This .28-caliber percussion pistol with a distinctive underhammer design was made in Qualla Town, now Cherokee, North Carolina in 1843. Inscriptions in English and Cherokee identify it as the work of Salola, a blacksmith of the Oconaluftee Cherokee.
These life-sized painted figures, popular in Europe and colonial America in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, were designed to amuse and confuse.