It is to this period that most extant items related to warfare can be attributed.  It is not always clear where new technologies originated, but they soon spread across the region.  Certainly, the Northwest Coast dagger was regional in its use. Steven C. Brown has outlined the two types of extant Northwest Coast daggers. 

Tlingit daggers were made in two main types. Perhaps the oldest type was made with a one-piece, double-ended blade. In these, the primary, double-edged blade was below the grip, and a much shorter blade of the same shape made up the pommel of the weapon above the grip. These would have been formidable weapons in hand-to-hand combat, able to do damage to an opponent both coming and going.

The second type, which was more common in the historic period, was made of a blade with a decorative pommel above the grip, usually depicting a clan emblem or in some cases a revered ancestor. Within this general type are two sub-categories. In one, the blade and pommel are both made of one piece of metal, usually steel but sometimes copper, and the pommel area is cut in a silhouette, hot-chased to create dimension in the design, and engraved for detail. This type probably evolved from the double-ended, functional style of pommel.

In the second sub-style, the blade can be of either steel or the much less common copper, and the pommel is a separate piece of material, to which the tang of the blade is attached by overlapping, and the two are wrapped together to form the grip. The materials of which these pommels were made could be various types of wood, of which walnut was common, sourced from Euro-American gunstocks, and also Pacific yew. The pommel could also be of bone or ivory, or a piece of mountain sheep horn.  Carved in these kinds of workable materials, sculptural form became the emphasis of their makers. Some of these sculptural pommels were singular images, while others were composed of double or multiple images, compactly formed into a tightly knit design.

The presence of steel as well as copper knives and daggers was noted among Northwest Coast Native peoples at the time of the first explorers in the late eighteenth century. Native placer copper was traded from deposits in the Copper River area of south central Alaska, and had been worked into tools and ornaments over a long period. All the coastal peoples had names for iron or steel in their languages, indicating an extended familiarity with this material as well. The earliest record of steel blades on the coast comes from the Ozette archaeological site on the Washington coast, where 37 steel-bladed tools and but one beaver-tooth knife were found, indicating the ubiquity of the material. Prior to the advent of Euro-American trade, iron and steel would have arrived either via Native trade north from California and Mexico, or in the form of ship's fittings in Asian wrecks that came ashore on the Pacific coast. Some such shipwrecks arrived as weather-beaten fragments of Chinese or Japanese vessels, while others arrived essentially intact, though dismasted and without their steering rudders, blown out to sea by typhoons along the Japanese coast and carried east by the prevailing currents. In some cases even some crew members survived, to be taken in by the resident populations. In addition to ship's fittings, woodworking tools were usually aboard these vessels for maintenance and minor repairs, and were also carried on some sailings as cargo. All of these materials and tools would have had a great impact on Native society and technology.

This superb dagger in the collection of the Museum of Northern BC is the second type.