Indigenous Ability

The following missive can be applied to not merely frontier trade-knife, bowie knife, tomahawk, foils, sabers, epees, but also to “schooled” unarmed combat and precision military maneuvers. The informed among us are already quite familiar with the fact that some of the best troops from Europe fought in Early America. These crack troops were schooled by some of the best military minds that Great Britain and the Continent had to offer, and yet they encountered more persistent and baffling resistance than they expected and/or had confronted in warfare in the Old World. The early colonists [some were schooled in the European military tradition, many were not] took their cue from what they encountered in the Indigenous Tribes of this new land. This new warfare if it can be encapsulated at all might be expressed in a proverb originating in the Northeastern tribes that can be loosely translated as “ Advance like foxes, fight like catamounts [panthers], and fly like birds.” F...

We’re all high-speed, low-drag, “ Keep your head on a swivel, eyes on everything ” sorts, right?  I’m assuming that because I am bombarded with a never-ending posting parade of “ Awareness Musts!” “Situational Readiness Always!” “Eyes of Jack Reacher” or commentary on shared violence-porn, “ This guy got popped because he wasn’t paying attention; what he shoulda done…what I woulda done ” that sort of thing. We’re all wide-wake great ones from what I read. I’ll give you a super-easy quiz to test that assumption in a mo’ but first, a little tale of one who was always eyes-open even amongst other eyes that were also straining to be open and these allied eyes had use of new technology to assist “seeing.” [The following is excerpted from Biographical Sketch of James Bridger: Mountaineer, Trapper, and Guide (1905) by General Grenville M. Dodge. Mind you, a military man not prone to exaggeration.] “ Captain H. E. Palmer, Eleventh Kansas Cavalry, Acting Ass...

As the pandemic lockdown whiles on I have offered in dribs and drabs a few bits of functional knot-tying or rope/line-handling. These little mini-asides are meant to be eye-trivia for the bored or possible spurs to, “ Hell, I got time on my hands I’ll give this tip a go .” At the top end, there may even be, “ WTF! I really needed that tip when…oh, I’ll be ready next time.” Knot-tying, rope-handling, marlinspike seamanship, whatever you want to call the practice is, to my mind, more than just “That Old Man really likes tying knots.” [BTW-I do.] It serves a dual functional purpose to my mind. The First Purpose: The Convincing Argument Broad Based Survival & Functional Utility Able use of rope, cordage, lines, vines et cetera, next to the ability to build the variety of useful fires is THE most universal skill in many survival, extreme sport, outdoor domains. I capitalized the THE for factual emphasis, not mere preference. Where do we see the absolute...

[The following is extracted from our upcoming volume Move Like a Warrior: Recapturing Indigenous Movement .] Spend any time reading accounts of early contact between “civilized” folk and indigenous peoples, or those “civilized” ones who had “gone Injun’” such as early frontiersmen, scouts, the Coureur De Bois [“Runners of the Woods” or “woods runners”] of the North Woods and you find some commonalities. There is in many an admiration for the strength and grace of body and freedom of spirit. There are also more than a few disdainful accounts that still offer begrudging regard for “ stout and sturdy frames ” that “ can run like a deer ” or “ disappear into [the desert/mountain/forest] like the very wind itself.” Undoubtedly, much of these remarked upon characteristics were part and parcel of time, time spent in these very environments and gradually learning that to be a good hunter, one needed stealth and stamina to eat. One needed a general natural cultivated facile ...