I took a class last weekend at Practical Primitives (http://www.practicalprimitive.com), a school for bushcraft and primitive skills. The class was entitled, "Cherokee Blow Guns & Thistle Darts" and taught by guest instructor Doug Meyer.

I had a blast!

First we made the blowguns out of river cane. Doug had a variety of pieces of cane he had picked out and then we sanded out the insides.





Then we learned how to make the darts using thistle.
Doug had collected A LOT of thistle near his home for us to practice with.
Here is what it looks like before.


It took a little while to get the hang of it but ...






I set up a little corkboard in the house to practice but outside I can shoot these pretty accurately from a good distance.



In case you were wondering, the Cherokee didn't use poison but did hunt with these. I just need to make slightly larger darts and I could hunt squirrels or rabbits.

We sanded the insides with modern tools (threaded metal rods, and sandpaper rods) but Doug said that you can do it without the modern tools. He told us that there was a debate that these long blowguns never existed before contact with Europeans because people thought it would be to difficult. He said that someone made one using just stone age tools to end the debate, it just takes a lot longer.

I personally have know idea where you could find river cane in Lancaster (it's grown in the south eastern US) but we were talking in class and supposedly you can make something very similar with bamboo.

Lancaster is only about 2.5 hours from Practical Primitive. I know they don't do the Blowgun class regularly but they might have Doug come back again next year if you call and ask. I know he was teaching a class there the very next day that I missed on using river cane to make various primitive tools. I'd love a chance to take that next year if he is back. 
http://www.practicalprimitive.com/

drum_slinger wrote on Nov 1^st, 2010 at 12:08am:


I live a like an 1hr or so from lancaster and I am positve there is plenty of river cane around here mostly around river areas like the conewago and other small creeks. my advice is to make friends with someone who does have it and they are usually very willing to let people take as much as they want as it is a fast growing weed.

As far as the natural blowgun I think the way they did it in the East is split the wood in 2 and sand out the nodes and then glue (pine pitch) it back together (pretty sure at least  )

Straighten the cane with heat.  Use a long hardwood shaft, such as an arrow, put sand in the cane and start drilling.  When you can't reach any deeper, turn the cane around and work from the other end.  Pick your cane so you don't have a node right in the middle.  That way, you can use a 30 inch shaft and drill out a 6 foot blow gun. 

They were the equivelent of a BB gun or a pellet gun, mostly used for birds down in the Southeast.  There are accounts of NA using them to kill passenger pigeons by the basket full.   Bill

The more you use your blowgun, the smoother the inside gets. Eventually becoming polished like glass.   If you tie a knot at the top of your dart and lay the string along your left hand, and lay the thistle out along the string. You can tuft up the dart by just rolling it up towards your wrist. That method was taught to me by Walker Calhoun, a Cherokee Medicine Man/Wisdom Keeper.

  I would be cautious hunting squirrel with one.  I hunt the red squirrels that we have around here sometimes and I have to tell you, they can take a heck of a wack and keep on wiggling.  I have shot them in the head with a .22 hollowpoint from a 495fps. airgun and they still managed to squirm into their home in the bottom of the tree and make me dig 'em out.  I would suggest making some mini broadheads from hacksaw blades and for improved accuracy and stability of flight one thing I found worked was using fletchings.  Just below the cotton I used I put 3 fletchings with a helix, the fletchings being very small and the same width as the bore when fastened on.  This stopped the broadhead from dragging in the tube and kept the darts flight straight and it seemed to go farther.

  Then again perhaps all that's completely unnecessary as I have only done target shooting with blowguns.

Thats very nice work. I have made darts with cotton wool but not with thistledown.