The references state that these are unique to rifles from Old Northampton County surrounding Allentown, and are found on Newhard, Kuntz, Moll, Rupp and George rifles, among others of the same style of riflemaking.
Published explanations for the decoration vary. One description explains them as a depiction of the “Sons of Liberty” head. Another believes they are guardian angels. A third description is of a woman’s face, and perhaps the strongest is of Lenni Lenape Chief Tammany (Tamend), a friend to settlers who negotiated William Penn’s 1683 treaty. Compare the headdresses in the painting below to the rifle above.
My research into the lives of the people involved leads me in a different direction. The continuing thread that united early Pennsylvania settlers of mixed ethnicity, background and faith across two generations and more was the fear of Indian attack. Peter Silver below wrote an entire 400-page book on the unifying nature of this fear, and he makes a good point. Between 1755 and 1783, each and every Moll, Newhard and Kuntz gunsmith as well as those at Christian Springs either had a relative killed by Indians, participated in the burial parties recovering the remains of Indian victims, was a member of a local defense force or later the organized militia, or was a close friend or relation of someone who was. And like all strong human emotions, those feelings later extended to children, grandchildren, and beyond.
In November-December 1755 the Delaware didn’t just massacre the 12 Moravian missionaries at Gnadenhutten (Lehighton) many are familiar with, they raided and burned throughout the northern area of Old Northampton County, killing dozens of noncombatants, including Newhard and Kuntz family members who would later become in-laws to the Molls. One farm a war party bypassed to attack the weaker farm adjacent to it was a Newhard farm, and the dead there were their in-laws.
After a similar incident in 1763 along a 10-mile swath through Whitehall and Allen Townships, Joseph Mickley below wrote his well-footnoted account from archives and live interviews with survivors in 1819. Twenty three settlers had been murdered and mutilated, 13 of them young children. This narrative is particularly poignant…and particularly gruesome. And these Lenni Lenape weren’t part of any organized rebellion occurring farther west….these were friendly, local Indians who routinely traded in Bethlehem, avenging an isolated robbery and murder.
The largest incident in eastern Pennsylvania was in the Wyoming Valley in 1778. William Nester below reports 302 scalps were taken and over a thousand homes burned by Seneca Indians led by British officers. This was followed a few months later by the Cherry Valley massacre across the border in New York, with 44 killed and 45 captured.
Nor do these well-documented incidents include all the random incidents of murder, robbery and mutilation. One doesn’t have to probe very far in Lehigh and Wyoming Valley genealogies of the period to find “killed by Indians” here and there.
Justification or lack of it notwithstanding, the impact of the terror of these attacks, especially the random ones, was undoubtedly profound and far-reaching. Instead of (or in addition to, depending on the user’s mood) a whimsical depiction of Chief Tammany, in the context of time and place I’m more inclined to believe the message was, “this rifle is capable of a clean head shot.” My evidence?
a) The first two family members I had enlist to fight in the Revolutionary War were frontiersmen who enlisted in the regulars to fight Indians, not for any urban notions of liberty, taxation or representation. One’s family had been made refugees by the Indian attacks of 1755, and the farm they had spent 20 years building was turned into “wastelands”. The other’s 69-year-old father-in-law had been “murdered, stripped and scalped” the year before. Both enlisted in rifle battalions led by experienced and well-known Indian fighters.
b) The double Indian head above in Ronald Gabel’s photograph is on a
double-barreled rifle. Probably one of the Kuntz’s, who had lost family members to Indian attacks.
Further Reading:https://www.home.earthlink.net/~pagca/page35.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TamanendGabel, Ronald G., Thoughts on The Northampton School of Pennsylvania Gunmaking, Gabelguns.com, 34p.
Mickley, Joseph J., Ancestry.com. Brief account of murders by the Indians, and the cause thereof, in Northampton County, Penn'a., October 8th, 1763 [database on-line]. Provo, UT: The Generations Network, Inc., 2005. Also available free on-line via Google Books.
Nester, William R., The Frontier War for American Independence, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg PA, 2004, 423pp.
Silver, Peter Rhoads, Our Savage Neighbors, WW Norton and Company, New York, 2008.