CANE ARROWS

by Al Herrin

Our good friends, Doug and Alphie Penisten, recently returned from a trip to Nepal.  They brought me an arrow crafted by the local tribesmen in their ancient tradition.  The arrow is made from bamboo with feathers tied on with thread and a handmade metal tip.  The tribesmen use their bows and arrows for competitive shooting.  In my collection of primitive archery equipment from around the world, most of the arrows and some of the bows are made from bamboo.  Even some of the bowstrings are made from split bamboo.

Worldwide, the most common materials used by prehistoric man for making arrows was cane or bamboo, reeds, and related materials.  The pre-Columbian Cherokees made most of their arrows from cane.  They also made arrows from sprouts of wood such as dogwood and from split wood such as black locust.

Possibly the oldest archery artifact found in the U. S. is a cane arrow shaft found in Tennessee in 1956 which was dated to be more than 2000 years old.  Cane arrows were still in use by southeastern tribes, including the Cherokees, when they were first contacted by the DeSoto expedition in 1540.

Two species of cane (genus Arundinaria) grow in the Southeastern U. S. where the pre-Columbian Cherokees lived.  The larger, Arundinaria gigantea, commonly called large or giant cane, can grow to a height of 30 feet and a diameter of 2-3/4 inches at the base and was used by the Cherokees for making blowguns, fishing poles, mats, baskets, quivers and many other uses.  The smaller, Arundinaria tecta, commonly called switch cane, usually grows to a height of 3 to 13 feet and was used, among other things, for making arrows.  In the Cherokee language, the word for arrow is ga-tli-da, which was also the name the early Cherokees used for switch cane.

Generally, cane grows in low-lying, moist to wet places near stream banks, shrub bogs, sloughs and bayous.  Switch cane grows from Florida to Louisiana and Maryland.  Giant cane grows, often in extensive cane brakes, from Florida to Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Virginia.

When the Cherokees were removed to Oklahoma in the 1830's, they found that giant cane grew along the streams.  We call it river cane and it is still used by some Oklahoma Cherokees to make blowguns and lengths of small diameter are suitable for making arrows.

Few traditional arrowmakers remain in the Cherokee Nation and I believe I am the only one still making arrows from cane.  All of the others that I know split their arrow shafts from black locust or osage orange wood.  I personally prefer cane to black locust or osage orange for arrows.  Cane arrows are easier to make and lighter in weight.  They are easier to break than an arrow of black locust or osage orange but cane is tougher than Port Orford cedar, from which most commercial wooden arrow shafts are made.

I prefer to cut my cane for arrows during the cold months of winter although I do cut cane in other seasons with acceptable results.  The quickest way to cut the cane is a downward slanting cut with a knife but this leaves a sharp pointed stob sticking up that can injure the feet of a person or animal so I make a perpendicular cut with a small saw which leaves a dull stob.

If you cut cane stems of the same diameter and test their stiffness or spine, you will find a strange result.  The stems will fall into two groups; stiff shafts, all having approximately equal spines, and shafts with very weak spines.  This result comes from the fact that the cane grows two different kinds of stems; a vegetative stem and a reproductive stem, one of which is strong while the other is weak.  To the inexperienced eye, the two appear to be the same so many of the stems that are cut are too weak to be used for arrows.

However, you can learn to distinguish the two.  The weak stems have fewer branches and green leaves on the stem and have brown, paper-like sheaths on the stem above each of the lower joints of the stem.  The strong stems have more branches and green leaves and do not have brown sheaths above the lower joints.

Among the strong stems, the stiffness or spine of the arrow shaft will be proportional to the diameter of the stem.  Once you learn to distinguish which are the strong stems and the diameter which will give you the spine you need, you can cut only those cane stems which will make arrows that shoot well in your bow.

Of course, this was the method used by the ancient arrowmakers.  They learned, through trial and error, the diameter of the strong cane shafts that would shoot well in different bows and thus "spined" the arrows to fit the bows.

After cutting the shafts, I hang them by one end and allow them to season in the air for a few months before using them for making arrows.  Then, with heat, I reduce the size of the joints and straighten the shafts.

The size of the joints can be reduced to the size of the shaft by sanding the joints but this tends to weaken the arrow at the joints.  The early arrowmakers used a grooved stone to accomplish the task.  They heated the stone to the point of scorching the shaft if held against it for a few seconds.  Each joint of the cane shaft was pressed and rotated in the hot groove which reduced the size of the joint, without weakening the shaft, and straightened the shaft at the same time.  I made a grooved device of copper which works as well as stone and is much quicker to heat.

I cut a shallow nock at one of the joints at the small end of the shaft.  The shallow nock necessitates my using the Cherokee pinch draw while shooting.  If you want to use a deep nock for a Sioux style, three finger draw, you can whittle a wooden plug to fit inside the hollow cane and carve your nock in the wood.  A similar plug can be fitted in the front end of the shaft and extend several inches to make a foreshaft for attaching the arrowhead.  I wrap the cane, where the foreshaft attaches, with sinew to prevent the cane from splitting when the arrow strikes its target.

The straightened, nocked shaft can be fletched by gluing on the feathers or tying them on with sinew.  If you are using a flint head, a shallow groove is cut in the end of the foreshaft and the head tied on with sinew.  A bit of pine pitch can be used to hold the flint head straight until it is tied with sinew.  If you don't have pine pitch, you can use hot melt cement to hold the head until you tie it.

At a draw length of 28 inches, cane arrows that have an average (midway on shaft) diameter of 5/16 inch will usually have sufficient spine to shoot in a bow of 50 to 60 pounds.  Larger diameter shafts will spine to shoot in very heavy bows.