212 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Aug. 16, 1913. 
Forest and Stream is the official organ of the National Archery Association. 
The Fables of Archery. 
BY W. H. THOMPSON. 
(From issue of Aug. 14, 1879.) 
While it might be very interesting to look 
up many of the old stories about Robin Hood 
and William Tell, and other of the real and 
mythical heroes of the bow, I do not propose to 
deal with the unbelievable tales told of their 
marvelous shots, but to come home to our own 
day and land, and call attention to the strange 
fact that hundreds of otherwise good and re¬ 
liable persons will relate with the most unblush¬ 
ing mendacity the most utterly improbable and 
even impossible things which they have either 
done, or seen done with the bow and arrow. 
What archer is there in the United States who 
has practiced through this season who has not 
been repeatedly' told by his white haired friend 
who strolls over of an afternoon to see him 
shoot, that he “has seen the Indians stick a 
copper in a split stick, and then hit it at every 
shot at a distance of thirty to sixty yards.” 
Now the old gentleman is a very good man, he 
is not considered a liar, but the truth is he has 
never seen an Indian in his life! In the next 
place, if he had chanced to see an Indian he 
would, ten chances to one, have been armed 
with an old rifle instead of a bow, and lastly, 
if he had been armed with a bow, he could not 
have hit the copper at thirty yards at forty 
shots! Now, to the reader who has never seen 
an Indian, an Indian bow, or an Indian arrow, 
and who does not know anything about archery, 
and who has heard such tales dinned into his 
ears from his boyhood, all this may sound a 
trifle surprising. It is, nevertheless, very true. 
The North American Indians are very poor 
archers. They use worthless bows and worse 
arrows. There are very few of our archers who 
have had this season’s practice only, who could 
not discount the best of them at a target at 
sixty yards. Your old friend has told that tale 
about the cent in the split stick until he actually 
believes it! I do not, however, and I always 
tell such persons that they are only making 
themselves ridiculous by' reiterating such bosh’. 
The Indian-split-stick-cent tale has for its prin¬ 
cipal foundation the fact that about some of 
our frontier posts and villages the Indian boys, 
and sometimes the men. in order to obtain 
whiskey, or other articles for their use, would 
shoot at pennies, or other small objects thus 
placed in the split end of a stick, which would 
be stuck in the ground, not at a distance of 
forty yards, but usually at about four or five 
yards. They used small bows, of about four 
feet in length, which they kept strung for 
months at a time, and clumsy, heavy arrows, 
with large knobs at the head, which they could 
not shoot one hundred yards at a flight, and 
which no amount of skill could have driven thirty 
yards in a straight line. Generally there would 
be about a dozen of them doing the shooting, 
and instead of one shooting at a time, the 
whole dozen would discharge their arrows at 
once, and in the melee of arrows, some going 
sideways in the air, some bouncing along the 
ground, and all clattering along together, the 
little stick would be raked out of the ground, 
and a “hit” claimed! Even with all the tangle 
of a dozen arrows at five yards, the cent escaped 
as often as it was knocked out of the stick. 
Sometimes a squad of the Indian archers have 
traveled the States, exhibiting their skill in this 
way, but I have yet to learn of their shooting 
at a greater distance than thirty feet. Such 
archery' is simply contemptible. But some will 
ask, “How do Indians kill buffalo, and even our 
American soldiers, with their arrows, if they 
are such poor archers?” This is easily ex¬ 
plained. The bows used are very short, rough, 
and strong. The arrows short, slender and 
pointed, with very keen steel spikes. Riding at 
full speed at the very flank of a buffalo, they 
will shoot arrow after arrow into its back, neck 
and side, until it sinks from twenty wounds. 
With their short rough bows they can shoot 
with great force, but very little' accuracy is ever 
attained. They will lie in wait, concealed by 
high grass or masses of rock, until the luckless 
soldier or mail carrier passes close by, when a 
dozen arrows will be shot at him from a dis¬ 
tance of three or four yards, and the poor fel¬ 
low either falls from his horse, or carries three 
or four of their arrows into camp or station, 
sticking through his arms, shoulders or legs. 
The reason they did not become expert bowmen 
was because they had no reliable weapons. 
One might as well take a Mexican Escopette 
and shoot at Creedmoor with Jackson and Sum¬ 
ner, as to take one of the miserable sticks called 
Indian bows, and shoot at a National archery 
meeting of English archers, against the Fords, 
Fishers, Palairets and Remingtons of the 
present day. Now, instead of striking a copper 
cent every shot at even twenty yards, no Indian 
or white man has ever lived who could strike 
an eight-inch circle every time at that distance 
with an arrow, and such a circle contains about 
one hundred and fifty times the area of a cent 
piece. Not only do we continually hear this 
Indian fable repeated, but we are vexed with 
the endless babble about how well “I could 
shoot when I was a boy!” how “I used to kill 
birds at forty yards, almost every shot!” Yet 
he never saw the day when he could hit a bird 
at twenty feet one shot out of fifty. He doubt¬ 
less did, in fact, stand under the low spreading 
branches of his father’s cherry tree, and shoot 
up at the red heads as they came to steal the 
cherries, missing fifty shots at six feet distance, 
to where one bird was struck. He knows all 
this, he well remembers all the particulars, but 
he stands up before you with serious face, in¬ 
nocent. truthful looking eyes, and avers that he 
could then shoot much better than you can now, 
though you are putting four arrows out of five 
into your four-foot target at sixty yards. He 
even imagines that he can beat you now. and 
takes your bow and one of your arrows and 
faces square front to the target! He holds the 
bow horizontally, draws feebly with his thumb 
and forefinger, flirts the arrow about one-third of 
the way to the target by a sort of toss of the bow, 
and subsides. If you put six straight shots into 
the blue and red rings, he does not think much 
of it. but if you miss with four, and put two in 
the gold, he cheers you lustily. To show the 
utter fallacy of all those idle tales would re¬ 
quire a volume, but even when all of them were 
refuted the curious fact would still remain that 
men, otherwise truthful, would still relate the 
marvelous tales of the Indian and his little bow. 
Strange Malady Amon^ Archers. 
Boston, Mass., Aug. 7 .— Editor Forest and 
Stream: To-day four of the Newton Archers 
shot a double American round on their range at 
the Newton Center Playgrounds. All of the 
archers seemed to be affected with archeritis, or 
some similar disease, and none of the scores is 
anything to be proud of, but they are sent along 
nevertheless: 
L. C. 
Smith . 
60vds. 
.. 27-105 
28-118 
50yds. 
30-178 
30-148 
40yds. 
30-184 
30-172 
Total. 
87- 467 
88- 438 
175-905 
B. P. 
Grav . 
.. 24-104 
19-71 
25-142 
29-171 
30-184 
30-192 
79-431 
78-434 
157-865 
S. W. 
Wilder . 
.. 27-105 
21-119 
27- 131 
28- 148 
30-174 
29-171 
84-410 
78-438 
Burton 
(10 
P. Gray Jr., 
years old) 
. 1-5 
4-14 
11-21 
8-20 
16-76 
11-49 
162-848 
28-102 
23-83 
51-185 
L. C. Smith. 
ARROWS 
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stop in and examine them. 
Fifth Avenue Store—At Forty-third Street, 
convenient to Grand Central Station. 
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River and "Outside” routes. 
Spalding’s Archery Guide, edited by Dr. E. B. Weston, 10 cents. 
A. G. SPALDING & BROS. 
124-126 Nassau Street 520 Fifth Avenue 
141 Federal Street, Boston 
