>They still used bows, but took to guns due to their power.
Not necessarily. Early guns were inefficient; one shot every minute is nothing compared to what a good bowman can do and you couldn't place an accurate shot outside of a few yards.
The reason an army switches to guns is because they require very little strength (and consequentially, training time) to use. In fact, for a musket, the limiting factor would be the user's height (they're 5 feet tall; being much shorter than that would make reloading much more difficult).
For American Indians, it would make sense to switch as their stocks of trained bowmen were depleted. Not before then.
You still need a significant amount of strength and time to ready a crossbow. Anyone can fire it, but not everyone can load it. Also the bolt is relatively slow (the shot travels in an arc that's more pronounced the slower the projectile), requiring you to be close to what you want to hit.
And if you're hunting game, even firing a crossbow will likely spook your target.
Or you could buy some 100-year-old military rifle and become proficient with it. Nearly all of them fire rounds that can be (and frequently are) successfully used for taking all North American game.
And a bolt-action surplus rifle (or any other repeater) is still faster than any bow, and you can carry more rounds than you can arrows in a quiver for the same weight, and bullets don't snap in half or depend on delicate pieces on the shaft to fly straight.
Not necessarily. Early guns were inefficient; one shot every minute is nothing compared to what a good bowman can do and you couldn't place an accurate shot outside of a few yards.
The reason an army switches to guns is because they require very little strength (and consequentially, training time) to use. In fact, for a musket, the limiting factor would be the user's height (they're 5 feet tall; being much shorter than that would make reloading much more difficult).
For American Indians, it would make sense to switch as their stocks of trained bowmen were depleted. Not before then.