I spent alot of time when sitting on baits and tree stands trying to imagine the processes that natives went thru in making their bows and arrows. I always thought that some day I would make the bow from local trees,(black ash here) try the trick where they stretched sinew on the limbs and let it dry (for more draw power) and how I would fashion the arrows. I never read this anywhere, but to find straight shafts and then have them dry straight would be a feat in itself. If a guy split a dried 31" log(my draw length ) removed the heart from the middle, placed a shaft within and bound the 2 halves together again,you could have even a bent shaft dry straight. Splitting feathers and using the same feathers from the same wing on each shaft (so it spun with least resistance) is crap I read they stuff they likely passed on to each other too.

Many say the natives were such great traders that the ones in northern Ontario smoked Mexican pot in their peace pipes....(that is why their called peace pipes ya know)! Maybe some carried chickens that never got eaten when they had the munchies.... 😆 😆

Last year I had the opportunity to watch how the natives fish for salmon in north BC, "dip fishing" I believe it was called, using a net on the end of a long pole. These guys were pulling out about 50 fish per hour. Learned how the fish were smoked too. The land will provide everything you need to survive, you just have to know where to look. Having a trade network certainly helps. Makes you think if native tribes were trading between Ontario and Mexico hundreds of years ago, surely some prepping groups could set up trade networks as well.

cares, the first of my family to arrive in Canada.. was t William graves in 1764, they would first be land granted in nova scotia, the next land grant know was in Ontario, then in the very early 1900, my family roots went out to alberta om mothers side, on fathers, they had come from Norway in mid 1800's and had a huge saw mill in Washington, they moved up in alberta and had a massive sheep farm in southern alberta, on my mom side, land grants about an hour from Edmonton, the big push in homesteading in the family was after the wars.. in total between both sides, seven went to war, all came home, all were granted and took the land offered further north in alberta as service reward.. I have been learning and tracking this kind of info for years.

We first hear of Lt. William Graves (1) in the Township of Granville, Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, Canada. In a Confirmation of Land Grants, 1764, William Graves was given lot number 11 in Granville Township. This land grant was awarded to William as a result of his military service in the French and Indian Wars which ended in 1763.

It is believed that the parents of William may have been Thomas Graves and Ann Stone.

Massachusetts Officers in the French and Indian Wars, edited by Nancy S. Voye, shows William Graves having two tours of duty. His rank is Lt.; residence in Massachusetts is Weston. From Nov. 2, 1759 until July 1, 1760 (43 weeks, 5 days) he was in Annapolis, Nova Scotia, in Capt. Daniel Fletcher’s Company, under Colonel Frye. He signed on for another tour of duty, remaining in Nova Scotia, stationed in Annapolis Royal in Capt. Jabez Snow’s Company from July 2, 1760 until Dec. 16, 1760 (33 weeks).

It is not known whether William returned to Massachusetts at the end of his duty. He married Elizabeth Williams in 1760 in Granville. No exact date of marriage has been found. Their first child, William, Jr., was born Sept. 1761 in Nova Scotia. This would seem to indicate that William never returned to the Colonies (at least not for any length of time) after being stationed in Annapolis during the Wars.

A Nova Scotia 1770 census for Granville, Annapolis Valley, lists “Lt. William Graves and family of 1 woman, 2 boys, and 1 girl: 5 Protestants from America”. Nova Scotia land records state that William applied for land “on the river of Annapolis Royal” sometime before 1777. In 1783 William and his eldest son, William, Jr., crossed the Bay of Fundy (the body of water separating Nova Scotia from New Brunswick) and joined the Loyalist settlers in New Brunswick. They arrived in Saint John, New Brunswick, and received a grant of 2,000 acres bordering on Kennebecasis Bay on the outskirts of the loyalist city of Saint John.

The Story of Sussex (New Brunswick) and Vicinity by Grace Aiton states “the two Williams (father and son) made their way up the Kennebecasis in Indian canoes and camped on the site now occupied by the Penobsquis United Baptist Church before settling at Springdale. From there they spread up the Portage Valley and were the first to make use of the upper reaches of the river for the operating of mills. William, the son, was the noted strong man of his day, and he thought nothing to harness himself to a sled loaded with farm produce and haul it over the frozen river’s surface to Saint John.”

i have to say that the settling in the east was quite different then in the west

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ps, yes, i am aware, that almost all the land grants over a two hundred year span was gives for service in wars

Speaking of worst nightmares, to change the nightmare thread topic to a new one ,,,I have wondered how the pioneers did it.
...
They arrived via wagon trains along a gruelling journey.
I've often wondered in those tiny pioneer towns, where did they get their supplies ?
... Did they have any fruit besides berries ?
How did the pioneers get their hands on hens to lay eggs ?
...What type of supplies did they have at those stores was it mostly sugar , grains, planting seeds and sewing cloths ?
Did they sell meat ? ...
Or was everything salted ? If everything was salted where did they get such a huge supply of salt for everyone ?
The farming pioneers would need alot of food stores...Where did they get all those canning jars and equipment ?
Some things must have been very hard to come by ? What type of supplies were they desperate for ?
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How did they take a bath ? ... If so the bath tub would need to be right by the window.
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If everyone stops and thinks, we could probably drum up lists of things we never thought of prepping for.

Big one, dude.

Big tubs were filled, buckets on stoves. Big pots and buckets on stoves are a good thing to leave in place, allowing the water to warm the air around them for dispersal, just like extra grates, chimney sheaths, and fire bricks. Cold or hot, families would share the water (seniority or least grody to most grungy), usually in a kitchen but in old-old cabins, there's just one room and regularly a loft. Summertime would be a porch or creek for bathtime. Water was then used for laundry, and later bailed out for gardens. Once it was empty enough to haul, the tub would be moved again. There were most commonly hip tubs - barely enough water for the hips to be covered - and a lot were 1/2 the length of modern tubs.

I actually have long but fairly shallow Rubbermaid totes for the bath/laundry and dish tubs that can go over drains for if/when plumbing stops working, and supplies to build a raised shower area with totes under it outdoors, to catch and save the water. DAWN is safe to put in plants. Pine sol goes 50/50 by opinions. Bleach is uncool to dump where it will hit creeks.

As the west was developed, above and below the borders, you typically had small settlements forming along the paths west, and smaller numbers moving from the west into the empty areas a little further east.

For a while, yes, everything came in by wagon and there were salt mines pretty early on.
You can research the Oregon trail for lists of prices, general store supplies, and how much stuff they were expected to fit into something with the capacity of roughly a Volvo. The per-person lists of military companies moving west (to include dried ruit requirements) during the Mexican War era and then post-Civil War era might interest you.
Livestock was led, hitch to the back of a wagon, or carted in hideous little baskets or wooden crates.

General stores ran off barter for long periods - baked goods and services like laundry for mining and lumber camps, somebody with a still, garden produce, finished and raw dairy products, and livestock. Raw minerals (gems, gold) and furs were used extensively in some parts. Coins and paper played bigger roles as settlements developed closer to the outskirts and the outskirts were pushed back further, and as travel routes became more developed.
Runs to the store could be a day or a week, but were necessary for hardware and some supplies.

Some seeds would have been available at the store. Most agriculturally based native tribes and rural families at the time practiced seed saving as a matter of course. Urban folk who were accustomed to paying for groceries and bread were just as ill informed about that practice - and many other hardships and skill tasks - as we are today. The later into history you go as far as Great Plains and northern settlement, the more soft city slickers died or begged, gave up, and went home.

Stores had their tools, metal goods, cloth, finished products, glassware, and outside produce (salt, tobacco, sugar, honey, dried fruits, very rarely fresh whole fruits that would survive longer trips but some from close but more developed towns) on top of locally produced items. Fruits were grown from seed, although some journals talk about people planting some of their cuttings as they abandoned things along the way.

The thing is, as white people, we have really never had a situation in this country where we didn't have a trade network already in place, not from the first time we landed with a year of supplies for permanent settlement.
Indians had some permanent settlements, but they ebbed and flowed in directions, supported relatively small populations, and many tribes stayed nomadic, following seasonal foods and good water, until we shoved them into lands they didn't know to duke it out with local natives and then shoved them all onto tiny scraps of land they couldn't survive on because we fenced and shot off the migrating large game and didn't let them follow.

Meat was, in fact, largely salted or dried, or canned. Salt was shipped in from the coasts or from salt flats, deposits and mines.