Pommel Bags & Saddle Bags
Our OldTradingPost.com Western Leather Saddle Bags, Western Leather Saddle Bags with Holsters, Western Leather Pommel Bags and Western Leather Pommel Bags with Holsters are the finest available today made from only the best leather available, also cut and sewn with the precision required for our customers with every attention to detail for Quality, Period Authenticity, Function and look. In Western horse riding, from approximately 1840 with the westward expansion saddle bags took on the appearance they still possess today. Western saddlebags can sit in various positions, on the back, side, or front of the saddle although most attach to the saddle by straps and ties at the saddle rear across the back saddle cantle. Saddle Bags can be made from various materials with our western saddle bags being made from leather like those of the 1800s . There are several types of Bags: Pommel bags (which sit on the front of the saddle), Small Horn Bags (which sit on the front of the saddle over the horn), Traditional Paired / Dual Saddlebags (which lie on the hips of the horse, on either side of the cantle attached by a leather gusset), Cantle bag (a small tube-like bag that sits just behind the saddle usually for carrying a bed roll). In the 1800s black powder was still the propellant used for firearms, but it does not burn properly when wet. Therefore, it was necessary to find some way to keep firearms functional, even in bad weather conditions. Of course, it is possible to carry a pistol within a person's clothing to protect it from bad weather, but the problem is that when the weather is cold or wet, people wear multiple layers of clothing to stay warm, which makes the pistol harder to access. One way around this was to put the pistol in a container, attached to the saddle on the horse. The pommel bag had a separate compartment designed to hold a firearm, and the cover flap on top kept the rain and snow away. Pommel bags were typically mounted across the front of the saddle and attached to the saddle pommel (which is why they are called pommel bags). This makes it easy for a person to reach into a pommel bag, even when riding the horse. To access the firearm, the user merely had to lift the cover flap to get to it. The pommel bag often carried some additional gear for the pistol, such as extra cartridges, bullet molds, cleaning supplies etc.