Working The Trapline — A Dark Wolf & The Cutting-Off Way

Crossed tomahawks seem to be a theme here this week.

The crossed Winklers are, of course, Jack Carr’s “brand” as a writer of thrillers and a podcaster. And a killer brand it is, too.

You know you’ve married well when you climb into a rental Jeep for a five hour drive from Boise, Idaho, to Redmond, Oregon and your wife is scrolling through the audio and says, “how about Jack Carr’s newest one. Have you read it? Do you mind listening to it again?” Yeah, you know the answer to that one.

Lady Marilyn is a James Reese fan.

A couple of days later came the welcome news that filming has begun on The Terminal List prequel, Dark Wolf. The series will engage with Reese’s comrade in arms Ben Edwards:

What would cause Ben Edwards, friend and SEAL Teammate of James Reece and Raife Hastings, to go down the path he took in season one of THE TERMINAL LIST?

I’d like to know.

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Crossed ’hawks are also the motif for a truly remarkable piece of military history that I picked up Thursday afternoon and dived into hard.

The Cutting-Off Way: Indigenous Warfare in Eastern North America, 1500-1800 is a meaty chunk of serious Frontier Partisan scholarship that contextualizes indigenous warfare better than anything else I’ve run across.

Wayne E. Lee, a professor of early modern military history at the University of North Carolina brings a formidable arsenal to bear on his work — including hands-on familiarity with traditional archery and black-powder firearms. That kind of engagement always bodes well, as far as I’m concerned. He also has background and expertise in archaeology and anthropology; getting his hands dirty informs his more traditional document-based work.

His conceptual framework of the “cutting-off way” tracks with my own sense of the native way of war — driven by its own political, strategic, tactical, logistic and cultural imperatives.

The “cutting-off way” refers to a strong preference for hitting isolated enemy elements:

A small war party might “cut off” individuals found getting water, wood, or out hunting, while a larger party might attempt to attack a whole town. Once revealed by its attack, the invading war party would flee before the defenders’ reinforcements from nearby towns could organize. Sieges or battles were rare and fought mainly to save face or reputation.

An attack by a mixed force of Shawnee, Delaware, Mingo (Ohio Seneca) and Wyandot and British Rangers on Fort Laurens in Ohio in 1779 is a perfect example of the tactical principle. On the morning of February 23, 19 young soldiers walked through the gates of the fort to cut wood and round up some stray horses. The work party was still within sight of the fort — but out of musket range — when they were set upon and slaughtered almost to a man, mostly falling to a rain of blows from melee weapons.

The Shawnee damn near got Daniel Boone when they cut him off from Fort Boonesborough in a raid in 1777. He was rescued thanks to the courage and athleticism of Simon Kenton, who rushed from the gate to his aid.

One imperative that drove the native way of war was a reluctance to risk heavy casualties. They simply couldn’t afford them. The imperative to preserve their own force led Euro-Americans often to think of native warriors as “skulking cowards,” a pejorative assessment that still leaves a hangover to this day. Lee’s approach debunks this more effectively than most other work I’ve seen. As with all peoples, the native peoples of the Eastern Woodlands pursued rational goals with a way of warfare that suited their particular expectations and capabilities.

I have often found it frustrating that accounts of frontier warfare in this period — even sophisticated ones — tend to treat native warriors as auxiliaries to the military forces of the imperial powers. In fact, the native peoples attempted to manipulate the might of New France, or the British colonies, or the fledgling United States to their own strategic ends. They had mixed success, and ultimately failed, but they were NOT mere pawns in an imperial chess match.

The Cutting-Off Way pairs well with John Grenier’s The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814, which is proving to be most useful for Spirited For That Work.

As you can tell, I really like this book. It’s going to take some discipline to put it down this weekend for work on McNelly and his Rangers…

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We’ve got some really nice spring weather at present, and I’m going to take full advantage of it for an early ruck-and-range session. Saturday morning. By Crom, I will maintain the theme…

 

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Colin G. Calloway shows up a lot in the notes of The Cutting-Off Way — which is to be expected. Calloway has been at the forefront of this theater of borderland history for decades now. Calloway has another tome coming out in September, which I will plunder the moment it hits the trading post: Hard Neighbors: The Scotch-Irish Invasion of Native America and the Making of an American Identity.

An intricate portrayal of the early American settlers who came to be known as Scotch-Irish, who through collusion and bloody conflict acted as the tip of the spear of white colonial expansion into Indian lands.

Crom!

The Bitter Southerner has published an excerpt from Taylor Brown’s upcoming novel of the Battle of Blair Mountain, Rednecks.

What if we told you that in 1921 a battle raged on American soil in which a million rounds were fired, bombs were dropped, and 10,000 Appalachians fought for their livelihoods? In this excerpt from his new novel, Rednecks, Taylor Brown introduces us to some gritty characters, both real and imagined, who waged the largest labor uprising in American history. Union miners versus King Coal. Can you smell the smoke?

Out in May. Taylor Brown is a badass. Really looking forward to this.