Trained by their father as rifle smiths on the East Coast, the brothers moved to St. Louis, Missouri, at the beginning of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.

[2]: 1, 4  Opening a gun shop in St. Louis in 1815, they developed their Hawken Rifle, dubbed "Rocky Mountain Rifle", to serve the needs of fur trappers, traders, and explorers, a quality gunː light enough to carry all the time and that could knock down big animals at long range.

In 1832 several mountain men are listed as purchasing Hawken rifles, including brigade leaders Andrew Drips and Lucien Fontenelle.

[1]: 32  Members of later Ashley Rendezvous also owned Hawken rifles, including Auguste Arhcambeau and Ft. Union hunter Joseph Ramsey.

[1]: 20  A number of famous men were said to have owned Hawken rifles, including Auguste Lacome, Hugh Glass, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Orrin Porter Rockwell, Joseph Meek, Jedediah Strong Smith, and Theodore Roosevelt.

[8] In Karl May's Winnetou books, the eponymous Indian brave and his blood brother Old Shatterhand both owned Hawken rifles.

Winnetou decorated his rifle with silver thumb tacks, and Old Shatterhand named his own gun Bear Slayer.

The 1972 film Jeremiah Johnson, starring Robert Redford as a mountain man who used such a rifle, contributed to general interest in replicas[9] and a resurgence in the popularity of muzzleloaders among modern hunters.

The First Mountain Man series (1991-2019) by William W. Johnstone, sees the leading character "Preacher" wielding a Hawkins Rifle, as his primary arm, in every entry.