American Indian Bows
The Native American Indians did not have Native American bow and arrows until sometime around the year 500 A.D. The American Indian bows are thought to have been used by the Native American people in the area of the country that is now Iowa. Some of the main benefits of the American Indian bows instead of spears is that they offered much more mobility, while maintaining fast speeds and being extremely accurate when used by a skilled American Indian hunter.
Another advantage of the American Indian bows is that the arrowheads needed for the arrows were much smaller sized than that of a spearhead, so they could make a few arrows with the same amount of raw materials that were needed for a spear arrowhead. The Native American men were extremely good hunters and they became master marksman with their deadly bow and arrows, and they were excellent in the skills of tracking since they observed and understood the wildlife, this was due to their closeness to the Earth and nature, and living around this environment their whole lives they became better and better at this.
Other times when American Indian bows were a huge advantage was during times of war, and in many ways the native bow and arrows had many advantages even over guns when they were developed, mainly because the American Indian bows were very quiet and so were the masterfully skilled Native American hunters and warriors. There were many wars among many different tribes of American Indians and other Native tribes and when the settlers began to arrive there were even more problems as the Indians were slowly forced off of their tribal lands. During some of these wars many people were silently killed by the expert Native American marksmen and their bows, and most of the time they did not even know that there were American Indian warriors watching them or tracking them. The expert hunting skills of the natives with their bows is something that the native boys were raised learning how to do, and hunting brought many of the main staples of their foods, due to this they were also expert warriors. The Native Americans made all of their own bows as well and these were handcrafted from wood and animal sinew was used for the string that would fire the perfectly balanced arrows.
Other Resources:
American Indian Archery
Indian Bow Making