Traditional Muzzleloading Association
The Center of Camp => People of the Times => Topic started by: ahuse2008 on March 06, 2011, 10:57:38 AM
-
what is the average length to the knife carried by the riflemen in the revolution
-
That's a bit tough.
It seems most riflemen (at least at the start) were carrying simple trade/butcher/scalper knives. At the time, blade length was somewhere around 7" or so.
Something like this (a "red handled scalper" by Bob Rossdeutcher):
http://i1222.photobucket.com/albums/dd4 ... CN0380.jpg (http://i1222.photobucket.com/albums/dd499/RRossdeutscher/DSCN0380.jpg)
“They wore fringed hunting shirts, dyed yellow, brown, white and even red; quaintly carved shot-bags and powder-horns hung from their broad ornamented belts; they had fur caps or soft hats, moccasins, and coarse woolen leggings reaching half-way up to the thigh. Each carried his flintlock, his tomahawk, and scalping knife.â€-
J.F.D. Smyth
"The principal distinction between us, was in our dialects, our arms, and our dress. Each man of the three companies, bore a rifle-barreled gun, a tomehawk, or small axe, and a long knife, usually called a "scalping-knife," which served for all purposes, in the woods. His under-dress, by no means in a military style, was covered by a deep ash colored hunting-shirt, leggins and mockasins, if the latter could be procured. It was the silly fashion of those times, for riflemen to ape the manners of savages."
"Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, June 20, 1754-May 3, 1775" Virginia State Library and based on a plan by Capt. Voss (Vause) to raise 200 men from Augusta, Bedford, and bordering parts of Carolina to march against the Shawnese.
Mario