How Fenimore Cooper's Heroes Fought
You can't ride horses in the forest...
Unlike the Indians of the Great Plains, the Iroquois, Hurons and other Delawares and Mohicans fought on foot: cavalry could not deploy in the forests. The main achievement of European civilization, which the palefaces shared with the Indians, was firearms. weapon...
The Swedish colony in North America, New Sweden, lasted only 17 years (from 1638 to 1655), after which it was captured by the Dutch. Of the cities founded by the Swedes, the most famous were Bridgeport (New Stockholm) and Wilmington (Fort Christina), and there was a small Swedish settlement on the site of modern Philadelphia. But the main thing that the Swedes did in North America was not their colonies, but the fact that they were the first Europeans to sell firearms to the Indians en masse.
There had been cases of illegal sale of matchlock muskets and arquebuses to local tribes before, but it was the inhabitants of the Scandinavian Peninsula who came up with the idea of paying with weapons for beaver pelts on a regular basis. And then, like a dam burst, the Dutch, who had captured New Sweden, passed a law punishing the sale of firearms to the Indians by death. And they immediately began to vigorously violate it: the price of 20 beaver pelts for a musket and 10-12 guilders for a pound of gunpowder gave such a profit that the greedy Dutch colonists could not resist, and the authorities, who received a percentage from each transaction, turned a blind eye to this business.
It is important not only to sell weapons, but also to teach how to use them!
And then the English began selling guns and gunpowder to the Iroquois for the war with the French, and the French to the Hurons for the war with the English... The details of those wars are not very interesting, and not well documented: the Indians could not write, and the palefaces were more interested in accounting than in war. story. Forts were burning, the Indian camps were getting more scalps and less food - the Europeans brought smallpox. But the technology of warfare was interesting enough for European travelers, so there is enough evidence of how the East Coast Indians fought...
Usually, Indian troops fighting in the forests consisted of 20-40 fighters. This number was not taken out of thin air - it was impossible to feed more in the forest by hunting. If it was necessary to send a larger army on a raid, it was divided into such troops, which went to the gathering place by different roads. The ideal option for combat operations was to approach the enemy camp unnoticed, and then kill or take everyone prisoner with a sudden attack.
Samuel de Champlain demonstrates the superiority of firearms in battle with the Iroquois
It must be said that, despite the fact that stories about Indian torture of prisoners left by Europeans (the same Samuel de Champlain) are capable of spoiling the appetite of even a person with strong nerves, prisoners were often accepted into their tribe: the Indians did not have any extra warriors, so if one of yesterday's enemies agreed to take their side... Why not?
It is worth noting right away: the Indians really did not like to suffer losses. This greatly surprised the European military. The dialogue between Hawkeye and Major Duncan Heyward in "The Last of the Mohicans" is typical:
- ...Well, what would you do here if you had the royal troops under your command?
- Bayonets would have paved the way.
- Yes, you speak reasonably, from the white man's point of view, but here in the desert a leader must ask himself how many lives he can sacrifice.
The Indians did not always kill prisoners. But often!
The fact is that wars between tribes were the prose of life (the Iroquois League prohibited wars between its members, but there were other tribes with which it was possible to fight...) and never ended, "having smoked the pipe of peace" with one tribe, the war with others continued. The Indians were at such a level of social development that military exploits played the role of money, and to prohibit young wars from committing them meant to deprive them of the opportunity for social growth. Therefore, any loss for the tribe was extremely painful, because warriors were constantly dying!
The main thing in war is to think everything through!
James Adair (1714-1796) in his History of the American Indians described Indians on the warpath:
"When a small band of Indians goes to war, they prefer to keep close to dense thickets and bushes, as they suppose that the enemy will not pursue them where it is reasonable to expect the loss of some of their warriors. When they arrive at the enemy's hunting grounds, they act with the greatest caution and cunning. They scatter through the forest and keep from each other at such a distance that the road signal of their neighbors can be heard. This signal consists in imitating the voices of birds and animals inhabiting the given locality, and there is not a single quadruped or feathered animal in the North American forests whose voice they cannot accurately imitate."
Traveling by canoe is fast and convenient
When an Indian detachment encountered an enemy detachment and a battle did occur, the Indians would spread out into a "battle line" - a kind of skirmish chain, but with a very large distance between the shooters. This distance was not regulated, but the shooters had to maintain visual contact with each other, and in the forest this was approximately 20-30 meters. In addition, in battle, the Indians tried to outflank the enemy or from the rear, so it made sense to stretch out the battle formation as much as possible, depriving the enemy of the opportunity to outflank. Fire was conducted from behind trees, rocks and other shelters - exposing yourself to bullets was considered bravery, but... stupidity. But changing positions was more than acceptable: especially since this prevented the enemy from establishing the real number of the detachment.
By the way, Cooper shows this quite well:
“The fight grew more and more intense and stubborn. There were few wounded, as both parties held on under cover of the trees. But the fortunes of Hawkeye and his party gradually began to fail. The sagacious scout soon perceived the danger threatening him, but knew not how to escape it. He saw that retreat was still more dangerous, and therefore decided to remain where he was, although he saw that the enemy were constantly increasing in number on the flank. The Delawares found it difficult to hold on under cover, and almost completely ceased firing. At this difficult moment, when they thought that the enemy’s tribe was about to surround them, the Delawares suddenly heard a war cry and the roar of shots coming from under the canopy of the forest, from where Uncas was.”
The passage above describes a battle between hundreds of men, but the Indians (and Hawkeye) operate as if they were fighting in a small skirmish in the woods of the East Coast of North America: shooting from behind cover, outflanking, and, as a culmination, an attack from the rear by a pre-assigned unit.
At the same time, for obvious reasons, the Indians did not like hand-to-hand combat: the losses were too great, no victory would compensate for the death of a couple dozen warriors. Based on the above, the love of American settlers for "Kentucky rifles", "deer shooters", "long guns" is understandable, which allowed for aimed fire at a fantastic distance of 200-300 meters for army smoothbore muskets. In a rifle fight of the Indian type, the winner was the one who could shoot as accurately and at the greatest possible distance.
Ambush is a favorite technique of the East Coast Indians.
When one of the fighting detachments felt that things were going badly, the Indians did not hesitate to retreat. Firstly, in the conditions of eternal wars, returning without enemy scalps, but not losing a single warrior was better than bringing many scalps, but losing half of the detachment. And secondly... It was always possible to replay the outcome of the battle by setting up a successful ambush on the pursuers. Sometimes such techniques were not improvised, but thought out and prepared in advance: a convenient place for an ambush was chosen, select shooters hid in the bushes. Most of all, ambushes were organized on a section of the road in the shape of the letter "G": bullets flew into the forehead of the pursuing detachment from the "horizontal crossbar" of the letter, and shooters from the "vertical crossbar" hit the flank.
But all the above-described tactics were rare in Indian wars, as were large battles. Much more often, a detachment circled in the forests around an enemy village, killing everyone who came out - usually women going for water or to work in the field (East Coast Indians were familiar with agriculture - they grew corn). If such a "siege" dragged on, the besieged could gather and leave the village together - it was too expensive to attack a migrating tribe, so the chance of leaving was quite high.
A French fur trader. The business was profitable, but dangerous. Very dangerous...
The main battles between Indian tribes with the use of firearms took place during the so-called "Beaver Wars". The fact is that beaver fur was used to make felt for hats, which were worn by everyone in Europe in the 17th-18th centuries. And the God-forsaken places in the north of the American continent became a natural Eldorado. The Indians caught beavers, sold the skins to European settlers, and most willingly exchanged the skins for guns and gunpowder. The French were the first to discover this business, betting on the Algonquin tribes (although not only: the Hurons are a tribe of the Iroquois language family), opposed by a coalition - the Iroquois, five powerful tribes united in the League. The League was patronized by England and Holland.
Powhatan Indians of the Algonquian tribe, late 19th century
The Iroquois, who had long monopolized the beaver pelt trade, drove the beavers out of their territory and began expansion to the north and west of the continent, where the Algonquian tribes and the Hurons lived. The French did not like the appearance of a strong Iroquois League on the borders of Canada, and they began to arm their enemies at an accelerated pace. Despite the appearance of their own firearms among the League's rivals, the Iroquois went from victory to victory, pushing the Mohicans westward and defeating the Hurons in 1649. Following the Mohicans, the Shawnee, Miami, Fox, and Sauk were driven from their lands. The Iroquois' fellow tribesmen, the Susquehannock, who lived southeast of the League, resisted the Iroquois the longest.
The successes of the Iroquois forced the French to involve regular troops in the war
But all the successes of the Iroquois only led to the French troops coming to the aid of their opponents. In 1667, the Iroquois were forced to conclude a peace treaty with the French and their allied tribes. The main result of the Beaver Wars was the final consolidation of the Europeans on the continent: firearms and the tactics invented by the Iroquois for their use, described above, significantly thinned out the tribes, whose numbers had already been undermined by smallpox. In 1701, the Great Peace of Montreal was signed: the Iroquois, who had terrified the entire north of the future United States and the south of Canada, were forced to agree to a condition according to which any conflicts between them and the Algonquin tribes could only be resolved through the mediation of the French. The Indians ceased to be an independent force in the east of the continent.
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