![]() Ashley and Pierre Chouteau who were bound up the Missouri for the Rocky Mountains. Louis by 1825, crafting long-barreled flintlock rifles for the local trade as well as for fur traders such as William H. Hawken-of Hagerstown, Md., Harpers Ferry, Va., and Xenia, Ohio-were established as gunsmiths in St. Of dimly documented origins and limited production numbers, this distinctive crossbreed was the weapon of choice for at least one hard-bitten Rocky Mountain denizen and his comrades. One rare exception to the prevailing prejudice against hybrid weapons was the Hawken-Spencer rifle, which merged the defining characteristics of a single-shot muzzle-loading percussion plains rifle with those of a breechloading metallic-cartridge repeating arm. Weapons like the Elgin cutlass pistol, which merged a cold steel blade with powder and ball, attracted few partisans among the pragmatic plainsmen, who rarely opted for any arm more unconventional than a twin-barreled rifle-shotgun combination. Hybrid firearms were generally not in demand in the premetallic-cartridge era. The Hawken-Spencer Rifle was a Crossbreed in Western Armament CloseĪ hybrid is defined as “one of mixed origin or composition,” and the most famous and prolific hybrid to flourish in the harshly demanding environment of the American frontier was the sturdy and intelligent mule-ungainly offspring of the horse and donkey.
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