The Way to the West, and the Lives of Three Early Americans: Boone—Crockett—Carson

by Emerson Hough

Moreover, it was only with great difficulty that the frontiersman transported any weighty articles on his Western pilgrimage. Lead was heavy, powder was precious, the paths back to the land of such commodities long and arduous. A marvel of adaptation, the American rifle swiftly grew to a practical perfection. Never in the history of the arms of nations has there been produced a weapon whose results have been more tremendous in comparison to the visible expenditure of energy; never has there been a more economical engine, or an environment where economy was more imperative.

The ball of the American rifle was small, forty, sixty or perhaps one hundred of them weighing scarcely more than a pound. The little, curving horn, filled with the precious powder grains, carried enough to furnish many shots. The stock of the rifle itself gave housing to the little squares of linen or fine leather with which the bullet was patched in loading. With this tiny store of powder and lead, easily portable food for this providentially contrived weapon, the American frontiersman passed on silently through the forest, a master, an arbiter, ruler of savage beast or savage foeman, and in time master of the civilized antagonist that said him nay.

We shall observe that the state of Pennsylvania was the starting point of the westward movement of our frontiersmen. We shall find also that the first American small-bore, muzzle-loading rifles were made in Pennsylvania. The principle of the rifle, the twist in the bore, is thought to have originated in the German states of the Palatinate, but it was left for America to improve it and to perfect its use.

At Lancaster, Pennsylvania, there was a riflemaker, probably a German by birth, by name Decherd or Dechert, who began to outline the type of the American squirrel-rifle or hunting-arm. This man had an apprentice, one Mills, with ideas of his own. We see this apprentice and his improved rifle presently in North Carolina; and soon thereafter riflemakers spring up all over the east slope of the Alleghanies, so that as though by magic all our hunters and frontiersmen are equipped with this long rifle, shooting the tiny ball, and shooting it with an accuracy hitherto deemed impossible in the achievements of firearms.

Withal we may call this a Southern arm, since New England was later in taking up its use, clinging to the Queen Anne musket when the men of North Carolina and Virginia scorned to shoot a squirrel anywhere except in the head. The first riflemen of the Revolutionary War were Pennsylvanians, Virginians and Marylanders, all Southerners; and deadly enough was their skill with what the English officers called their “cursed widow and orphan makers.”

The barrel of the typical rifle of those days was about four feet in length, the stock slender, short and strongly curved, so that the sights came easily and directly up to the level of the eye in aiming. The sights were low and close to the barrel, some pieces being provided with two hind sights, a foot or so apart, so that the marksman might not draw either too fine or too coarse a bead with the low silver or bone crescent of the fore sight. Usually the rear sight was a simple, flat bar, finely notched, and placed a foot or fifteen inches in front of the breech of the barrel, so that the eye should focus easily and sharply at the notch of the rear sight. Such was the care with which the sights were adjusted that the rifleman sometimes put the finishing touches on the notch with so soft a cutting tool as a common pin, working away patiently, a little at a time, lest he should by too great haste go too deep into the rear sight, and so cause the piece to shoot otherwise than “true.”

The delicately arranged set-triggers made possible an instantaneous discharge without any appreciable disturbance of the aim when once obtained; and the long distance between the hind sight and fore sight, the steadiness of the piece, owing to its length and weight, the closeness of the line of sight to the line of the trajectory of a ball driven with a relatively heavy powder charge, all conspired to render extreme accuracy possible with this arm, and this accuracy became so general throughout the American frontier that to be a poor rifle shot was to be an object of contempt.

Each rifle was provided with its own bullet mold, which cast a round ball of such size that when properly “patched” it fitted the bore of the piece tightly, so tightly that in some cases a “starter” or section of false barrel was used, into which the ball was forced, sometimes being swaged in with a mallet and a short starting rod. The ramrod proper was carried in pipes attached to the long wooden stock, which extended to the muzzle of the barrel underneath the piece. One end of this rod was protected with a brass ferrule, and the other was provided with a screw, into which was twisted the “worm” used in cleaning the arm.

The pouch of the hunter always carried some flax or tow for use in cleaning the piece. The rifleman would wind a wisp of this tow about the end of the “worm,” moisten it by passing it between his lips, and then pass the tightly fitting wad of tow up and down the barrel until the latter was perfectly free from powder residue. Then the little ball, nicely patched, was forced down on the powder charge by the slender ramrod, made with great care from the toughest straight-grained hickory wood.

Powder and ball were precious in those early days, and though strong men ever love the sports of weapons, waste could not be tolerated even in sport. Sometimes at night the frontiersmen would gather for the pastime of “snuffing the candle,” and he was considered a clumsy rifleman who but fanned the flame with his bullet, or cut too deeply into the base of the candle-wick, and so extinguished the light. Again the riflemen would engage in “driving the nail” with the rifle ball, or would shoot at a tiny spot of black on a board or a blazed tree-trunk, firing a number of balls into the same mark. In nearly all such cases the balls were dug out of the tree or plank into which they had been fired, and were run over again into fresh bullets for use at another time. Thus grew the skill of the American rifleman, with whose weapon most of the feats of latter day short-range marksmanship could be duplicated.[^[1]]