Looks like Buck resurrected this thread from over a year ago. It got me to thinking and thought I would add my 2¢.
I really wasn't referring to the reproduction guns but the original rifles. Here is what I found on another site.
"Another early reference appears in a list of goods taken west by French Canadian trader and fur trapper Etienne Provost in 1829: “2 rifles, Hawkins ($25.00 each).” Those are just two examples (both notations appear in the book Supply and Demand: The Ledgers and Gear of the Western Fur Trade by Olsen and McCloskey). Other rifles were not generally named to this level of detail, but Hawken rifles (and some pistols) always seem to be mentioned by name. In other words, if it wasn’t a Hawken, it was just another rifle".
"For comparison, the price of a “trade rifle” (a rifle made for the fur trade, to be sold or traded to trappers, red or white) as made by Henry, Leman, Tryon or others could be purchased for around $12. At more than twice that amount, Hawken rifles were truly expensive guns".
In the link I posted in the first post Leman rifles were shown to be priced around $7-8 not $12 like in quote above. Back then $4 was a lot of money...
The $7-8 price for a Leman rifle was the price around 1850. In 1837 when Henry Leman got his first and only contract with the US government for rifles, the price was $14 per rifle.
Also in 1837, Henry Leman sent a sample rifle to the American Fur Company and told them he could make them similar rifles for $12 each. Prices for Leman rifles during the Mountain Man period were comparable to J Henry rifles and other Lancaster maker prices. As time went on, his operations grew, and through the economies of scale, prices for his rifles had dropped to the $7-8 range by 1850.
Just for comparison over this same period, prices for the top end Hawken rifles declined from the mid-$30's range to the mid-$20's range (see Hanson's Figure 6 below).
Prior to 1840, Leman rifles were more scarce in the west than Hawken rifles. Leman didn't start his business until 1834. Hanson, in the article cited above, said he made 250 rifles in the first year and possibly 50 of these went to St. Louis for the Indian trade. We don't know how many of the 500 rifles from the 1837 US contract went to the West. This contract was meant for Indians being relocated to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and were mostly for the Cherokees.
The offer to make rifles for the AFC in 1837 was rejected, and Leman was never awarded a contract from them. It wasn't until after the AFC went bankrupt and broke up that he finally got contracts to make rifles for Pierre Chouteau Jr. & Co. (the successor to the AFC Western Dept.) and the Ewing Brothers of Fort Wayne, Indiana (competitors to the remnants for the AFC Northern Dept) in the 1850's, long after the time of the Mountain Man.
Ask about anyone what rifles the beaver trappers and mountain men carried with them and you will be told they carried Hawken guns made by Sam and Jacob Hawken in St Louis.
I thought so too. But a little more reading and google searching turned this up. I also stated in another thread that I also suspected that those eastern men who came west probably brought their eastern rifles with them and used them in the mountains. It looks like my guess was correct. And there were many more non Hawken rifles in the mountains than you would think. This article makes it sound like Hawkens were sort of scarce by comparison. Its a good read. Hope you like it.
Traditional Muzzle Loader - Rifles of the Mountain Men
http://americansocietyofarmscollectors.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/B051_Hanson.pdf
This rifle maker also supplied a lot of the rifles used by trappers and explorers and supplied trade rifles to the government. Henry lemon supplied a huge amount of rifles for a long period of time until his death and the closing of his plant.
The initial premise of this thread, quoted above, makes it sound like there are only two possiblities concerning Hawken rifles--(1) every mountain man had one or (2) Hawken rifles were scarce.
More recent reaserch suggests the truth is something in between. The reference to Etienne Provost having a Hawken rifle in the mountains prior to 1829 pushes the date of the earliest known mountain man with a Hawken forward by several years from what Charles Hanson thought in
The Hawken Rifle: Its Place in History. There is no record of Provost's purchase of this Hawken rifle, but 1827 would be the latest date that he could have acquired it. He was in St. Louis for the last half of 1827. By the spring of 1828, he was heading up the Missouri River and may have made it to the 1828 summer rendezvous on Bear Lake. He wintered with the Crows and probably visited Fort Techumseh late in 1828 for Kenneth McKenzie wrote a letter dated January 2, 1829 asking Pierre Chouteau, Jr. to send him "two rifles similar in all respects to the one made by Hawkins for Provost." Provost returned to St. Louis in the summer of 1829 and got married. In the August of 1829, Provost purchased 2 more Hawken rifles for $50. He left St. Louis not long after that for another season of trapping and trading in Crow country.
The Chouteau Papers include a keelboat manifest dated April 29, 1830 that included a case of
9 Hawken rifles and
2 lone Hawken rifles going up the Missouri River.
An AFC invoice for the 1834 rendezvous listed "
10 steel mounted rifles," at $17.20 each (these are in all likelihood JJ Henry steel mounted Lancaster rifles), 30 Northwest guns, and "
6 steel mounted rifles, Hawken," at $20 each.
Another AFC invoice for 1836 lists:
2 Am Rifle @$17.50 (most likely steel mounted Henry Lancasters)
7 " " @$11.00 (most likely brass mounted Henry Lancasters?)
8 Hawkins " from $20 to $26
2 Rifles Hawkins @$24
84 N. W. Guns @$4.50
An AFC invoice for 1837 lists:
36 N. W. Guns best quality @$4.50
5 Am. Rifles steel mounted @$19
10 Hawkens Rifles @$24
12 N W Guns @$4.50
These records only show the guns that the AFC was sending to the mountains and does not include any other rifles brought to the mountains by the Rocky Mountain Fur Co. and the various other groups that were competing with each other for the mountain trade.
It is interesting that looking at these numbers, the ratio of Hawken rifles to American or Lancaster rifles steadily increased in the 1830s and were 2 to 1 in 1837.
This reaserch since Hanson published his Hawken book shows that Hawken rifles were not scarce during the 1830s and were present as early as 1827/28. In fact, Hawken rifles beat JJ Henry rifles to the mountains and may have been as common as Henry rifles in the 1830s. Of course, there were likely other Kentucky rifles used by the mountain men than just Henry rifles, and these other Kentucky rifles would have been dominate in the 1820s.
One last note, based on Hanson's analysis of his Figure 6, these Hawken rifles priced at $24 and less were most likely full stock rifles. It's not clear how many were flint and how many were percussion. Provost's rifle that he acquired in 1828 would certainly been a flintlock. The same is likely for the Hawken rifles in the keelboat manifest of 1830. By 1834, some percussion Hawken rifles could have been present in the mountains. The numbers could have increased in the following years.