Tikchik village: a nineteenth century riverine community in ... - Cluster

VANSTONE: TIKCHIK VILLAGE 303barrel would be required to show proof marks. It is possible, however,that guns intended for the Indian trade would not be so tested.A curious and somewhat unusual assemblage of artifacts recoveredfrom the site were 13 musket percussion caps and 65 centerfirecartridge primers found together wrapped in a small piece of oil clothin house 7. A percussion cap is a small cylinder of copper adapted tofit over the nipple of a gun and having a flake of fulminating powderinside. This is exploded by the fall of the hammer on the nipplewhich communicates fire through the latter to the charge in the gun.The percussion gun was not introduced in the United States militaryservices until 1842, although the process had been invented in Englandin 1807 (Knight, 1876, vol. II, pp. 1664-1665). Musket percussioncaps differ from those used with pistols and revolvers in beinglarger and having a narrow flange around the distal end. These capsare the only indication of the use of percussion firearms by the TikchikEskimos.The method of firing a weapon using a percussion cap and nippleaffixed to the proximal end of the barrel was replaced during thesecond half of the nineteenth century by the capped metallic cartridgein which the fulminate was applied inside the base of the shell,forming a ring in rimfire cartridges or a cap in the center of centerfirecartridges. The case of a centerfire cartridge is worked through aseries of dies in order to draw the brass to the desired shape. Thismethod results in a finished case which has a thin wall and a thick,strong base into which a hole is bored to accommodate the primer.A blow from the firing pin of the weapon ignites the fulminate in theprimer. This produces a flame which passes through a small hole, orvent, and ignites the powder in the body of the cartridge case. Rimfirecartridges were invented just before the Civil War and the externallyprimed centerfire cartridge was introduced in 1866 (Knight,1876, vol. II, pp. 1664-1665; Datig, 1956-58, vol. 1, pp. 13-15). Thecartridge primers from the Tikchik site are unused and were presumablyobtained by the Eskimos for reloading used metallic cases.Since the Tikchik Eskimos appear to have had an interest in andthe equipment for the reloading of cartridges, it might be expectedthat hunters would have recovered and saved used cases. Therefore,it is surprising that only six spent cartridge cases were found, althoughit is in keeping with the relatively few indications of the use of firearmsat the site. Three of these cases have been made into bluntarrowheads while a fourth was strung with beads in a necklace; asartifacts, these specimens have already been described. There are