The Guns Of Thanksgiving
BY Herschel Smith
2 years, 11 months ago
The subtle fact about Thanksgiving and the arms that were present is that there were lots of arms present. A staggering number of guns, to be exact. Captain John Smith of Jamestown, Va., wrote in 1609 that they had 24 cannons and 300 muskets, way more than the number of men currently on hand to use them. Firearms were perhaps the only commodity that the first colonists had in any abundance.
The types of guns they used to defend their small enclaves were mostly the same types of arms currently in use in Europe at the time. Matchlocks were the first common type of long arm developed in the 16th century. Generally a 10-bore smoothbore that fired a 12-bore round ball, matchlocks were fired by means of a slow match, a burning length of rope and hemp, impregnated with saltpeter to aid in its burning.
A pull of the trigger, or lever, brought the burning match into contact with the exposed powder in the frizzen pan at the breech of the gun, beginning the chain of events that eventually sent the round, lead ball flying down the barrel. A few matchlock actions have been excavated at Jamestown by archeologists, but far more snaphaunce actions have been found. This corresponds to the written inventories of Jamestown (as well as Plymouth beginning in 1620) that showed almost 1,000 snaphaunce muskets vs. only 47 matchlocks on hand.
Well, whatever else one wants to argue, you can’t legitimately argue that our forebearers weren’t well armed.
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