Working The Trapline — Carhartt Collaboration; Redcoats Under Fire & Fur Trade Symphony

Carhartt has announced a collaboration with Cheyenne/Crow designer Bethany Yellowtail. The work looks good. I have a hunch Lady Marilyn will like it a lot.

Growing up on her family’s cattle ranch in Montana, Bethany Yellowtail learned the value of hard work; respecting the land and nature around her, never forgetting her roots, and [deriving] inspiration from her community.

As a Native American designer, Bethany Yellowtail has woven together our shared history of hard work and heritage in every upcoming piece.

As part of our partnership with Bethany Yellowtail, Carhartt is donating $50,000 to support the Wyola Development Fund, a non-profit organization that supports the well-being of residents of the Wyola Mighty Few District.

Christian Parkinson of Redcoat History has served up another tale of British soldiers on a wild frontier — this time right in the heartland of Frontier Partisans in North America:

The British Army in North America faced more than just forests and rivers—they faced ambushes, war cries, and tactics designed to terrify as much as to kill. From the French and Indian War to the Revolution, did the Redcoats adapt or just keep relearning the same bloody lessons? To find out, I’m joined by historian Jacob Hagstrom, author of Asymmetric Warfare from Cambridge University Press.

Yes, dammit — another must-purchase volume…

The forces that fight asymmetric wars are so distinct that one side avoids direct military confrontation in favor of political, social, or otherwise unorthodox means of resistance. These conflicts have been a mainstay of modern times, though scholars have often separated them into various designations by era. Observers have referred, in chronological order, to Indian warfare, petite guerre (small war), guerrilla warfare, irregular or revolutionary war, and terrorism. The proliferation of labels over time has obscured the continuity of asymmetric wars throughout modernity. Stark distinctions in resources and capabilities have shaped the reasons why states and societies have decided to fight, and the manner in which they have fought. Across the modern era, mismatches arose in the domains of technology, intelligence production, and law. But in recent decades, so-called weak powers have neutralized many of the typical advantages of strong military states.

A very positive review notes that Hagstrom emphasizes the 20th Century, and pays particular attention to the Filipino Insurrection, which is most welcome.

The Redcoat History podcast goes into more depth, and touches on the Cape Frontier as well as contemporary Afghanistan.

When Lady Marilyn and I were courting, we went to see The Battlefield Band at a theater in Pasadena, California. They were a long-lived and now hall-of-fame Scottish folk outfit. Wonderful stuff. It had been a long time since I had listened to them, so I fired up a live set:

The Almighty Algorithm kicked up a remarkable Canadian folk music cycle by Rodney Brown, Songs From Fort William. Don’t know why I hadn’t heard of this before. Recorded with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, it tells the story of the North West Company’s outpost at Thunder Bay.

The fort was established in a strategic location, where French fur traders had operated since the 17th Century, and it thrived through the first part of the 19th Century before diminishing in importance later in the century.