I've been watching this site from time to time after recently hearing about it through the small Texas diggin' scene. (by that I mean network, ie. Duane Rogers, Bob Mc Williams, Bill Arnold, Nacho, Randy, Frio Landing, Temple/Boerne shows, etc.)
I have been a hunting/fishing guide professionally spanning five states and two countries for 17 years, and I have harvested- and more importantly, butchered- my share of game.
Being an avid digger for the last 10 years, as well as an avid surface hunter the last 20 years, I also have my share of killer artifacts, including the rarest of the fluted points.
This past month, while in the process of "indian quartering" whitetail deer, I have again thought about is how well one of my three corner tang knives would accomplish the task at hand. I am using an up and down, or back and forth sweeping motion as I have a thousand times. Ancient man did it a million times, and he too had it down to less than a mere formality. Being that my corner tangs all came out of massive open aired bison slaughters in box canyons with live spring heads, I know for a fact they were used at some point in the slaughtering process. Today, I have to hit my knives on my steele after I finish every animal in preparation for the next, or it becomes difficult. A corner tang has a top edge and bottom edge, and often show signs of ancient resharpenings, (which might add to the crescent shape.) The corner tang is perfect because it has two sharp edges to call upon in the duties required for taking an animal down, including the skinning.
All that is my long winded, possibly overstated self-presumed theory of the corner tang, right or wrong.
Couldn't go diggin' today, so I thought I'd hole up and throw somethin' meaty out there to chew on a bit...

Paleoboy, here is alittle something else to chew on...a friend of mine asked if I had a replica that he could have for a X-mas gift for his buddy last year, so I made him one, hafted it, actually put a haft on one that I had...lol. His friend took it out hunting with his other gear, when his steel knife went dull, pulled out the corner tang and started using it...long story short, said it worked better than his modern knife...ordered three more for his friends...goes to show, modern ain't always better...

That's cool!
You are so right, modern is definitely not always better, and rumor has it that a high grade flint can take a finer edge than steel.

By the way, I left off the "as opposed to what" part of the idea. I have heard theories from ol' timers that corner tangs were used like scyths (sp?) in order to cut plants at the ground, and as well were corner notched in order to wear the knife from a wrist or around the neck while on a piece of cordage. I think they were gutting knives, easily ripping through the thick cartilage of the brisket when splitting thr ribs. Something about the shape and halfting on a corner tang that seems it would trump a Friday or other biface only in the butchering process, though we did recover Base tangs,Fridays, and other bifaces as well.

Good observations PBoy [ and good Paleo finds ]
In addition to "normal" hafting, I also had heard from "experts" that some were on a lanyard worn around the neck for easy availability. {Expert was one of the ones listed in your diggers circle }

Looking at the large variety of Ctangs on display like various dealers at the flint shows is interesting.
Some are only about 2 1/2 inches, sounds about right for a handy ExactO knife.
Could be resharpened to a nub or just deliberatly made that small.

You were detailing Ctangs but just mention BASE TANGS in passing.........THOSE are the ones I dont understand. Delicate little notches in the base of a huge blade seem absolutly useless for bolting on to an
antler or bone handle.
Somehow they must have been effective, they are almost common all over Tx from a long time span.

Thanks SH. I'm with you, the basetangs are probably a little more mysterious as far as what advantages the basal notches served. That might keep me up tonight...
One of the gentlemen digging with us recoverd a true 7 inch basetang, unbelievable symmetry, no retouches, and of course the smallest notches you could imagine, it certainly would have been difficult for halfting. I think the guy could have floated home that evening.
I also had an interesting conversation with Floyd Easterwood concerning basetangs years ago, and like us he was really intrigued with the base tang and its function. All we can do is speculate. All in all, we recovered 5 different basetangs from this camp over the course of three months, and come to think of it, all were barely used and very sizeable, four out of five breaking five inches or more. Although we sometimes associate these types of artifacts as ceremonial or burial items, and that's a justifiable argument, not a single human remain was found by any of us, and we kept our eyes open. Perhaps one could make the argument that within all the bison bones there might have been human remains that went unnoticed, but we never found anything even remotely speculative. As you know, bison bones are BIG. That being said, those basetangs were on hand for quite a feast!

PB, Sorry to harp on Base tangs rather than C tangs but before this posting melts into history. . .
For those following this story, there is a great example to backup PB's input.
Go back to forum frt PG. Hit G-mans posting of BIGGEST HEARTBREAKERS, about 25% the way down [ that little cursur on the right of screen !! ]

Assuming thats a standard hand and NOT one of G's stuffed animal hands. . . .

The base of that blade is 4 inches LONG and 4 3/8 WIDE.
When new, it must have been over 7 inches......
Check those ditty little notches

One theory is that basetangs were hafted with one edge into a piece of wood with hafting sinew tied at 45 degrees. To me, this is the most plausible explanation on hafting.

Ok, think about it. You take a piece of wood that is the same length as the knife. Then you put a groove into the wood. Lay one edge of the the basetang into the groove. Then haft the blade down to the wood, "handle", with sinew at an angle. This would give a long skinning/ cutting edge. It would also explain two things. One, the tiny notches on a long wide blade. Two, the specimens that have been used and sharpened with a crescent shape.

Paleoboy, I've talk with you about this before. Why don't you trip these people out and post a few pictures of your killers?

First off, no need to apologize for talkin' Base Tangs vs. Corner Tangs SH, like everyone else I just love talkin' artifacts. A true 7" G10 BT is hard to get over, I have even spoken with friends like Outdoor Guy about whether or not I would trade my 5" G10 CT for the 7" G10 BT. Since I didn't find the BT, I wouldn't trade my CT, but it's still fun to think about. In its frame, that Base tang commands your eye, and hardly even lets you look at the other killers around it, including the Andice exotic.
Outdoor Guy, thanks for lending a little credibility to my words, after re-reading the post, some of it does sound too good to be true...
I'm with you on the halfting process, I just for some reason in my mind see the Corner tang providing more leverage after halfting than the Base tang, especially for pushing straight down or pulling straight up with any force. The tiny basal notches found on the BT's just seem like they wouldn't stand up to a lot of pressure applied with a downward force without maybe slipping in the wood/bone handle. Then again, maybe the Mastic or pitch or whatever else was used helped to solve that problem as well. Again, purely speculative...
I'm a woosie when it comes to posting anything of mine on cyberspace, I can look at killer points on the net and recall exactly who owns many of them, so no offense to the good people here, but my points will remain off the net, and may be viewed by all at the next show.

By the way, look at the BAD A** Base tang on the front page of austin diggers. 6.5" long, caramel material with light colored swirls in it. Freakin' awesome. How many times are you going to be able to wrap cordage around those basal notches? One wrap and the diameter of most cordage is going to then prevent another pass....
compared to those basal notches, the base tangs we recovered had ultra-tiny notches, most cordage would hardly fit in them. Call me crazy, but the base tang on Michelle's front page looks more at first glance like a phase one "spatcher"-(artifact fixed to a solid, somewhat long foreshaft and used up close as the finishing blow on downed and dying bison. A true spear in every sense.) Projectile point? no. Knife? Could be. Spear? Could be.

Cant get those monster base tangs out of mind almost seems the larger the blade, the smaller more delicate the notches !

Just a very small parallel, for years I have thought how awkward some smaller projectile points seem to be for strong hafting . . . like the SAN SABA and the tiny FAIRLAND. The urge to create a point that was so distinctive to their own tribe seems to have lead
away from what seems to be a perfect basal configuration. . . like a PERD !

Paleo, if you have a table at Fredricksburg, I would like to your display.
How do we know you ? Got your name on the table ?
OR easier yet [ for those that cant read ] how
bout wearing your Santa party hat. .

I had not planned on attending the Fredericksburg show this year, but who knows, maybe I'll grab my best A-frame and do a walk through. I'll know you SH, after getting to know this site it seems that your celebrity status will make you easy to find. I look forward to introducing myself to you and sharing in some great artifacts, I'm sure your collection is phenomenal. If I don't make the Freds show, I usually always make a Boerne show- just fyi.
Have a good day...

Boerne is good PB,

Gives you a little more time to dig something spectacular .
I'll wear something easy to spot, maybe an eye patch, plastic wooden leg and
a Peguin on my shoulder

The penguin on the shoulder ought to do it. Look forward to meeting you SH.

If anyone knows of a documented case of a corner tang being hafted I would like to know what it is.

Concerning the base tangs; I always wondered about their function until last weekend, when it was explained to me that they were circumcision tools.

PB, I have some new input for the Corner tang crowd, which is what you originally started out with. . .

No doubt about them being very efficient cutting tools. The hafting or thong [ or whatever ] theories seem a little undetermined,
A little like the base tang notch observations we covered. . .

So, to the "new input". . . G-man posted a pic of a really slick flint knife that he devised [Flo-T did
the knapping.]. See STAGHORN KNIFE, last date Jan 07, 08
I took one look at that and said [ to myself ],
" Self, THERE is the Buck knife of old "
The tang is just what modern knives look like. G-man says it's patterned after the Cody knife and its easier to haft.
And I add, looks stronger than Ctang notches.
I had seen Cody knives refered to before so I went to the money book. Could only find it in the SW section
page 830, and it's a TERRIBLE example to relate to a hafting tang.
Then to muddy the question more, look at page 831, the corner tang ! That little bump would not aid thong or hafting.

So. . . . . I'm musing on whether the beautiful, rare and somewhat delicate type of Ctang blade might have been something more of pride of ownership or [ I hate to mention it ] maybe more "ceremonial" than
a heavy duty butchering tool.

Good info SH, I certainly can't prove otherwise, and what you say makes perfect sense. Because my corner tangs were all recovered from the middle of bison slaughters, its still hard to think that a ceremonial piece would be on hand there for anything other than slicing, cutting,& skinning.
However, I have left sacrificial offerings after harvesting certain animals in the past, maybe those CT people offered up (and buried) a nice knife in celebration of the kill and the feast.
Fun to dream about...

Well now, we are very fortunate that the things we don't know for sure about early Amerindians is so nicely tempered by our enthusiasm for the unique things they made. Good observations all round, thank you.

SH, there is a better example of the cody complex knife in a different edition. The one in the SW is totaly different. It could be in the 8th edition but I cant remember,I know I saw it someplace. As a knife maker I would not trust the hafting of a CT to hold up under any kind of heavy cutting unless you grooved the handle somehow where it would lock into place and then tied it on half way up the blade but who knows

The only hafted cornertang on record is shown in Dwaine Rogers' Cornertang Book. It was picked up by a whiteman after a skirmish with indians. Apparently it had been found by an indian in historical times and hafted as a weapon.

Since I'm not much at knapping, I hadn't thought about it from that perspective, but that's helpful. What I do know however, is when an animal is harvested, skinning it while it is still warm is 100% easier than when it has had time to "stove up" and get cold, meaning I know I could take at least a deer apart with my CT's- halfted or not, in no time at all. Maybe these tools were used in hand with a protective piece of skin/cloth, just as people theorize what they used to protect their hands while knapping. The corner notch would at least grab the "leather" and keep the hand from slipping down the knife. Again, alot of pressure is not needed when an animal is still a fresh kill, you can almost peel the hide off with your hands, and as well, certain pieces of the meat. I strongly doubt these people were letting these animals lay too long before butchering.
I may be getting way out there, but I just keep going back to the slaughter sites where these CT's were laying when I found them, there's no mistake that a big animal was carved up and broken down there, though blades and point types of all types came out as well, meaning that even a crude biface may have played a hand in the slaughter. A lengthy, sharp knife however, would be a much more beneficial tool when facing the duties required to disassemble an animal the size of a bison.

Brought this up to date for same original Q

What was the poon tang knife used for?

Brought forward ( again ) 12/17/11 for some interest in base tang notches.

Thanks Hal, nice to see some of the old long forgotten post brought back up. Good info. on the base tangs and good reading on a wet, miserable day..

I still think the corner tangs were women's sickle blades for cutting grass. Early explorers to Central Texas reported that the indians lived in lodges thatched with grass. and slept on mats woven from grass. The corner tangs were made that way for a specific reason.

It would stand to reason that they could be used for grass cutters. Some sort of tool would have had to been made for that purpose. Bedding and even dry grass used for insulation would be easier to harvest with something like the CTang verses just pulling it by the handful. A pre-historic weedwacker.

Corner tangs are normally associated with large multipurpose camps and burnt rock middens. Unless there has been a recent discovery, corner tangs have never been found at a purely hunting camp or kill site.

So the prevailing wisdom is they were used for some type of plant processing, not butchering.

swess multy tang tool !!!cut grassstems-crops pull skin-butcher push.I thout you knew!!!the great and allpowerfull sod has spocken!!!!