68. Kentucky Riflemen
FROM THE VIRGINIA GAZETTE (1775)
ON Friday evening last, arrived at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on
their way to the American camp, Captain Cresap's company of
riflemen, consisting of one hundred and thirty active, brave young
fellows; many of whom have been in the late expedition under Lord
Dunmore, against the
Indians.[185]
They bear in their bodies visible marks of their prowess, and
show scars and wounds which would do honor to Homer's Iliad. They
show you, to use the poet's words:—
"where the gor'd battle bled at every vein!"
One of these warriors, in particular, shows the cicatrices of four
bullet holes through his body. These men have been bred in the woods
to hardships and dangers from their infancy. They appear as if they
were entirely unacquainted with, and had never felt the passion of fear.
With their rifles in their hands, they assume a kind of omnipotence
over their enemies.
One cannot much wonder at this, when we mention a fact
which can be fully attested by several of the reputable persons who
were eye-witnesses of it. Two brothers in the company took a piece of
board five inches broad and seven inches long, with a bit of white
paper, about the size of a dollar, nailed in the centre; and while one of
them supported this board perpendicularly between his knees, the
other, at the distance of upwards of sixty yards, and without any kind
of rest, shot eight bullets through it successively, and spared a brother's
thigh!
Another of the company held a barrel stave perpendicularly in
his hands with one edge close to his side, while one of his comrades, at
the same distance, and in the manner before mentioned, shot several
bullets through it, without any apprehension of danger on either side.
The spectators appearing to be amazed at these feats, were told
that there were upwards of fifty persons in the same company who
could do the same thing; that there was not one who could not plug
nineteen bullets out of twenty, as they termed it, within an inch of the
head of a tenpenny nail. In short, to prove the confidence they
possessed in their dexterity at these kind of arms, some of them
proposed to stand with apples on their heads, while others at the same
distance, undertook to shoot them off; but the people who saw the other
experiments declined to be witnesses of this.
At night a great fire was kindled around a pole planted in the
Court House Square, where the company, with the captain at their
head, all naked to the waist, and painted like savages, (except the
captain, who was in an Indian shirt,) indulged a vast concourse
of people with a perfect exhibition of a war-dance, and all the
manoeuvres of Indians, holding council, going to war, circumventing
their enemies by defiles, ambuscades, attacking, scalping, &c.
It is said by those who are judges, that no representation could
possibly come nearer the original. The captain's expertness and agility,
in particular, in these experiments astonished every beholder. This
morning they will set out on their march for Cambridge.
[[185]]
These men came from Kentucky to aid in the
siege of Boston.
