To George Washington from the Pennsylvania Council of Safety, 10 February 1777
From the Pennsylvania Council of Safety
In Council of Safety,
[Philadelphia, 10 February 1777]
Sir,
Application has been made to us by James Smith Esqr. of Westmoreland, a Gentleman well acquainted with the Indian Customs, and their manners of carrying on war, for leave to raise a Battalion of marksmen expert in the use of Rifles, acquainted with the Indian method of fighting, to be dressed intirely in their fashion, for the purpose of annoying and harrassing the Enemy in their marches and encampments. We think 2 or 300 Men in that way might be verry useful. Should your Excellency be of the same Opinion and direct such a Corps to be formed, we will take proper measures for raising the men on the frontiers of this State, and follow such other directions as your Excellency shall give in this Matter.1
Df, PHarH: Records of Pennsylvania’s Revolutionary Governments, 1775–90. The back of this document contains an earlier draft of this letter and a docket that reads “To General Washington with Proposals for raising a Regt of Wood rangers.”
1. Smith’s undated memorial to the Pennsylvania council of safety is in PHarH: Records of Pennsylvania’s Revolutionary Governments, 1775–1790. James Smith (1737–1812), who was born in the Conococheague settlement in what is now Franklin County, Pa., was a celebrated Indian captive who at this time was living as a farmer on Jacob’s Creek in Westmoreland County. Taken by the Caughnawaga Indians during a raid in 1755 and ceremonially adopted into the tribe during his captivity, Smith escaped near Montreal in 1759 and made his way back to the Conococheague region. In the 1760s he commanded the “Black Boys,” a company of rangers that dressed in Indian clothing and painted their faces black and red when periodically defending the frontier settlements against Indian attacks. Smith later published two accounts of his life with the Indians, , and A Treatise on the Mode and Manner of Indian War, Their Tactics, Discipline, and Encampments, etc. (Paris, Ky., 1812). Smith served in the Westmoreland convention of 1776 and the Pennsylvania general assembly in 1776 and 1777. Later this year he commanded a scouting party in the Jerseys, and in 1778 he commanded a large party of riflemen on the Pennsylvania frontier. In the late 1780s Smith settled in Kentucky, and in the last decade of his life he served as a Presbyterian missionary to the Indians on the frontier. Smith later wrote that GW “did not fall in with the scheme of white-men turning Indians, yet he proposed giving me a major’s place in a battallion of rifle men already raised. I thanked the general for his proposal; but as I entertained no high opinion of the colonel that I was to serve under, and with him I had no prospect of getting my old boys again, I thought I would be of more use in the cause we were then struggling to support, to remain with them as a militia officer, therefore I did not accept this offer” (, 75).