howe

"Every man wore a full buckskin suit and a pair of moccasins. In a belt which he always wore, he carried a couple of pistols, two large knives and a tomahawk. What we called a tomahawk was a kind of hatchet which we used to chop our meat up with, and in fact do all the chopping that we had to do."
-Richens Lacey "Uncle Dick" Wootton

Wootton also described a similar set of arms for those whom he had hired on to accompany his outfit as stated in a letter dated June 24th, 1852.

"I armed each of the men, Americans and Mexicans alike, with a first-class rifle, a pistol, and knife, and thus equipped we started our long drive..."
-The Rocky Mountains into New Mexico Territory (ca.1830-50's) – "Uncle" Dick Wootton

"The hunting-shirt was universally worn. This was a kind of loose frock, reaching halfway down to the thighs, with large sleeves, open before, and so wide as to lap over a foot or more when belted. The cape was large, and sometimes handsomely fringed with a raveled piece of cloth of a different color from that of the hunting- shirt itself. The bosom of this shirt served as a wallet to hold a chunk of bread, cakes, jerk, tow for wiping the barrel of his rifle, or any other necessary for the hunter or warrior. The belt, which was always tied behind, answered several purposes, beside that of holding the dress together. In cold weather, the mittens and sometimes the bullet-bag, occupied the front part of it. To the right side was suspended the tomahawk, and to the left the scalping-knife in its leathern sheath."
-Bang's History of Methodism, Life Among the Early Settlers of the West (1824)

"The dress of these people is generally half civilized, half savage. They wear a capot or surcoat, made of a blanket, a striped cotton shirt, cloth trousers, or leathern leggins, moccasins of deerskin, and a belt of variegated worsted, from which are suspended the knife, tobacco-pouch, and other implements. Their language is of the same piebald character, being a French patois, embroidered with Indian and English words and phrases."
-Washington Irving's Astoria, Ch, IV

Another Description of a Mountaineer

"A hunting-shirt of ruffled calico of bright dyes, or of ornamented leather, falls to his knee; below which, curiously fashioned leggins, ornamented with strings, fringes, and a profusion of hawks' bells, reach to a costly pair of moccasins of the finest Indian fabric, richly embroidered with beads. A blanket of scarlet, or some other bright color, hangs from his shoulders, and is girt round his waist with a red sash, in which he bestows his pistols, knife, and the stem of his Indian pipe; preparations either for peace or war. His gun is lavishly decorated with brass tacks and vermilion, and provided with a fringed cover, occasionally of buckskin, ornamented here and there with a feather."
-Capt. Benjamin Bonneville, 1837

Description of Missourians

"They were all dressed in the same fashion: a pair of "homespun" pantaloons, tucked into thick boots reaching nearly to the knee, and confined round the waist by a broad leathern belt, which supported a strong butcher-knife in a sheath. A coarse checked shirt was their only other covering, with a fur cap on the head."
-Life In The Far West (1849)

A description of the modern 'Pike's Peaker' as witnessed by Albert Richardson of the New York Tribune while visiting the growing town of Denver City at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

"The men who gathered about our coach on its arrival were attired in slouched hats, tattered woolen shirts, buckskin pantaloons and moccasins; and had knives and revolvers suspended from their belts."

Richardson recalled the appearance of many mountaineers found among the 1500 people who gathered from the Pike's Peak mines to greet Horace Greeley.

"It was a motley gathering in the open air, of men with long unkempt locks, shaggy beards, faces reduced by the sun to the color of a new brick, and bowie knives and revolvers hanging from their belts. They gathered in all the freedom of the frontier."
-Albert Richardson, 1859

[Jake MacReedy]

Big knives of all types...butchers and Bowies were quite common during the period we are trying to recreate.  Whichever you choose, it should work.
Ron

[Tsalagidave]

There are quite a few nice examples of original large-blade butcher knives to be seen at the Museum of Fur Trade and at The Steamboat Arabia museum. The term 'butcher-knife' is a generic one for any blade suitable for dressing game and cutting meat. Inexpensive green river blades are excellent for this as well. It would just be a matter of choice.

Clip point blades are good for hooking membrane when dressing game. The design is much older than I thought it was. I recently saw a folding knife dating from 1st c. Rome, that has a clip point.

Drop point knives have the spinal strength to stab more deeply into large game such as bear, with a lesser likelihood of breaking the blade. This is a good design for a hunter or mountaineer.

Double-edged blades - are primarily suitable for fighting, not woodcraft. Despite its finer point, the knife is better suited for greater versatility in cutting an opponent than for stabbing. Although it can stab deeply, the blade itself lacks the strength of a drop-point in resisting from breakage.

Mediterranean blade is the traditional single-ege hunting knife with common use dating back to ancient Europe. In period vernacular, it is often just called a single-edge hunting knife or butcher knife as that is what it's primarily good for. They may be flat-edged or roach-bellied but these tend to be extremely reliable and common in many museum collections and archaeological digs whenever a larger-bladed knife is recovered.

-Dave