January/February 2015, Muzzleloader magazine, pages 21-33

“From a bar of iron, and stock from the tree,” begins this epic story of rifles made for Tennessean William Wade Woodfork, Kentuckian William Whitley, Chief Piomongo of the Chicksaw, and Colonel Gasper Mansker, the first two the work of Gunsmith Jacob Young and the second pair crafted by Thomas Simpson. The article is illustrated with letters to and from the gunmakers, prices, signatures, period quotes, portraits, battle paintings and photos of surviving weapons.

The importance of the long rifle to the men of the frontier is examined, as is the geography and economics of the Cumberland Watershed. These men lived in an era where state boundaries were much less important than geographic regions. A letter and a statement from literate Chief Piomongo, who said, in August 8, 1792, “If I could see the day when whites and reds were all friends it would be like getting new eyesight,” points up nicely the fallacious hypocrisy of the modern Native American movement—spearheaded by mixed race activists of predominantly or significant Caucasian ancestry, to abolish such terms as refer to the red skin tone that real Native Americans who fought to keep their ancestral lands were proud of.

Numerous wilderness campaigns that long preceded the advent of Andrew Jackson, point to endemic warfare between white and red men before the birth of the former president and war fighter, whose image current half breed activists are trying to remove from the 20 dollar bill.

It is always enlightening to read a history piece with no political angle or modern references, built solely from period information, that exposes our current collective mind as the collage of shadowy falsehoods that it is.

For me the most interesting aspect of this is the record of the death of Whitely, who, according to eyewitnesses, killed an Indian just as the Indian killed him at the infamous Battle of the Thames, were the cowardly British abandoned their Indian allies to fight the Americans on their own. Simon Kenton—a friend to Tecumseh—identified the Shawnee leader as that man who killed Whitely and was slain by the gun crafted by Jacob Young.

Aside from historical and craft insights surrounding the frontier wars, Masterpiece Rifles of the Cumberland gives the reader numerous brief glimpses into the establishment and struggle of small communities that were essentially tiny nations, that have passed from history, and whose men and women we would be told by academics did not exist or were mere soldiers of globalist hegemony. Thanks to the real nonacademic historians that write for Muzzleloader we can gain some real insights into the lives of our forefathers.