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The Real Josey Wales, Parts 1 & 2 by Mark Hatmaker

 


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 Black Box Warehouse

The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast

 


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