Frontier Butcher Knife

[Steve Jajo]

Frontier butcher knife or fighting piece. Really old knife and scabbard. Knife o/a - 20 3/4". Blade 14 3/8".

[Cap't Bridger]

Now,,,I like that knife. A LOT.

Question also...are the thickness's on Green River blades now same was was back then,,,,or are they thinner ?

It just seems to me some old butcher knives are a tad more sturdy than the Green Rivers of today....but maybe Green Rivers were always thin.

[buckshot]

I'd say variations existed but there are enough of the old scalpers and Wilson type butcher knives still around to pretty much establish that the Green River knives of today are pretty close. The 7" butcher has a profile that is very close to the Wilson butcher knives of about 1849 and later. The main difference is the early knives tended not to have a choil, in other words the edge of the blade was even with the bottom of the tang. There has been a long discussion on exactly what knives the mountain men carried- butchers or scalpers, or both. The scalpers were far more common but perhaps the Wilson brand of butcher knife was viewed as having superior steel. The Miller paintings are confusing because the sharp pointed sheaths tend to suggest a scalper type blade but then the square handles sticking out of the sheaths show a pin, which sort of suggests a butcher knife since many of the scalpers were a half tang with three small pins in the front half of the handle. It seems a lot of questions exist that may never be fully answered.
Personally, the rackish tip of the scalper has a lot more appeal than the blunt tip on the Wilson butcher knife. When Diah stabbed the Griz- would you really try that with a blunt tipped Wilson- seems the scalper would be more logical.
BTW the HBC didn't sell Wilson shaped butcher knives- only scalpers. J.J. Astor came from a family of German butchers and Astor lived with his brother in England before moving to America.
Perhaps he pushed the Wilson shape as a good tool for skinning a buffalo. Just a thought.