Is it Hawken or Hawkin? Who built the famous Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Rifles?
When we’re talking about a mid-1800s era percussion muzzleloader, one of the biggest names to come up is Hawken, and then there Hawkin, and then the Hawkins. So which one is correct, and who really built the now-famous percussion muzzleloading rifles?
To get to the bottom of this, we’re going to wade through some 1980s cinema and trek back in time to St. Louis in 1815 where two brothers have just opened up a gun shop after moving from the east coast. It was a booming time for St. Louis, the rocky mountain fur trade was the instigator of change in economics and industry, St. Louis was the gateway to the future of a Western United States.
These brothers were the “Hawken” brothers, Hawken being the last name of Jacob and Samuel. Jacob and Samuel were experienced gunsmiths at the time and believed they could build a better gun for Americans moving west. In 1823 the first documented Hawken rifle was sold, and the rest is history.
So where does “Hawkin(s)” come from? Well, not to sound harsh, but I think it comes from mishearing, misreading, and not understanding the history of these great rifles. Now that’s not to demean anyone who has misspelled or mispronounced it, lord knows I can’t spell or pronounce anything French, but it’s important for us to do our best to be accurate when talking about muzzleloading rifles.
When we look back at the box office of the late 1980s, consumers were blessed with a variety of “mountain man” and “fur trade” era flicks, all of which a real treat to revisit today, and for many, these movies defined their entrance into the muzzleloading and reenacting hobby. Movies such as “Jerimiah Johnson” (1972) and Heston’s “The Mountain Men” (1980) served as the key piece of content used to build rifles and personas for the majority of muzzleloading enthusiasts for better and for worse. Today, we are truly blessed to have primary documentation for just about any era right at our fingertips, something enthusiasts of the 1980s could never dream of, as many still tell me today. It was a time where I imagine, you could go years, decades even without seeing a defining piece of information on something as obscure as one particular muzzleloader. Or maybe not, maybe it’s all ignorance on the part of those saying “Hawkins Rifle”, what do I know?
Regardless of how you think it’s spelled, the sport and hobby can be confusing enough and there are truly a lot of questions that have hundreds of correct answers, but when it comes to Hawken vs Hawkin vs Hawkins, the debate is settled. Let’s honor the Hawken brothers with a legacy they truly deserve and give them credit for the Hawken Rifle.
Redford as Jerimiah Johnson, 1972
