Let us begin with an extract from Josey Wales creator,
Forest Carter’s, novel The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales.
This extract was Carter’s explanation for Wales’
background.
THE MOUNTAIN CODE.
“The Code was as necessary to survival on the lean
soil of mountains, as it had been on the rock ground of Scotland and Wales.
Clannish people. Outside governments erected by people of kindlier land, of
wealth, of power, made no allowance for the scrabbler.
“As a man had no coin, his coin was his
word. His loyalty, his bond. He was the rebel of establishment, born in this
environment. To injure one to whom he was obliged was personal; more, it was
blasphemy. The Code, a religion without catechism, having no chronicler of
words to explain or to offer apologia.
“Bone-deep feuds were the result. War to
the knife. Seldom if ever over land, or money, or possessions. But injury to
the Code meant---WAR!
“Marrowed in the bone, singing in the
blood, the Code was brought to the mountains of Virginia and Tennessee and the
Ozarks of Missouri. Instantaneously it could change a shy farm boy into a
vicious killer, like a sailing hawk, quartering its wings in the death dive.
“It all was puzzling to those who lived
within government cut from cloth to fit their comfort. Only those forced
outside the pale could understand. The Indian—Cherokee, Comanche, Apache. The
Jew.
“The unspoken nature of Josey Wales was
the clannish code. No common interest of business, politics, land or profit
bound his people to him. It was unseen and therefore stronger than any of
these. Rooted in human beings’ most powerful urge—preservation. The unyielding,
binding thong was loyalty. The trigger was obligation.”
Mr. Carter was no mere spinner of fiction, the
original Wild West [and some historians put it as even wilder and Bloodier than
the Western West] was right here in my stomping grounds of east Tennessee, the
Hills of Kentucky, Virginia [where my mining camp scufflin’ originated], and
the foothills of North Carolina.
This Clannish mountain Code met and blended with the
Warrior Cultures of more than a few tribes.
Let us return to that original stock of
Scots-Irish-Ulster and move from the fictional to the actual.
It was a culture just as Carter described, it was
Josey Wales stock. It was prideful, hard, and warlike.
Consider this from J.P. MacLeans’s An Historical
Account of the Settlement of Scotch Highlanders in America, 1900.
“These Highlanders were a race of tall, robust men,
who lived simply and frugally and slept on the heath among their flocks in all
weathers, with no other covering from rain and snow than their plaidies. It is
reported of the Laird of Keppoch, who was leading his clan to war in winter
time, that his men were divided as to the propriety of following him further
because he rolled a snowball to rest his head upon when he lay down. "Now
we despair of victory," they said, "since our leader has become so
effeminate he cannot sleep without a pillow!"
Hardness was a virtue.
I offer the above as there is a wealth of martial
info, tactics, history strategy, woodcraft, martial philosophy from this
Original Wild West.
We will be offering a bit of the history to this
Indigenous Ability blog [not a subscriber? Why not, it’s free.]
A bit more to the newsletter, also free. Not a
subscriber? WTF? Rectify that Here.
And of course, The Black Box Brotherhood will
reap the fruits of the tactical info that melds the Warlike Disposition of The
Real Josey Wales Mountain Code and the wise warrior ways of the Comanche,
Cherokee, and Apache, to name a few.
Armed, unarmed, stealth, tactical, strategy, mindset,
hell, mountain-warrior philosophy.
Let us look to another aspect that shaped these early
Ways—the environment itself.
Consider this description from Pioneers of the Old
Southwest: A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground-- Constance Lindsay Skinner [1919.]
As we consider the descriptions of the
frontiersman left for us by travelers of his own day, we are not more
interested in his battles with wilderness and Indian than in the visible
effects of both wilderness and Indian upon him. His countenance and bearing
still show the European, but the European greatly altered by savage contact.
The red peril, indeed, influenced every side of frontier life. The bands of
women and children at the harvestings, the log rollings, and the house
raisings, were not there merely to lighten the men's work by their laughter and
love-making. It was not safe for them to remain in the cabins, for, to the
Indian, the cabin thus boldly thrust upon his immemorial hunting grounds was
only a secondary evil; the greater evil was the white man's family, bespeaking
the increase of the dreaded palefaces. The Indian peril trained the pioneers to
alertness, shaped them as warriors and hunters, suggested the fashion of their
dress, knit their families into clans and the clans into a tribe wherein all
were of one spirit in the protection of each and all and a unit of hate against
their common enemy.
[The blending of the Warrior Borderers’ Ways with Indigenous
Warrior Ethos was both necessity and choice.]
Into the pioneer's phrase-making the
Indian influence penetrated so that he named seasons for his foe. So thoroughly
has the term "Indian Summer," now to us redolent of charm, become
disassociated from its origins that it gives us a shock to be reminded that to
these Back Country folk the balmy days following on the cold snap meant the
season when the red men would come back for a last murderous raid on the
settlements before winter should seal up the land. The "Powwowing
Days" were the mellow days in the latter part of February, when the red
men in council made their medicine and learned of their redder gods whether or
no they should take the warpath when the
sap pulsed the trees into leaf. Even the children at their play acknowledged
the red- skinned schoolmaster, for their chief games were a training in his
woodcraft and in the use of his weapons.
[Letters, journals, and other musty tomes of the time
hold copious info on actual Old School ways and not modern-day guesses or mere
transfers of a popular martial art as an overlay. What was done, not what was
assumed done, was an entirely different practical and brutal beast. It had to
be.]
Tomahawk-throwing was a favorite sport
because of its gruesome practical purposes. The boys must learn to gauge the
tomahawk's revolutions by the distance of the throw so as to bury the blade in
its objective. Swift running and high jumping through the brush and fallen
timber were sports that taught agility in escape. The boys learned to shoot
accurately the long rifles of their time, with a log or a forked stick for a
rest, and a moss pad under the barrel to keep it from jerking and spoiling the
aim. They wrestled with each other, mastered the tricks of throwing an
opponent, and learned the scalp hold instead of the toe hold. It was part of
their education to imitate the noises of every bird and beast of the forest. So
they learned to lure the turkey within range, or by the bleat of a fawn to
bring her dam to the rifle. A well-simulated wolf's howl would call forth a
response and so inform the lone hunter of the vicinity of the pack. This forest
speech was not only the language of diplomacy in the hunting season; it was the
borderer's secret code in war. Stray Indians put themselves in touch again with
the band by turkey calls in the daytime and by owl or wolf notes at night. The
frontiersmen used the same means to trick the Indian band into betraying the place
of its ambuscade, or to lure the strays, unwitting, within reach of the knife.
We go deeply into the Old School Ways from the actual historical
record in The Black Box Brotherhood Subscription Service.
Now, The Black Box Brotherhood ain’t free. Too much
work goes into this to keep that teat flowin’ for dabblers.
I leave you with another extract—this uses a term that
pops up again and again in old times describing the character required of a
truly New World. That phrase is “New Adam.” It refers to those who went into
a Garden, not one of paradise, but one of Peril. Men and Woman who were not
ready-made by society but forged themselves by dint of what they faced.
To use a fictional correlate, they were young Lord and
Lady Greystokes stripped of the trappings of civilization and forged into Tarzans
in what this New World required.
Yet, in every cabin, whatever the national
differences, the setting was the same The spirit of the frontier was modeling
out of old clay a new Adam to answer the needs of a new earth.
Ready to be a New Adam. A Warrior of the twin Worlds?
Only the serious need apply, those that read the
Mountain Code and feel it sing in their blood.
Ready for The Black Box Brotherhood or do you require
a pillow? Info Here.
Mucho Mountain Warrior Gold coming down the pike—The
True Ones out there won’t want to miss it.
Resources for Livin’ the Warrior Life, Not Just
Readin’ About It
The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast
Comments
Post a Comment