Because leather armor was so pase, like hellooo? they'd never be caught wearing something so last year in public, hoihoihoihoi.

Its difficult to generalize on "Native Americans" since you are asking about literally thousands of groups and civilizations over a period of several millenia, but basically most American groups found that advanced (for their time) textile techniques allowed for the production of strong, durable and adaptable armor, even when metallic materials were available as was the case in Mexico and South America, or that the adaptation of local materials had much the same effect, indeed there are cases of Wooden Armor stopping 18th century weapons in Alaska, or conquistadors using Aztec Ichcahuipilli's to protect themselves when their own armour proved less than ideal for the task at hand.

I'd go on a spiel on it, but I think these 2 responses in the same post cover it pretty thoroughly.

• by u/The_Alaskan : https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5sfepz/how_effective_was_native_american_weaponry_and/dderux4/

• by u/400-Rabbits : https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5sfepz/how_effective_was_native_american_weaponry_and/ddfqnnh/

I'd also recommend you check out this post about Aztec weaponry when applied against spaniard defenses by the same author, so you can get a more complete idea of american weaponry at the time.

(1/2)

The old adage goes something like “before asking why, ask ‘if’”, although I suppose you technically did that in your description :)

You asked for leather armor, so unfortunately I’ll try to tone down on the mentions of wood, bone, antler, padded cotton, wool, copper, bronze, gold, silver, and iron and try to focus on just that. As long as we know leather wasn’t the only option, of course.

Unless stated otherwise, most of the information is from David E. Jones’ amazing book Native North American Armor, Shields, and Fortifications. There’s quite a lot of information there condensed into a single book, so if you’d like to learn more about a scarcely discussed aspect of Native American history that’s a great, cheap book to pick up!

First, I’ll ask — what would you consider buckskins to be?

Although the increasing popularity of ever more effective firearms made heavier armor obsolete, the buckskin war shirts of the 19th century still would have protected the wearer from more than just a chilly wind. But in Native North America just as other parts of the world, before bullets buzzed by their battlefields, arrows arced around their airspace. Warfare, and consequently armor, was quite different.

Unfortunately, much of this was a time before photography (though we still have some preserving examples), and illustrations are hard to come by (although we do have George Catlin’s 1832 painting of Mandan chief Mah-to-toh-pah, wearing a thicker hide ‘gambeson’ similar to what earlier Plains Indian warriors would have worn); that coupled with the nature of leather means that very little material evidence remains for some of these articles. What we do have, however, are a great deal of primary sources that all point to Native Americans making use of heavier and sometimes more complex sets of armor for both themselves and their horses (for the nations that used them). Tribal elders interviewed in the 19th and early 20th centuries also corroborate that they used much heavier armor in the old days.

The hide for leather was taken from nearly every large mammal on the continent, but bison and moose made for some of the toughest material. This was a fairly straightforward method of protection seen all over the continent. Leather and rawhide were used to protect both the chest and head, though other tribes would use helmets of wood, cane, or thick cloth turbans as head protection.

One of the simplest ways to further toughen the leather is of course to boil it for a while (this was used extensively for shields). Another method is to give it a head-to-toe glue bath; this stiffened the hide considerably, producing something like these Tlingit glue-hardened hide jerkins and can be used whether or not you actually want to tan it (again in the case of shields, this was used in addition to boiling).

Additional protection is as easy as gluing and quilting more layers of leather together. On his second voyage, Captain Cook wrote that the Nootkas had:

A thick tanned leather mantle, doubled, and appears to be the skin of an elk or buffalo. This is so contrived as to cover the breast quite up to the throat, part of it falling down to the heels. This garment is sometimes very curiously painted, and is not only strong enough to resist, but, as we understand from them, spears could not penetrate it. So it may be considered their complete defensive armor. (quoted in Hough 1895, 646)

Gabriel Franchere wrote in 1811-1814 of the peoples of the Columbian River as having similar armor:

For defensive armor they wear a cassock or tunic of elk skin, double, descending to the ankles, with holes for the arms. It is impenetrable for their arrows, which can not pierce two thicknesses of leather; and as their heads are also covered with a sort of helmet, the neck is almost the only part in which they can be wounded. (Hough, 646)

Just one more layer sewn on would have added substantial protection, but many people around the western Plains used many more: fur trader Matthew Cocking wrote in 1773 that a Blackfoot had shown him “a Coat without sleeves six fold leather quilted, used by the Snake tribe to defend them against the arrows of their adversaries” (Burpee 1908, 110). Navajo four-ply war shirts did have sleeves, and probably would have resembled an English buff coat. When fighting from horseback, they wore eight-ply leather.

The hide from bison necks made for an attractive source of leather armor. The Kiowa, Comanche and Wichita used tanned buffalo hide to protect both themselves and their horses. Horse armor is also well attested in the rock art of the northwestern Great Plains, and one site from Montana shows two shielded figures, one riding an armored horse, wearing folded leather armor and leather buffalo caps.

Probably the most interesting version of the multi-ply leather armor was the incorporation of sand on and/or between the glued layers. It’s coarse, rough, irritating, and it gets everywhere, and yet seems to have effectively reinforced their leather. Shoshone armor was folded and quilted, with a mixture of sand and glue between the layers and folds. This was first noted by Lewis and Clark who wrote that

They have a kind of armor, something like a coat of mail, which is formed by a great many folds of dressed antelope skins, united by means of a mixture of glue and sand. With this they cover their own bodies and those of their horses, and find it impervious to the arrow. (quoted in Jones 2004, 70)

The Pawnee also added a layer of sand-glue inbetween their layers of leather armor. Some nations, instead of applying sand between the layers, applied them to the surface, probably becoming sort of like a surface of hard sandpaper. In 1889, Catholic Oblate missionary Adrien-Gabriel Morice wrote about this armor’s history in western Canada. He wrote:

Another sort of armor, indigenous to the Dené nation, was the peoesta (wherein one sits). This had the form of a sleeveless tunic falling to the knees, so that it afforded protection to the whole body save the head — in hard fights the Dene's invariably shot kneeling. The armor or cuirass was of moose skin, which, when sewed according to the proper pattern, was soaked in water, then repeatedly rubbed on the sandy shores of a stream or lake dried with the sand and small pebbles adhering thereto, after which it was thoroughly coated with a species of very tenacious glue, the principal ingredient of which was boiled isinglass, obtained from the sturgeon. Being again, before drying, subjected to a thorough rubbing over sand, it received a new coating of the aforesaid glue. When this process had been repeated three or four times, it formed an armor perfectly invulnerable to arrows over the parts which were thus protected. (quoted in Jones, 92)

In addition, the Dené also layered up their leather cuirasses and sewed additions onto them, such as shoulder pads (Hough 1892, 641).

The “Padouca”, who probably are equivalent to the Apache or Comanche, took this form of sand armor to one of its most complex forms by turning it into scale armor:

To protect their horses from arrows they made a covering for the horses' breasts and sides, to prevent an arrow taking effect at ordinary range. This covering was made of thick rawhide cut in round pieces and made to overlap like the scales of a fish. Over the surface was sand held on by glue. This covering made the Ponca arrows glance off and do no damage . . . Some of them had breastplates made like those on their horses. (Fletcher & La Flesche 1972, 79)

This type of armor didn't seem to survive, although there is a mysterious photograph of an unidentified Kiowa, Apache or Comanche man that either contains a surviving 'Padouca' scale cuirass or is the even more mysterious "Iron Jacket" that some historical Native American figures took their name from.

Leather and rawhide were also used for helmets, and people from California to the Eastern Plains wore hardened leather to protect their heads. The famous buffalo bonnet is a more decorative example of this, though still functional and worn in battle. The Nez Perce had large elkhide helmets with a long flap to protect the back of the neck. Many of the surviving hide helmets come from the Apache who kept using them well into the 19th century. Many of them had adornments made of trade silver, but some got a little more flashy like this one from bison leather and bison horns, or this one from pronghorn horns.

They did, a lot. Take for example these sets of Tlingit armor at the American Museum of Natural History

But the image of a lone Indian wielding a stone hatchet dressed only in a loin cloth and moccasins is a conception that arouse after the introduction of gunpowder, where armor began to either take a solely ceremonial function, or simply be abandoned as it was no longer useful.

As American Indians, similar to other humans, understood that being stabbed can result in bleeding to death, often took pains to ensure that their cuirass wouldn't be easily punctured and could withstand blunt force trauma. Leather armor was always formed from layered sets of heavy hides such as those of elk, moose, bear, or buffalo.

A wonderful overview of historical armor would be "Native North American Shields, Armor, and Fortifications" by David E. Jones. He goes over it region by region from and it's interesting to see the similarities and differences of armor across the continent with some regions like the Southwest and Great Plains having a great cultural emphasis on the sanctity of a shield with intricate methods of crafting them, whereas the cultures of the NW Coast (where armor lasted the longest) had barely used shields and instead relied more on body armor similar to the examples from the AMNH.

I can get into more specifics if you want.