HALF HORSE, HALF GATOR AND ALL HOGWASH
In the wake of the 1832 Black Hawk War U.S. Army Lieutenant Philip St. George Cooke singled out a unit of mounted rangers composed of frontiersmen for its poor performance. The citizen-soldier had fallen in his estimation. “There was a time when our frontiersmen were the most formidable light troops…the sun ever shone upon. But what made them such?” Cooke pointed to earlier generations’ necessary and continual use of arms, vigilance and endurance, back when the times were filled with real danger. As archetype frontiersmen, he cited Daniel Boone and ilk, those tamers of the Woodland Indians, the latter of whom, Cooke asserted, were far more formidable than any Plains tribes. But such hardy souls as Boone were gone. The skilled border men had become squirrel hunters and “the foes of timid deer.” Cooke believed that “once well-founded notions concerning this class, which naturally linger in the minds of a succeeding generation,” were to blame for Congress’ continued preference for irregulars, when professionals were needed.
There is a glitch in Cooke’s assessment: Certain ranger companies and standout frontiersmen of the 18th century may have raised concern among the warrior tribes, but they were few and far between. Daniel Boone (1734–1820) was not among them. In fact, he was a man contemporary correspondents more often described in pejorative terms. Cooke was imagining a rosy past when frontiersmen were America’s true heroes. Regrettably—or perhaps thankfully—that mythical frontier of straight-arrow, sharpshooting riflemen never existed. It was clearly not in evidence to Cooke in 1832, but neither was it present in Colonel Jeffrey Amherst’s world in 1759, the year that British commander in-chief in North America complained about provincial troops, “If left to themselves, [they] would eat fried pork and lay in their tents all day long.”
Americans, however, were already building the myth. In 1813 Major Benjamin Forsyth of the U.S. Regiment of Riflemen had captured a number of
