[Jim Post]

[Sean Flynt]

I don't have my figures in front of me this morning, but I'd estimate from memory that there were swords enough for a little under half of the adult men. If that turns out to be the case, I'd say that would still qualify the weapons as "common". Of course, some heads of households reported none, while a few reported 20 or more (one man reported 40!), so the average is a bit misleading. I'm going to relate the final figure to the ratio of firearms to adult males to get some sense of the relative martial value of the weapons. It's possible, too, that the individual musters don't contain all the arms available to the colonists. The authorities might have added the muster weapons to whatever the company/crown supplied for the common defense. In other words, if you conducted a census of all weapons in private hands in a given modern US state, it would probably look woefully underdefended. BUT if you add in the police, National Gaurd, and assorted active-duty military bases the picture would change significantly.

Anyway, here are the Wild Guesses Du Jour to explain why every adult male didn't have two or three swords on hand. I hope to eliminate some of these as I get deeper into the material:

Complacency is one possibility. Prior to the massacre of 1622, it seems that in at least some parts of the colony, the colonists were not taking their defense seriously. If the colonists got complacent, their importation of arms might not have kept pace with the growth of the colony. They might not have replaced broken arms and/or they might have been content to have a common and thus unlisted supply of swords. One would expect this situation to have changed by the time of the 1624/25 muster, however.

The polar opposite scenario is that the Va. colonists were acutely aware of the danger they faced, and simply placed much greater value on firearms. In other words, rather than lagging behind, say, the newly arrived Pilgrims of the northern colonies, the Va. colonists might actually have been ahead of them in adopting and adapting new military technology and in setting aside outmoded weapons. I'll turn again to Thos. Flynt, who was a single man at the time of the muster, well supplied and living in an outlying area of the Elizabeth City Company. He reported no swords in his muster but he did report those eight firearms (wheellocks, apparently, as he reported no rolls of match). He was no naive new arrival. He was in the colony by 1618, witnessed the 1622 massacre, later served as a militia captain and representative in the House of Burgesses. So he must have had a knack for survival as well as the respect of his fellow colonists. If, as some suggest, he had crossed the Channel to fight on the Continent before coming to the New Word, he might have had a more practical view of warfare. Whatever the case, he obviously trusted his defense to powder and shot. Again, he might have kept a hand axe tucked in his belt everywhere he went, or may have known that in an emergency he and the other men in his community would run to a nearby arms cache and get kitted up with armor and swords for the fight.
NOTE: ElJay will recall Ivor Noël Hume's fascinating attempt to identify the weapon used by a native to kill a colonist in 1622. If I remember correctly, he decided it may have been a shovel! When you think about it, a good, sharp spade would make a formidable improvised weapon (in fact, the modern military entrenching tool is said to be very effective as a weapon). So, it's not too far-fetched to think that a colonist might look around his homestead and decide that he had secondary weapons aplenty.

Theft. We seem to have a better idea about what value the local NATIVES placed on swords! The weapons were an especially popular trade item in the first years of the colony--in retrospect probably not such a great idea on the part of the colonists. I just noticed a reference to a native raid on the colonies with the specific intent of seizing swords. In addition to bows, native weapons included wooden, sword-length, paddle-shaped clubs. They understood They understood the technological leap forward the English weapons represented, and they wanted them. It seems likely that they would have seized many swords and other weapons and tools in 1622, so the sword/adult male ratio of 1624/25 might not be that much different from the pre-1622 ratio when you factor in the depopulation of intervening period.

Illicit trade. I don't recall when the trade of arms to the natives was banned, but it's certainly possible that before 1622 a hard-up colonist would trade a unused and rusting 5s sword for sacks of corn, etc. I mean, if Russian soldiers will trade weapons to Chechen rebels in exchange for booze....

There may be some strategic sense in the distribution of arms, as well. It would make no sense to equip every man with a pike, but mixing pike and firearms worked pretty well back in the Old World. We know the colonists designated some men as targeteers (armed with sword and target). Perhaps they wanted a good mix of powerful but slow-loading firearms and light, fast troops who could defend the shotte at close-quarters. So, what makes little sense when viewed at the level of individual muster might more properly be viewed in the aggregate, the way the colonists' arms would actually be deployed in an emergency. Hmm....

[Scott Bubar]

[Tom M. McIntire]

May I suggest that any interested in US swords use as the ultimate resource :

1. American Swords and Sword Makers - Richard H. Bezdek

2. American Swords from the Philip Medicus Collection - Norm Flayderman


Tom