So basically in most cases Muskets WERE better than bows by the 17th Century.
The forlorn hopes who were tasked with going “into the breach”.
This passage is from Tears of the Sun, latest novel in S.M. Stirling’s Emberverse series, set in a future where, for reasons still mysterious, firearms don’t work any more:
Can anyone shoot twelve arrows a minute?!
[QUOTE=griffin1977]
So basically in most cases Muskets WERE better than bows by the 17th Century.
[/QUOTE]
Well, yes and no.
If you were going for accuracy at further than arm’s reach, a pistol was not exactly your best bet and a musket only marginally better.
You know those fancy duels, start back to back, move 10 paces forward, turn around and shoot at each other repeatedly ? They sound kind of insane today, but the reality of it was that most of the time, nothing whatsoever happened. The duellists just missed each other again and again.
That’s because as I said earlier, the barrels weren’t machined, they were each individually cast by hand. What this means is that no two barrels had exactly the same diameter, and because the balls themselves were cast by hand they were never a perfect match either.
Which means that as they were fired, and if the discrepancy between ball and barrel was more than a hair, the ball would tumble around and exit the barrel going in a rather random direction. Sort of in the general vicinity of where you were pointing the damn thing, but there were anecdotes about balls going a good 80° off axis. Which is bad news if that happens to the guy firing from the second row ;). The duels stopped in a hurry when guns started shooting true most of the time.
Other times, the weapons stubbornly refused to fire. Doubly so in the rain (not that bows are any hotter in the rain, but at least you can still try and fire with a soggy string. Soggy powder, on the other hand…)
And sometimes the damn things just blew up in your face. That hardly ever happens with a bow.
In warfare, all of these were mostly corrected by multiplying the barrels and putting as much lead in the air as possible - statistics say a handful are gonna hit something. But one on one, and at a distance ? Feeling lucky ? 
But that was mostly true in the 15-16th and yeah, by the mid 17th century onwards I’d say the major problems had been hammered away. Plus as **xtisme **mentions the advent of the bayonet let soldiers get around the last flaw of the weapon, the long-ass reload times and vulnerability to fast movers.
They lived on oneness with nature more because they had to, but also because it worked, it was a hand in hand system that nature molded them in ways that worked, just like how we see evolution working. They were not perfect in it, though when that happens nature corrects it, or perhaps a new adaptation occurs.
The beaver pelt was due to the trade with the Europeans, so again this is inaccurate to use in this context, and as you say it is insulting to the Native Americans to lump that with their spirituality, for in many ways that was the spirituality of the Europeans (that being worship of money) that combined with Native American spirituality, that lead to such things.
Keeping animals in check with hunting seems pretty much in line with nature, depending on how far one goes, but can be normal and natural, many apex predators do exactly this.
So no they were not perfect, and for that matter no one is, but nature guided and constrained them far more then the Europeans. The question is why did the Europeans develop better weapons, but for the sake of the OP you can’t compare Native American bow weapons to that of the European models, far different in usage and also training of bowmen, which caused further development.
(oh, forgot to add: bow, musket, doesn’t matter ultimately. It’s all red chunks to the guy behind the 16-pounder 
)
Specifically, in the Americas the simple “self bow” was used. The English longbow and the Asian composite bow both used materials that had different tensile strength and stiffness, and thus could store and release a lot more energy. More energy translates into faster arrow flight, flatter trajectory, greater range, greater accuracy, and of course more damage to the target. These bows were orders of magnitude more effective militarily than the self bows. of course, storing all that energy required considerable upper body strength., which was one factor in the difficulty of training bowmen.
Eh, they were used to hunt if one had them, but they were developed for warfare.
Specifically, they were training for a different purpose.
The main purpose of archery training is perfecting the muscle memory (using the same body position and motions each release produces a predictable, and therefore aimable, missile trajectory), and the secondary purposes would be learning to estimate and elevate for various ranges, and coordinating massed fire.
The main purpose of musket drill is firearms safety. A rote series of motions were drilled into the recruits mostly so that they would pose less danger to their immediate neighbor, and secondarily so that they’d all be reloaded and ready to fire again at roughly the same time. Elevation and ranging were inconsequential because the short range and inaccuracy were such severe limitations that muskets were exclusively fired at close range in massed volleys. Sergeants and officers famously sometimes laid a staff or pike on the row of musket barrels to “level” them all to the same elevation and prevent “high fire,” so it’s clear that no one expected the trainees to be arcing long-range aimed shots.
Well, to somewhat contradict you, the English kings actually mandated the practice of archery, and I believe at one point they banned other sports so that the longbowmen wouldn’t be distracted from practicing. Of course, this was after they discovered that they could win battles with longbowmen.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Can anyone shoot twelve arrows a minute?!
[/QUOTE]
I’ve heard of up to 15 a minute, but no one could sustain that rate for very long with an 80+ pound bow…you’d be worn out (and you’d have to have arms like a gorilla to even try it). IIRC, 5-6 shots of aimed, massed fire a minute was more normal for English Longbowmen during combat.
(Have you read the latest book in the series? Just came out about a month or so ago)
-XT
Bit before actually - wouldn’t have had longbowmen to win battles with without training them first, dontcherknow. The bowmen at Agincourt were yeomen levied from said training sessions.
Not that the English kings mandated it out of love for their people, or a will for efficiency, or even military vision. To put it bluntly: they were strapped for cash, the French weren’t and Italian mercenaries had lots and lots of crossbows. So it was either getting rolfpwnd, or swallowing their pride and teaching peasants how to fight, even if it meant contemplating swarms of poachers and/or bandits in the long run.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Can anyone shoot twelve arrows a minute?!
[/QUOTE]
The Chinese had a repeating crossbow that I believe could surpass this by a fair margin.
That is accounted for by the ease of use. The Native American bow was a simple “self” bow, not comparable to the longbow or Nomad composite bow in power or difficulty of use - it would make no sense for a Native to attempt to become a longbowman or composite bowman, which would require intensive and specialist training your average native has no time for - a gun is simply easier to use.
The question though is when does the specialist longbowman or composite bowman lose any superiority if you ignore the long-term specialist training thing. That isn’t nearly as easy to answer. Extrapolating from when nations actually did replace the one with the other isn’t the answer, because of course nations are extremely cost-concious and most willing to replace expensive specialists with cheap cannon-fodder whenever possible.
Excellent point. A dead archer’s bow has no value, unless some other archer’s bow has broken. When a guy carrying a gun dies, almost anyone can pick up that gun and use it. It’s not a mindless skill when using an old musket, but anyone can pick up the basics in few minutes.
The English longbow is a self bow.
True, but the Native American bow is a simple self bow, having a flat cross-section. The longbow, in comparison, had a thicker D shaped crossection which enabled use of the different properties of sapwood and heartwood to make a “natural laminate” - making it much more powerful than the Native American bow.
This requires special woods …
The Manchus, like their neighbors the Mongols ( who they eventually partially absorbed ) had a tradition of horse-archery. Again a little like the Mongols when they ruled China, they self-consciously attempted to segregate themselves from the conquered Han population in part by forming permanent military-caste “colonies”, which collectively became known as the Eight Banners. It failed as a preserver of racial purity and like virtually all such systems in history it also loss its military effectiveness as it ossified. But one thing they prided themselves on as symbol of their distinct Manchuness was their archery. As late as 1820 a sitting Qing Emperor was discouraging bannermen from hunting with muskets so as to preserve their archery skills.
Of course the Manchus ( which eventually included Han units as well, more often deployed as infantry ) made use of field artillery from very early on, but for reasons of tradition they clung to the composite bow as a personal weapon. And to be fair their use of the bow was probably not the primary reason in their loss of effectiveness in the later 19th century. That was down more to the breakdown of the system itself.
Well, you’ll notice that I didn’t exactly address the OP :). I was more going on a tangent by saying that repeaters was the final death knell of the bow and it was. Even the Manchus finally wised up at that point.
But to your point point out that it might be better to say Western European battlefields and foot archers. In the east Polish Hussars and other mounted units continued to make use of bows throughout the 17th century and as at least Robert Frost has argued, that wasn’t a sign of clinging to outdated military forms in Eastern Europe, but more adaptation to different local conditions. Horse-archers because of their combination of mobility, indirect ( arching ) fire AND rate of fire continued to retain their utility much later than massed foot-archers. As long as carbines and pistols were cumbersome single-shot affairs a horse-archer could still get value from the bow. It was only when repeaters arrived that even that increasingly marginal utility (and to a lesser extent the utility of cavalry in general ) disappeared.
Bashkent/Otluk-Beli, 1473 ;). At least according to John Woods.
If we’re comparing effectiveness in hunting as well as in warfare, it’s worth noting that rate of fire isn’t nearly as important in hunting. Typically in hunting you only have one target at a time, so it doesn’t matter if it takes you a couple minutes to reload after the first deer-- The rest of the herd isn’t going to be trying to charge you in between shots.
I guess I didn’t really answer this question. Traditionally apparently the Qing adhered to a triple line formation with spearmen forward, then swordsman, then archers, all screening the cavalry, which I believe then normally would tend to envelop on the wings on the opponent in your classic mounted-archer style ( Ottoman, Mughal and other heavily mounted-archer-centric armies adopted roughly similar tactics, with cavalry on the wings maneuvering around an infantry/artillery centre ).
That’s sort of the classic formation but how rigidly the Manchu hewed to that, particularly as the military evolved, I’m uncertain. And I should note that the Manchus were certainly adopting muskets by the 18th century if not earlier. The fact that an emperor was admonishing them about using them to hunt with in 1820 is certainly telling. But much like the Mughals or their Dzungar/Oirat Mongol opponents in Turkestan, they seemed to have tended to use them more as individual sniping weapons ( the term “fowling pieces” turns up frequently ), rather than in massed formation a la the Europeans. And of course the Manchus soon adopted masses of infantry ( mostly Han ), very early on developed a professional artillery park and heavier shock cavalry as well. A fairly balanced and effective military at one point, until rot set it.
As to opponents - anybody and everybody. Various Mongol groupings ( frequently ), other minor Turkic powers, the Ming dynasty ( Han ) Chinese, Korea, Vietnam, Burma, Nepalese Gurkhas - the Qing were highly expansionistic and effectively doubled the size of China and imposed tribute much farther afield in the roughly 150+ year period when they pursued a militarily aggressive foreign policy ( from early 1600’s when they rose to local prominence to the last foreign expeditions into Nepal in the 1790’s ). China was arguably the greatest world power in the 18th century - it’s decline thereafter being all the more dramatic for its speed and collapse from such a dizzying height.
Thanks for the comprehensive though succinct answers, Tamerlane…as always, appreciated.
-XT
… not so much. Humans, since (or even before) we’ve appeared, have lived above nature, not with it. Everywhere we went, for tens of thousands of years ago, we killed off almost without exception all the big game and were working on the rest, causing extinction everywhere. Humankind burned the forests everywhere we went, to hunt, to create grazing land, or create cropland, or even just for the hell of it. Native American societies rose, overextended and exploited nature, and fell, and it happened time and time again, in the north and the south, by the sea and far inland. When you wipe out 99% of the population, then give a few generations for plants and animals to regenerate before anyone with writing shows up to record the situation, it may seem like a wild land of plenty, but that’s an illusion. We’re not an apex predator, we’re the apex predator, and that changes everything.
The truth is they were limited by geography and the local flora/fauna, but in every other way they were just as human as the rest of us, for all the good and bad that entails. If you look at some of the societies on the cusp of the bronze age, with their agriculture, religious and political systems, standing armies and many mouths to feed, with cities dotting everywhere from the Amazon to the Mississippi, their model was no more sustainable in the long run than that of anyone else.