The above painting is of a Mingo Warrior around 1750. Note the wire wound around his outer ear cartilage. Looking fierce, more than anything, was a good way to avoid trouble.
Organization: Indian tribes had war captains, but these men held no authority over other men. The war captain was a person whose opinion had special status due to having a lot of prior success with few casualties. The war captain would listen to input from his warriors and decide which actions to take. After the war captain made his suggestion, the warriors were allowed to either partake, or simply refuse and remain back. They did not have the idea that one man could possess the will of another. That is the natural way of men. “Basic Training” in our military is simply a collection of techniques for “breaking” a man into acting when his will states otherwise. A solider has to substitute the commander’s will for his own. Indians weren’t soldiers, they were individual warriors, a system akin to independent contractors.
Battle: The ideal act of war for an Indian was sneak attack. Indians tolerated no casualties. This was mainly because there were not very many of them.
We are taught culturally, I believe, to think of Indians as reckless, and as a result, less predictable and thus more savage. In reality, the Indian was a highly pragmatic fighter. They valued surprise as the main advantage in battle. If their attack began to fail, they would quickly call retreat rather than suffer losses. Their culture did not teach shame in retreat, as it understood the utility of life. Villages were small and could not absorb the loss of men.
Dress: Indian warriors used clam shells to pick their scalps bald, leaving only a single lock of hair on the back of their scalps. A warrior grew this scalp lock so that his enemy could more easily grasp and remove the top of his head. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that.
Indian warfare was called “guerrilla warfare” by the French, who quickly adopted it as the preferable way to fight in the Wilderness.
Connection to Jumonville Glen
It should come as no surprise that on the morning of May 28, 1754, when Washington took forty men and followed Tanacharison into the wilderness, that Tanacharison, a war captain, was leading them into a sneak attack. And that is exactly what happened. The French stupidly camped in the shadow of a rock bluff, allowing Washington’s men to fire on them from above, killing many while they slept, as easy as fish in a barrel. For Tanacharison, this was the ideal battle. He suffered no losses. He was so sure of their victory that he brought two young Indian boys along for the show.
Also, of note, Tanacharison and his warriors did not carry the Brown Bess musket, which was standard British issue, they carried instead the French Charleville musket, which was in another realm of craftsmanship. It was like the difference between a Ford Escort and a Ferrari. Tanacharison knew there were about forty of those Charleville muskets there for the taking. You can draw your own conclusions about that.
Above is the picture of the “lock” on each gun. The top lock is the french Charleville, the bottom is a Brown Bess. The pictures do not give the full picture of the differences between the guns.
Fun fact: I always thought the term “War Path,” was a metaphorical term used for when someone was angry and destructive, but the war path was literally a path some Indians would take south during the summertime to fight other Indians. The one I am aware of travels from Lake Erie south through the Shenandoah Valley.