Historic Replicas

Millions of people gathered around their TV’s this past Sunday to enjoy the Super Bowl, the ultimate American athletic competition and the most watched television event of the year. It’s a distinctly American sport, as central to our culture as Coca-cola and the fourth of July.  Like our country itself, modern football is a recent development.  The rules we play by today didn’t take shape until 1879.  The origins of the game go back much further, though. 

Football evolved from rugby, a similar game that is extremely popular in England and many other countries.  Rugby is an off-shoot of soccer, first created when a rebellious little player named William picked up the ball and started running with it, or so the legend goes.  Football, then, came from soccer, and that’s where the river of history begins to run deep.  In fact, there’s archeological evidence of people playing soccer or games like it as long as 3000 years ago!  No one is certain how the game spread, but it appears in cultures across the globe.  The Japanese wrote of a similar game in 1004 B.C, The ancient Greeks in 2,000 B.C.  The Roman warriors played a rugby-like game called Harpastum for over 700 years. Sports were a noble pastime for the Romans; they were encouraged to participate during breaks from the battlefield and their historical weapons.  Sports have always been important; they allow people to indulge their aggressive impulses during peace, and experience the thrill of competition and physical conflict without the horror of war.  The Super Bowl may be a modern phenomenon, but it’s part of a tradition that’s as old as civilization itself.

One of the products on the Early American/Colonial section of the website is an authentic peace pipe tomahawk.  This relic of the colonial past was both an instrument of war and an essential part of peacemaking ceremonies, and is symbolic of the complexities that defined the Native Americans’ worldview. To me, their understanding of natural world is particularly interesting. While they may have appeared primitive to the Europeans with their historical weapons, most Native American tribes were actually quite observant and resourceful.  They possessed a keen understanding of and respect for the environment and were exceedingly efficient in their use of natural resources. The Sioux and Cheyenne tribes hunted buffalo and famously used every part of the animals they killed.  In their own opinion, the Native Americans were a part of the natural world, on an equal footing with the birds and the bison.  Before each hunt, the Sioux honored their prey with a ritual dance and a prayer of thanks.  Their philosophy is a sharp contrast to the prevailing Western European attitude, in which the natural world was only valuable so far as it benefited mankind. The Native Americans never developed the technology and widespread agricultural practices of Western Europe. While that shortcoming doomed them to a tragic fate, we would all do well to remember that their respect for the natural world was vastly more developed than that of the people who conquered them.

Japanese swords are almost as old as the culture itself.  Initially, these graceful and deadly implements were simply variations of a Chinese design called the Jian, a straight, double-edged blade that resembles the well-known swords of medieval Europe.  But around 700 AD, the beloved katana of popular lore and samurai movie fame began to emerge.  Like the historic reproductions on our site, the katanas of old are curved with a single, razor-sharp edge, and were central to Japanese warrior culture.  Unsurprisingly, the katana’s origins have been immortalized in legend. 
Amakuni Yasutsuna was a sword smith who had the distinct honor of forging blades for the Emperor and his army.  The monarch and his men would greet Amakuni enthusiastically when they passed his home on the way to battle; they held him in high regard, for they knew that victory lay in his hands.  One day, however, as they returned from battle, they passed in silence, and would not meet his gaze.  Akamuni was horrified when he realized that many of their Japanese swords had broken or been damaged in the battle. Desperate to regain his honor, he locked himself in his forge and prayed to the Shinto gods for guidance.  On the seventh night, Akamuni was granted a vision:  a curved, glowing blade with a single edge.  He set to work forging the sword, and ran breathlessly to the palace when he’d finished.  The soldiers and advisors laughed and laughed, for they’d never seen such a weapon.  But the Emperor decided to trust him, and Akamuni was the only one laughing the following year, when a smiling emperor passed by and told him that not a single sword had broken or failed in battle.