I am just finishing Alan Eckert's 'The Frontiersman'. What a wonderful book. I wondered though at the constant reference to 'rifles' when I would have expected a mix of rifles, smoothbore trade guns and muskets. Especially as so many supplied to the Indian tribes were supplied by the English through Canada. Were such a large proportion truly 'rifles' or was it a common generic term in the era?
Kinda longwinded...
What many to not realize or do not want to address was the number of rifles in native hands from the 1740s onward, both British made and American made which I suspect was most common. What this meant was that if in a stockade and having nothing but muskets the natives could take "liberties" and cut off daylight movement inside the stockade if they had a tree of hill to fire from within 200-300 yards of the walls and had even a few rifles and people that knew how to use them. There are accounts from the 1750s stating that "they take such aim from behind a tree to seldom misseth their mark." This will be found in DeWitt Bailey's "British Flintlock Military Rifles". Along with other accounts of rifle use by the natives well before the F&I War.
So far as people "sniping" with a trade gun. I would advise they look at the results of the various "firefights" detailed in the various writings of the Western Fur Trade. The Trade Gun armed natives invariably got the worst of it, usually in a VERY lopsided result, in any standup fight like Pierre's Hole. Even when the range was close they STILL could not get hits. The Eastern Natives from accounts of the Colonial era and the Western Fur Trade, were better shots it seems.
Then we have the account of Second Saratoga where Morgan's Riflemen virtually eliminated the native and French Canadian scouts working the British. They basically all went home and those that staid, according to a British officer "could not be brought within sound of a rifle shot". It was so bad that any of the British forces who ventured past the pickets were ordered to be hung by Burgoyne. The smooth bore never got much respect from the Americans on the frontier and there are accounts of people getting off flatboats in Kentucky or Ohio and being LAUGHED AT for carrying a fowler (see "The Frontier Rifleman" by LaCrosse). But this again, does not fit with the narrative than many in the reenactor community want to advance since too many rifle show up at events to please them. This is based on the numbers of smoothbores found in wills and probate records. But of course EVERYONE had to have a militia gun and few were going to pay for a rifle that did nothing but hang on wall of stand in a closet unless called to drill with the Militia. There are three classes of people who own guns. Owners, shooters and riflemen. In Colonial America I am sure there were more owners than the other two combined due to legal requirements.
When people discuss Tecumseh's trade gun they need to remember that he traded it off for a rifle on his way to battle.
Also remember that Eckert is not 100% correct and any long gun could be (and often was) called a rifle or a musket at the will of the writer in any era. This further muddies the research.
The problem with the smooth bore in general and the Musket in particular is the amount of lead and powder they use. In the east there is very little a 50 caliber rifle will not do that musket can, other than speed of loading which off the linear tactics battlefield is not a factor. And the musket uses almost 3 times the lead. The disparity in the amount of lead needed for the smoothbore vs the rifle was, along with the fact that they were more dangerous in war, was the reason some military officers and traders wanted rifles be banned as trade items and colonists be punished for selling rifles to the Natives. Again see Bailey.
So there were a number of documented, very valid reasons why the rifle was common (dare I say necessary?) if not the primary arm in actual USE on the frontier.
Dan
