In another thread I posted some images of a pattern 1853 Enfield rifle with a broken stock. I mentioned that it appeared to me to be intentionally broken by swinging the rifle sideways against something like a tree to break the stock and render the firearm useless. I wondered if this was done by a soldier during the Civil War who was retreating or being overrun so that the enemy would not be able to use the gun without replacing the stock. This was not the first firearm I had come across with a broken stock.
In reading about the development of the plains rifle, I learned how the Pennsylvania rifle had been developed in the forests of the East where much travel was done by foot. As settlement crossed the Mississippi River there were fewer forests and more prairies. Travel was often by horseback and if a rider dropped a rifle from horseback there was often damage to the stock. In response to this problem, rifles became shorter with a more robust half-stock. There was still damage when a rifle was dropped as attested by the number of rifles whose wrists have been wrapped with rawhide, copper wire, and sheet copper. In particular, rifles used by Native Americans lead a difficult life. In addition to being dropped from horseback, Indian rifles were often damaged before being turned-in to the Army by those settling on reservations.
A few years ago I came across a rifle with a broken stock that I took to be an Indian rifle. My reading indicated that Indian rifles were often decorated with tacks. These tacks had larger heads than the typical thumb-tack of today and the cross-section of the shaft was square rather than round as we are used to seeing. It was mentioned that years ago some gun collectors felt that the tack decoration detracted from rifles and so they would remove the tacks. The rifle I found had once had tacks but they had been removed.
Holes in the stock indicate tack decoration in the two images below. Some of the holes appear square in cross-section. There are some holes surrounded by a trace of a tack head that dug into the wood.
Based on these traits, I decided that a likely story was that a Native American had owned the rifle and damaged it before turning it over to an Indian agent or the cavalry. If an Indian had lifted the rifle over his head like an axe and brought it down on the protruding part of the butt plate, it could have split the wrist in the way we see it today.
While this interpretation seemed logical, it didn't explain all of the damage done to the butt plate. While the protruding part showed damage, the plate itself showed damage all around the shoulder curve, as if it had impacted with something hard enough to scar the brass. It took me a long time, but I finally had another idea that would explain the damage to the butt plate.
Indians didn't always take the best of care with their firearms and might find themselves without a ramrod. A stick might be a suitable replacement but it would be another item to be juggled along with a rifle while on horseback. An alternative that worked well enough for short range targets was to load powder and then drop a slightly smaller ball than was typically used down the barrel. Rather than ram the ball down with a rod or stick, the shooter would slam the butt of the rifle into the ground forcing the ball down the barrel using Newton's first law of motion. That would account for the damage to the butt plate and, eventually, for the split of the stock at the wrist. In this scenario the wrist was not broken on purpose but an unintended consequence of a simplified loading procedure.
My brother and I both have had Remington Nylon 66 rifles since forever. One really really cold day 40 or so years ago we were out and Steve slipped and broke about 6 - 8 inches off the one piece nylon stock's forearm. Remington honored their lifetime unbreakable warranty and transferred all his rifles innards into a new Mohawk Brown stock no charge
Bringing the