The native americans knew smithing, but they seemed to only have used to jewelry, why didn't they made metal tools and weapons?

by Frigorifico

There are plenty of smithed objects from civilizations all over the americans, and not just gold and silver, but coper too, and yet it seems that no civilization there ever developed metal tools nor weapons, which is weird because they certainly could have made them, it wasn't beyond them in any way, and it's not like you need a genius to come up with the idea that a coper ax may last longer than a stone one

wotan_weevil

They did make metal weapons and tools.

In Mexico, pre-Columbian, one could find, of copper or copper alloys (including bronzes of a few % tin): knives, axes, chisels, spearheads, mace heads.

In South America, pre-Columbian, copper and copper alloys (including tin bronzes of about 10% tin): knives, axes, chisels, spearheads, mace heads, drills, needles.

Elsewhere, one could find knives, axes, adzes, etc. (including post-Columbian weapons/tools, but made of native copper, meteoric iron, telluric iron, and iron recovered from driftwood from shipwrecks etc.).

For an old overview of Aztec metallurgy, see Phillips, G. (1925). "The Metal Industry of the Aztecs". American Anthropologist, 27(4), 550-557.

For some examples of iron weapons/tools from Greenland, see Vagn Fabritius Buchwald, "On the use of iron by the Eskimos in Greenland", Materials Characterization 29(2), 139-176 (1992)

Copper and bronze were expensive. Copper isn't good for making sharp bladed tools/weapons (but note that axes benefit a lot from toughness). Thus, stone and wood were still common, as I discussed recently in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9ohmg8/forged_steel_in_subsaharan_africa/e7wn1hd

There was some discussion on cultural views of metal reducing common use as tools by u/Pachacamac in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2tohsu/why_did_the_incas_never_develop_bronze_tools_with/com7imz along with some further references.

Some examples:

RhegedHerdwick

Actually, some peoples did use bronze and copper tools. The Tarascans used bronze for woodcutting axes and fishing hooks, though there is limited evidence that bronze was used for weapons of war. There are a number of explanations for American civilisations not using metal tools and weapons. One is that obsidian, a volcanic rock easily chipped into a sharp edge, was more plentiful there than in Eurasia. Copper and tin, on the other hand, were rare. Indeed, most parts of Eurasia didn't use bronze until it was being traded in large quantities. Copper isn't actually very useful for tools and weapons, because it's soft and doesn't hold an edge. Only a few areas in Eurasia had a 'Copper Age'. Obsidian was actually a much better material for weapons, as well as being tried and tested. The Mesoamerican civilisations already had complex networks of extraction, trade and manufacture for stone tools, and their economies were functional and prosperous. In a sense, metal tools and weapons didn't really offer them anything they didn't already have. Then again, bronze took a long time to supplant stone in Eurasia and Africa. Perhaps if American civilisations had been left undisturbed for another 500 years, metal tools and weapons would indeed have become commonplace.