For over 200 years, the flintlock was the dominant type of firearm; as a result, there were a number of rather minor variations in design and manufacture. Korea, North Metro Map To be able to determine the exact type of flintlock under consideration requires real familiarity and the handling of many actual specimens.
The development of the various types of wheel locks and flintlocks aided in the development of several additional types of firearms. These included such weapons as the long fowler, fusil, musketoon, petronel, carbine, blunderbuss, and pistol. Of these, the pistol first appeared sometime after 1520; it was a wheel lock dag, that is, a long, heavy device with straight grips, which was rather popular with sixteenth-century cavalry.
This design was also used with flintlock pistols until sometime after the beginning of the seventeenth century, when curved grips came into being. One of the earliest reports of pistols in the colonies comes from Ralph Lane’s report concerning the English colony on Roanoke Island in 1586. The number of references then increases rather quickly, starting with Captain John Smith. He used some form of a French snaphaunce pistol in the welldocumented fight with Native Countrys in 1607 that resulted in his capture by Powhatan and later meeting Pocahontas.
