“Keep your powder dry” has been a military maxim for at least 400 years. But how was one to do this in an age when gunpowder had to be manually loaded into an unsteady firearm, outdoors and in a hurry?
Let us now praise the lowly cow (or ox) horn, savior of many a soldier, hunter or marksman in need of a handy supply of the stuff at a moment’s notice. The light, hollowed-out horn, with a base and spout tamped in, was ubiquitous among early colonists to the United States, so much so that they needed a way to identify their personal horn.
Which brings us to praising the artisans, cartographers or just a bored guy with a knife, all of whom whiled and whittled away many an afternoon in turning a utilitarian object into a personal work of folk art: the engraved powder horn.
The Library has 10 brilliant pieces of these relics of frontier life in the Geography and Map Division. The Library’s are all from the 1750s to early 1800s, just before they began to be replaced by paper cartridges. The Library’s well-preserved pieces, like the tens of thousands that filled the countryside during the Revolutionary War era, are carved with an array of images: maps, houses, cityscapes, trees, animals, birds or personalized motifs.
“ABEL CHAPMAN AND HIS HORN – MAID (sic) IN PROVIDENCE,” reads the inscription on one 1777 horn from Rhode Island, engraved with etchings of many buildings, a church and roads. Another has scenes from around the state of New York.
“During the mid-eighteenth century practically every American male owned a powder horn for hunting or military service,” wrote John S. duMont in “American Engraved Powder Horns,” a 1978 book that explores the history and art of the horns. “Ornamental as well as useful, the powder horn was almost as necessary a part of a man’s dress as his shoes or hat.”
Animal horns had been used for thousands of years, either to blow signals or to store almost anything – ink, snuff, grease, water – so gunpowder was a natural addition, particularly as a horn could be easily made water and spark proof.
On the armament side, the first firearms of any sort were made in China in the 10th century. By the time the 14th century rolled around, Europeans were using them and, as this tradition developed, matches, flashpans, wheel locks and flintlocks were the stuff of gun play from the from then until roughly the first third of the 18th century, when Samuel Colt patented his mass-produced, multi-firing revolver.
Until then, when gunpowder was doled out from large kegs to individuals, the gunman needed a way to mark his horn so that he could get it back. And so horn etchings, like their cousin scrimshaw art engraved onto bone or ivory, began to move from the prosaic to the ornate.
The outline typically was first penciled or penned onto the horn, then cut in with a needle, knife or graver. They could be quite elaborate. Officers and gentlemen often posed for portraits with them by their side.
Powder horns faded after paper and then metal cartridges were introduced. By the outbreak of the Civil War, they were history, save for a few hunters who pined for the old days. Still, they tended to be keepsakes.
“The soldier prized his horn, the companion piece of his musket, and invested it with the same romantic appeal,” wrote Stephen V. Grancsay, curator of arms and armor for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in his 1945 book, “American Engraved Powder Horns: A Study Based on the J.H. Grenville Gilbert Collection.” “In times of peace, horn and musket usually hung over the kitchen fireplace, a constant reminder of fighting days and campaigns against the Indians.”
Their long afterlife endures in museums and private collections, showing up at auctions and on antique websites, a reminder of who we used to be and how we used to live.
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