Civilization, Homeric; Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism; Homer; Homer -- Homes and haunts -- Greece
To the kindness of Mr. Hill Tout I also owe a description of the armour
of the Indian tribes of north-west America, from a work of his own.
He says: "For protective purposes in warfare they employed shields
and coat-armour. The shields varied in form and material from tribe to
tribe. Among the Interior Salish they were commonly made of wood, which
was afterwards covered with hide. Sometimes they consisted of several
thicknesses of hide only. The hides most commonly used were those of the
elk, buffalo, or bear. After the advent of the Hudson's Bay Co. some of
the Indians used to beat out the large copper kettles they obtained from
the traders and make polished circular shields of these. In some centres
long rectangular shields, made from a single or double hide, were
employed. These were often from 4 to 5 feet in length and from 3 to
4 feet in width--large enough to cover the whole body. Among the
Dene tribes (Sikanis) the shield was generally made of closely-woven
wicker-work, and was of an ovaloid form (exact size not given).
"The coat armour was _everywhere used_, and varied in form and style in
almost every centre. There were two ways in which this was most commonly
made. One of these was the slatted cuirass or corslet, which was formed
of a series of narrow slats of wood set side by side vertically and
fastened in place by interfacings of raw hide. It went all round the
body, being hung from the shoulders with straps. The other was a kind
of shirt of double or treble elk hide, fastened at the side with thongs.
Another kind of armour, less common than that just described, was the
long elk-hide tunic, which reached to and even _below the knees and was
sleeved to the elbow."_
Mr. Hill Tout's minute description, with the other facts cited, leaves
no doubt that even in an early stage, as in later stages of culture, the
use of the great shield does not exclude the use of such body armour
as the means of the warriors enable them to construct. To take another
instance, Pausanias describes the corslets of the neolithic Sarmatae,
which he saw dedicated in the temple of Asclepius at Athens. Corslets
these bowmen and users of the lasso possessed, though they did not use
the metals. They fashioned very elegant corslets out of horses' hoofs,
cutting them into scales like those of a pine cone, and sewing them on
to cloth. [Footnote: Pausanias, i. 211. [misprint] 6.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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