“They will not stand cutting like the Highlanders or other British troops.”
-James Smith
“We are warriors and I can eat fire!”
-Captain Jacobs, Delaware Chief, refusing to surrender when cornered in a burning cabin
The scene above was described by Peter and James Smith. Who provided the last words of the English-speaking chief a year after the infamous slaughter of Braddock’s command in the same vicinity of Western Pennsylvania.
From a 1787 Engraving of a Iroquois Warrior
He wears moccasins and snow shoes, buckskin pants painted green, a red and white braided belt, from which hangs a white red-tasseled square front cloth hanging to the top of the knee and a triangular cut back cloth hanging to mid-calf.
His torso is bare and muscular. Based on the length of his musket he is six feet tall and 190 pounds.
Belted for a left hand draw is a heavy two foot tomahawk.
In his left hand is a string of beaded shells.
In his right hand is a war club of Polynesian proportions, hilted like a cleaving sword, with a broad expanding cross section decorated with carvings that have served to lighten it like the fuller of a blade, and terminating in a knob the size of a fist. The club is of stained maple and lacquered to extreme hardness.
The warrior’s face is set in a scowling frown as he looks with narrow eyes over a prominent nose. Two rows of seven dots each mark his forehead, crowned by a quill- and feather-platted scalp indicating that he has slain eleven or more enemies.
A folded blanket is draped over his back, across which is the strap of his rifle and his powder and shot pouch. The exposed barrel of his prized rifle is capped with a bundle of scalps to protect the inside of the barrel from moisture and debris.
