A Firefight In The Woods

One of the most intense episodes during the Sullivan Expedition of 1779 occurred when a reconnaissance patrol of 27 men led by Lt. Thomas Boyd of the Rifle Corps engaged in a woodland firefight with a substantial force of Loyalist Rangers and Iroquois warriors deployed in an attempt to ambush the American advance toward the Seneca town of Genesse in western New York.

General John Sullivan’s force had beaten a Loyalist/Iroquois/Lenape force in battle at Newtown, and was embarked on their mission to gut the Iroquois war-making capacity by destroying their towns and crops. Lt. Boyd was tasked with locating Genesse and determining whether it was defended.

Boyd had 18 Riflemen, eight musket men, and an Oneida scout. The patrol located an abandoned Seneca town — but it wasn’t Genesse — and they clashed with some warriors who rode into town, which alerted the Loyalist/Indian force to their presence. Boyd realized there was a substantial force between the patrol and the main American force — and they would have to fight their way though.

The episode is featured in the next episode of the Frontier Partisans Podcast (which will be up early next week). My account relies heavily on Glenn F. Williams’ The Year of the Hangman: George Washignton’s Campaign Against the Iroquois, which covers the Boyd Patrol in detail.

Williams’ account does a fantastic job depicting the chaos, terror and confusion of an 18th Century frontier firefight in the woods. At different points in the encounter, each combatant element heard shooting and hallooing, and thought they were surrounded. Running from tree to tree, it was impossible to maintain unit cohesion, and portions of the patrol got separated from each other. Some made it back to the main column — others didn’t.

During the Rhodesian Bush War of the 1960s-70s, Rhodesian forces took to employing what essentially amounted to reconnaissance-by-fire, dumping 7.62 rounds into likely spots where an insurgent fighter might be leveling a Kalashnikov. This was effective in breaking ambushes. That kind of fire wasn’t an option among men armed with single-shot, muzzleloading rifles or muskets. Targets were fleeting and hard to see, and if you didn’t platoon your fire — with some men always having a loaded piece — you would be vulnerable to a sudden charge out of the trees by a warrior swinging a tomahawk or war club.

As synchronicity would have it, I Love Muzzleloading, Hawken Horse, and The Shirttail Mess just dropped their 20-minute short film depicting just such a firefight — this one set on the Kentucky frontier in 1780.

This is probably as visceral a depiction as you can get of a frontier firefight. Hats off to ’em.

You might watch this before you fire up the Sullivan Expedition podcast; it’ll put images in your mind’s eye that really enhance our understanding of what it must have looked, sounded and felt like to be engaged in a fight for your life on the frontier during the American Revolution.