The Possibles Bag: Frontier Origins, Modern Uses, and How to Build Your Own

A possibles bag is the original everyday-carry. A small leather shoulder bag, eight inches by seven on average, with a single flap, a single strap, and inside it everything a working trapper needed to get through a day in country where the nearest store was three weeks away. Lead balls, patches, flint, fire kit, jerky, awl, thread, maybe a small folding knife, maybe a horn cup. Whatever the day might possibly require.

The form is genuinely old, verified examples in museum collections date to the 1790s, and it has barely changed. The Hawken brothers’ shop in St. Louis sold them across the counter in the 1820s. Modern saddlemakers in Wyoming and Montana are still building them on the same patterns, sometimes from leather they tanned themselves. If you have ever owned a small leather shoulder bag and packed it full of small items you needed to keep dry and to hand, you have owned a descendant of this object whether you knew it or not.

What was actually in one

A working possibles bag in 1830 carried a predictable kit. The variation was in the maker’s preference and the trapper’s habits, not the function. From the surviving inventories, both written ledgers from the period and the actual contents excavated from documented sites, the standard load looked something like:

• Shooting kit. A bag of round lead balls (typically .53 or .54 caliber for a Hawken), a pre-cut stack of greased linen patches, a vent pick, a turnscrew, a spare flint, and patch ticking or extra cloth for cutting more.
• Fire kit. Char cloth or punk wood in a small tin, a flint and steel striker, and tinder (dried grass, birch bark scrapings, or commercially-prepared tow).
• Tools. A small awl, sometimes hafted in antler. A bone or brass needle case. A few feet of waxed sinew or linen thread. A small whetstone.
• Edible. Jerky, parched corn, or pemmican wrapped in oilcloth. Sometimes coffee beans in a small bag for the mid-day brew.
• Personal. A folding knife or small fixed-blade for tasks the larger belt knife was too big for. Sometimes a clay pipe and a twist of tobacco. Often a horn cup tied to the outside.

The powder horn rode separately on its own strap. Loose powder in a cloth bag was a recipe for losing a hand. The horn was always external; the bag was for the things that did not blow up.

How they were built

Original possibles bags in museum collections show a remarkably consistent construction. A single front and back panel cut from medium-weight vegetable-tanned cowhide, usually three to four ounces, with a separate gusset two to three inches deep. The flap was cut as part of the back panel and folded over, fastened with a brass buckle and tongue, a wooden toggle, or just a thong tie depending on the maker.

The strap was almost always cut from the same hide as the bag, two-and-a-half to three feet long, an inch to an inch-and-a-half wide. Adjustable straps with brass buckles existed but were less common than fixed-length straps cut to the wearer’s body. A trapper bought a bag that fit; he did not adjust it.

Inside details are where the surviving examples get interesting. Many have small pockets sewn to the inside front, sized to hold a specific tool, a turnscrew, an awl, a flint. A handful have wooden ball blocks fitted to the bottom: a small block of pine drilled with holes to hold balls upright so they did not roll loose. The Museum of the Fur Trade in Chadron, Nebraska, has several with the original ball blocks in place, and the quality of the joinery is striking. These were objects somebody planned to use for years.

Stitching was hand-sewn with two needles and waxed linen thread, the saddle stitch that has been the standard leatherwork joint for a thousand years. Edges were burnished with bone, sometimes bevelled, sometimes left raw. Hardware was almost always brass, copper alloys do not rust, and rust on the bag was rust on the contents.

Why the design stuck

The possibles bag survived as a recognizable object across two hundred years of changing technology because the fundamental problem it solves has not changed. People who work outdoors in rough country still need to carry a small set of essentials in something that:

1. Rides against the body without bouncing. A single short strap worn cross-body is the optimal configuration for walking, riding, and bending. Two-strap packs are better for heavy loads but worse for constant access; pockets are too small. The single-strap shoulder bag is the right answer for ten to fifteen pounds of small items you reach into all day.

2. Closes against weather. A flap with a buckle or thong sheds rain and snow far better than a zipper and is silent in the field. Modern hunters who have stalked elk in the dry timber will tell you that the rasp of opening a Cordura zipper at a hundred yards has cost them animals.

3. Repairs in the field. A leather bag with brass hardware can be stitched, patched, or cut down with the same tools the contents include. A synthetic bag with a broken zipper is trash.

4. Lasts. Vegetable-tanned cowhide with brass hardware, kept oiled, will outlive its owner. Many of the bags in the Buffalo Bill Center collection in Cody were used for forty or fifty years before they were donated.

The form is a piece of design that arrived at its near-final shape early and has had no reason to evolve.

Modern uses

The possibles bag has three living traditions today.

The first is muzzleloader shooting. Black-powder hunters and target shooters in the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association still use possibles bags in close to original form, because the kit a flintlock or caplock requires is the same kit it required in 1830. Modern makers sized to NMLRA shooters are easy to find, Tandy Leather sells the components, and small custom shops in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and the West turn out finished bags in the $80 to $400 range depending on hand-tooling and hardware.

The second is living history and rendezvous reenactment. The American Mountain Men, the National Association of Primitive Riflemen, and a network of regional rendezvous events keep the period kit alive at high standards of accuracy. Bags built for this audience are often museum-faithful reproductions, sometimes from period-correct hides tanned with bark and brain.

The third is everyday carry. The contemporary leather-goods scene, small Western and Americana brands, Etsy makers, heritage outdoor labels, has reintroduced the possibles bag as a daily small-shoulder bag, sometimes branded as a “haversack” or “satchel” but identical in form. The contents have changed (phone, wallet, keys, sunglasses, notebook) but the design has not, and the case for carrying one over a backpack on a city day is exactly the same case the trapper would have made: it rides on the body, it opens fast, it lasts forever. If you carry a Saddleback leather journal cover in it — full-grain vegetable-tanned, same material as the bags from the 1830s — the lineage is essentially unbroken.

Building or buying one

A working possibles bag in the modern market falls into three tiers.

Mass-produced ($30-80). Generally Indian, Pakistani, or Mexican production from middling leather, often listed on Amazon or eBay as “rendezvous bag,” “trapper bag,” or “haversack.” Functional for a beginner reenactor or a casual shoulder bag. The leather is usually too thin (under 3 oz) and the hardware is base metal that will tarnish. Expect 2 to 5 years of regular use.

Mid-tier American small-shop ($120-300). Etsy makers, regional saddlemaker side shops, and small Western leather brands in Wyoming, Montana, Texas, and the Carolinas. Vegetable-tanned hides in proper weights, brass hardware, hand-stitched. This is the sweet spot for a buyer who wants a working bag that will last decades. The Pendleton Leather Shop, Buffalo Trace Leather, Beaver Mountain Works, and several Etsy specialists work in this range.

Top-tier commission ($400-1,200+). Custom hand-tooled work from named makers, saddlemakers who do leather goods on the side, and a small number of full-time bag specialists. Tooled patterns, often in the same style as a Western saddle or a tooled belt. These are heirloom objects and they are priced as such. They are also the closest modern equivalent to the bags in the museums.

If you are building one yourself, the simplest pattern is two rectangles (front and back) and a long strip (gusset and strap, cut from the same belly piece). Five inches tall, six wide, two-inch gusset, three-foot strap. Single needle saddle-stitched at six stitches per inch, a brass buckle on the flap, and a leather wax finish. A first attempt by an absolute beginner takes about six hours and produces something usable. Tandy’s Basic Leathercraft Set includes tools, leather, and instructions to get started — and Weaver Leather sell the materials in beginner bundles in that same range.

Why the name still does work

“Possibles” is one of the words the fur trade gave to American English that mostly survived only inside the trade and the reenactor world. Most people now would call this object a “leather satchel” or a “shoulder bag” or just a “bag.” But the old name still does work, because it points to the original design intent: a small, weatherproof, soft container for the things that the day might possibly require. That intent is still useful, and the bag that meets it is still useful, and the form is still recognizable.

It is one of the few pieces of frontier kit you can buy a faithful copy of today and use, in the same way it was used originally, for the rest of your life.

Related reading on this site

• What is a trading post? A history of frontier commerce
• Hand-tooled leather: how real Western leatherwork is made
• The heritage gear glossary: 80 terms every buyer should know
• Wyoming outfitters offering horseback hunting trips
• A buyer’s guide to heritage camping bedrolls in 2026
• Buffalo Bill Cody: the man who sold the West to the world
• Pinedale, Wyoming: the Bridger Wilderness gateway and Mountain Man capital

Further reading

• Carl P. Russell, Firearms, Traps, & Tools of the Mountain Men (Alfred A. Knopf, 1967; UNM Press paperback also available). The standard scholarly reference.
• James A. Hanson, The Mountain Man’s Sketch Book, Volumes I and II (Fur Press, 1976). Period-accurate construction drawings of original kit, including possibles bags. The modern reenactor’s bible.
• Mountain Men and the Fur Trade, quarterly journal of the Museum of the Fur Trade, Chadron, Nebraska. The current living-history scholarship.
• The Museum of the Fur Trade itself, the largest collection of original trade-era leather and metalwork on the continent. Worth a trip to western Nebraska if you can make one.