Indigenous Ability

This is Lieutenant-General John “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne on the rabble that was encountered during the American Revolution. “It is not to be expected that the rebel Americans will risk a general combat or a pitched battle, or even stand at all, except behind intrenchments as at Boston. Accustomed to felling of timber and to grubbing up trees, they are very ready at earthworks and palisading, and will cover and intrench themselves wherever they are for a short time left unmolested with surprising alacrity…Composed as the American army is, together with the strength of the country, full of woods, swamps, stone walls, and other inclosures and hiding places, it may be said of it that every private man will in action be his own general, who will turn every tree and bush into a kind of temporary fortress, and from whence, he has fired his shot with all deliberation, coolness, and uncertainty which hidden safety inspires, he will skip as it were to the next, and so on for a long ...

All right, my stalwart ones! This little PT Challenge is rooted in Five Nations history and a nice demonstration of the stamina of the early frontiersmen and coureur des bois [“woods runners.”] First the historical background. The Five Nations were the Five Tribes that united under a loose confederacy known as the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee. The five tribes that made up the League were: the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca. In 1722, the south-eastern tribe, the Tuscarora made the League the Six Nations. The Iroquois League was primarily a Northeastern confederation and it is there that they occasionally accepted white men into their tribal system. This acceptance was not easy to come by—one was expected to perform many feats of woodsmanship, bravery and cooperation to be accepted, One such man’s account [William Johnson] gives us a little peek into how rigorous the initiation was. The Iroquois tribes were masters of river-navigation via canoe, bull-boat...