Page 176 - 83-BOOK1

Iconic & Well Documented Frank
Company Collection & Illustrated
174
LOT 1226
Extremely Rare Well-Documented Montana Found Historic Custer Battle Era Kittredge & Co. Marked Frank Wesson Tip-Up Single Shot Rifle with Native American Tack Decorated Stock from the U.S. Cartridge Co. Gun Collection and “Custer Battle Guns” by duMont - NSN, 44 RF
cal., 24 inch octagon bbl., blue finish, hardwood stock. Very few Native American used and decorated guns survive, and those that have any documented stories are even rarer. Like many 19th century firearms, Native American guns all too often leave
us wondering: “Where have you been? How have you survived?” Not this one. We know where it was found thirteen years after the 7th Cavalry’s mutilated corpses littered the battlefield at the Little Bighorn: this rifle was resting in a teepee to the west on the Middle Fork of the Flathead River beside the body
of its owner, a victim of the brutal Montana winter.
It is documented in the included copies of “Custer Battle Guns” by duMont on pages 61 and 54 (latter the “Revised and Expanded Edition, 1988”) and listed with other “Single Shot Carbines showing Indian Ownership.”The rifle is also shown and discussed
on pages 48 and 49 of the third volume of “Frank Wesson Gunmaker” by Woods, Littlefield, Rowe, Pellett, and Hamilton (full set included) where it
is identified as a 1st Type from the U.S. Cartridge
Company’s collection and “extensively modified, probably by an Indian. We don’t know how the rifle is opened. Baldwin Collection.” Arguably the most important book documenting this rifle is the famous catalog of the U.S. Cartridge Company collection where this rifle is listed as gun 255 and the following history is recorded: “By some means this carbine fell into the hands of the Indians. History as given by Buckskin Joe: ‘I, with Tanning Iron and Tanning Hoe, while hunting on the Middle Fork of the Flat Head River, I found a large Indian tepee, snowed up. I dug the snow off, and there were two Indian bucks and one squaw. They were frozen stiff. I think they got there, and got snowed in, and starved to death. I took the rifle from the teepee, Nov. 23, 1889. Signed, Buckskin Joe, hunter, trapper, and guide.’ The stock
is ornamented with brass tacks.” No details on the identity of “Buckskin Joe” are given, but the most well-known man with that monicker was Edward Jonathan Hoyt (1840-1918) who was a legend of the West in his own time. He was born in northwestern Canada. His father was involved in the fur trade both as a trader with Native Americans and as a trapper. Hoyt grew up among Canada’s First Nations and moved to the U.S. and served as a scout during the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. He spent twelve years living among Native Americans on the Great Plains.