John Curry
Holy Cow! Where have all the years gone!?! Seems like only yesterday I was a young buck, just beginning to learn about the N.M.L.R.A. and quickly joining up. Happily romping around at the Friendship Nationals ‘til eleven or twelve midnight. Learning with amazement of the many local people from my own hometown and everywhere around our great country who were into muzzle loading themselves! Joining and helping to organize several muzzleloading clubs… Reading every information… What exciting times!
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined this alluring, black powder fascination I was just beginning to encounter, could rise to the eminent place in my life it currently occupies and has dominated for over five long decades now. So many wonderful, irreplaceable, wilderness experiences, muzzle loading type events, historic ventures, amazing occurrences;
the whole stacked up, one on top of another like a glittering pirate’s treasure chest full of gold and silver. For a lad of unexceptional means with doubtless, an unexceptional intelligence quotient I have (from my point of view at any rate), led a relatively exceptional life.
How well I recall my first trips to Friendship and the paltry few other black powder and living history goings-on in those days, wherein literally everything I saw absolutely thrilled me to the core! Not necessarily because I wanted to become involved with whatever in the world they were doing but because I was totally ignorant of it and wanted so badly to understand. I remember I once saw two fellows at Friendship on Commercial Row, shoving huge bullets through a barrel to size them… Now I have never had much of an interest in slug guns, but at that point… Eighteen years old
and clueless – I stood there mesmerized and bewitched nevertheless, watching their every move for the longest time.
Late one afternoon at the Spring Nationals – long ago… I found a humble, rough-cast, visibly warped, little, soft-brass tomahawk head at Jesse Booher’s rather popular booth with a price tag of a whopping $3.00 but didn’t have enough money left to make the purchase. From that point until I was able to come back in August, I fantasized about that goofy little hawk; thinking to myself how fine it was and (after I could clean it up, straighten it out and put a handle on it) what an excellent addition it would make to my personal trail gear. Ultimately attached to a rough, green, “somewhat straight” tree limb with the bark still left on, it became one of my most prized possessions… When at school and supposed to be paying attention, I would instead, meditate about a tiny , paperback, George Shumway book entitled “Longrifles of Note” I’d discov-ered, drooled over and planned to save up for and buy.
(My poor teachers really appreciated that.) Shoot, back then I could have given you exact page numbers of where everything was located in either of my good ol’, beat-up, food stained/ Magic Maple stained, Dixie Gun Works or Log Cabin catalogs!
Now, with regard to historic reenacting; I would from time to time, read articles in Muzzle Blasts of various, hardy, modern-day souls (i.e. Ralph Marcum, John Baird, Max Vickery) employing primitive weapons, tactics, clothing and equipment… Hunting, traveling and existing in a great many of America’s magnificent 18th and early 19th century wilderness areas, thinking to myself; “Oh, if only I could” Straightway, I avidly considered the whole concept so enticingly remarkable and so very worthwhile. This combined with all the amazing, early frontier history I was beginning to learn about; having taken place more or less in my own back yard - I simply had to become in-volved. It was at this juncture my slant on frontier history began to ever so subtly change. I was always of the opin-ion that shooting and hunting with muzzle loading rifles, accompanied by an earnest, meaningful study pertaining to your sort of interest was a good idea. Monthly shoots were good. Living history events were good. Rendezvous were good… Ferreting out those wild and unspoiled natural areas to inhabit and better understand the actual primitive lifestyle however - that was now quickly begin-ning to catch my attention.
Being your typical, young, redneck, outdoor/adventure type, I had been tolerably aware of eastern Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest and its magnificent, nearly 300 mile long, Sheltowee Trace for some time. Having more large forests within a 45 minute drive than I could ever hope to use, I guess I’d just never really felt a need to go there. Magical places like The Hoosier National Forest, Morgan-Monroe State Forest, Yellowwood, Harrison State Forest, etc. were all basically right at my doorstep; provid-ing me with hundreds of thousands of rugged, untamed acres. All the same; constantly acquiring additional, compelling information about those areas below the Ohio where these fascinating, pre-rev war longhunters indeed plied their trade… this my friends, was a self-imposed restriction that would soon be changed... Eventually progressing from my nearby, in-state scouts and hunts, to include a few more long-range, lengthy endeavors into his-toric regions I’d either read about or heard tell of; I began to kind of “stretch my legs” so to speak.
By the latter part of the 1980’s I had done my homework and located on a worn-out, dog-eared topo-map I’d managed to borrow from my buddy Bill Proctor (no google back then), what appeared to be a sparsely used, lonely section of the Sheltowee Trace... Extending southward from Kentucky’s beautiful Cave Run Lake district almost twenty miles toward the wee little town of Frenchburg, and a
bit further on. This part of the trace gently meandered well-nigh the lake, past the Pioneer Weapons area, the old, iron furnace and the Zilpo Range on its way to Middle Tennessee. Slipping off to the west of Licking River with only one narrow, beat up, rarely used, little dirt/gravel road to cross; my decidedly inexperienced and uneducated guess was this should be a grand introduction to the entire territory. Quite luckily for me, I was not wrong. My expectations were rewarded far beyond my wildest dreams…
Ranging through eastern Kentucky’s charmingly distinctive, “knob country”; a continual blanket of uninterrupted, mature forest literally swallowed up the earth. True enough, we had our share of ancient forests amid their share of rugged hills and hollars back in southern Indiana - but nothing, nothing like this! Coming from a part of the state where our tallest hills and ridges reached to a height of around 900/1000 feet - I was astounded! With the Sheltowee Trace itself running at an elevation of some-where around 1000 feet, if you happened to spy a handsome, gently sided peak or towering bluff that caught your fancy, you had only another 1000/1200 feet to go and you could be standing atop its rocky, boulder-strewn summit; looking down on a mind-boggling panorama of God’s grandest creations.
Falling in love with this area and doing my best to gain a perceptive awareness of its colorful, eighteenth-century history, it wasn’t too terribly long before I had rather thoroughly scouted that 16/17 mile stretch of the much-celebrated trace along with its numerous spur-trails, special places and hidey holes. The region’s natural arches, rock houses, creeks, springs, amazing vistas and unbroken forests became as familiar to me as the back of my hand. On occasion; sometimes leading a huge party of 25/30 men. Just as often, traveling through the wilderness entirely on my own hook… No denying, I’ve always loved the camaraderie of trail pardners. Yet nothing cuts straight to the center of my heart nearly so much as being out in the middle of nowhere; miles and miles away from any semblance of humanity – alone. Just me, my rifle and God. Regardless of the situation, these historically valid, far-western, colonial period endeavors I’d become so fond of were beginning to multiply exponentially.
Shortly thereafter; with my curiosity and wanderlust ever growing, the picturesque Barren River of James Knox, Henry Skaggs and Bledsoe brothers renown plus a host of many other legitimate, pre-revolutionary war era Longhunters became one of the first “Kentucky scouts” I would make outside the boundaries of my precious DBNF. Fortunately enough for me, I was accompanied on this particular venture by two of the finest colonial frontier types I know – my dear, longtime friends, Ernie Boyd and Kevin Hendircks. I can still recall that raw, sheer excitement coursing through our veins: We were on the dagone Barren! The same river many of Lyman C. Draper’s, late18th/early 19th century con-tributors had made mention of. We were on the same river Janice Holt Giles had so boldly written about. We were on the same river several of Judge John Haywood’s earliest, pioneer era correspondents often referred to … We weren’t just reading about it in some musty old, yellow paged, library book, we were there. WE WERE THERE! Well… as you might imagine; this had a very profound effect on me.
The three of us slipping maybe a mile or more upstream from the old river’s confluence with the Green; we estab-lished our little camp 100/150 yards to the west; high up on the brow of a ridge. From this vantage point, we had a wonderful, panoramic view of the scenic Barren and
its surrounding forests and meadows. I recollect setting cross-legged around our sputtering, little cook fire; casually talking with Kevin and Ernie – thinking to myself: “We can’t actually be here… This is like some long-dead, colo-nial era hunter giving the Rev. John D. Shane an extremely graphic account of something he’d done way back in 1769 or 1771... You only read about this place in old books. Hah! We could never be here.” Nonetheless, the amazing thing (for the three of us at any rate) was YES! We in fact, really and truly were there! This was not some lukewarm, artificially constructed, museum mock-up. This was the real deal. Welcome to Isaac Lindsay and Kaspar Mansker’s, Barren River! Looking down upon an endless, level floored, river bottom stretching out below us we could visualize the great, wide, serpentine buffalo roads which followed that ancient waterway - packed up with bison, on the move and berm to berm… Relentlessly shuffling as far as the eye could see with unbelievable numbers of those enor-mous, shaggy, 2,000 pound beasts. Gazing up and down the Barren, our minds could easily picture its massive deer population as well, and the few brave companies of real-for-real, legitimate longhunters who came out to this unexplored portion of our fledgling country to hunt them and make their fortunes. Wow!
Years passed on by – swiftly, unnoticeably, and my in-satiable hunger for the far-western, pre-Revolutionary backwoods in addition to everything related to it only grew and intensified. Places most folks only read about in old history books: Wallens Ridge, Kimberling Creek, Dick’s River, Pine Mountain, Sycamore Shoals, Red River Gorge, the Rockcastle, the Cumberland, Raccoon Spring, the Big South Fork - all these and many more, I came to know intimately. As I found them and the reality of their existence all so incredibly amazing, I have tried in my ama-teurish, stumble-footed way, to more or less take you along with me. Up into the headwaters of the Green, way down on the lower Wabash, Daniel Boone’s legendary, Station Camp Creek. Traveling western Pennsylvania’s almost mystical, Allegheny Trail, Iron Mountain, Kentucky’s awesome Laurel River... The equipment they used, the weapons they employed, the clothing they wore, the habits and tactics they practiced… I guess because I thought of it as quite extraordinary and being of great consequence to our muzzle loading heritage, I assumed you might too.
And so it was – several decades ago; the powers that be at Muzzle Blasts Maga-zine concluded my peculiar, backwoods shenanigans demanded some sort of semi-rational explanation. Thus, their exceedingly flattering request for my various and sundry examples toward this largely overlooked facet of our much beloved, muzzle loading sport which might possibly be of interest to the general N.M.L.R.A. readership. Now at that time, our association was quickly becoming the absolute paramount of knowledge with regard to any sort of muzzle loading firearm, new or old – period! We were the heavy-weight, “go-to guys” and remain so still to this day. Be that as it may, our practical ap-plication of these weapons in an extend-ed, historically factual, deep wilderness situation was for the most part, painfully naïve and as a rule, purely theoretical… Not only here at Friendship but the world over! Everyone back then seemed to be stuck in a Hollywood-driven, “Cowboys and Indians” mode; equating Tonto, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, Davy Crockett, Sitting Bull and Pontiac as mutual contemporaries. (Oh boy.)
Thank goodness, the writing part has for me, always been relatively easy. From the outset, I never really knew what topic I was going to come up with or even write about un-til I’d pretty much already written it. People have always very kindly interpreted this as some sort of an amazing ability to compose like I was simply talking to you…
“Wow, what a talented writer that John is. He can write just like he talks!” But - truth be told, no. I’m nowhere near so ingeniously gifted. That’s always just been me, thrashing around; trying in my woefully unprofessional way to say something. Fortunately, I never had to try all that hard to acquire more and more 18th century frontier information. By this time I had become a confirmed, out-of-control, backwoods history junkie. Massive doses gleaned from rare books, original manuscripts and hard to acquire, first-hand accounts – in quantities which would kill a bull rhinoceros were never enough for me. This amusing, very personal quest continues yet today.
Drawing ever nearer into contact with scores of original, far-western bordermen from this time period (both in the literary sense and via my scouts and hunts deep within their actual, middle 18th century stomping grounds), it has been my desire to more or less acquaint y’all with them to boot! Kind of introduce you to them. Let you see the different aspects of living that were commonly employed along the ragged fringes of the colonial far-west. Traits appearing to be important to them; elemental to their lifestyle. Where they went, what they did, and how they did it. The better I came to know these intrepid lads; the more thoroughly I studied them - the more comfortable I became with physically recreating that lifestyle and as a result, the more I felt at liberty to speak about them. This in turn has allowed me to help others who have over the years, wished to do the same... The lion’s share of what I have given you has with the passage of time, been proven via other, knowledgeable, living history scholars to be accurate, excepting for a few, minor subtleties - not so much. In my errors, I would ask your forgiveness. I am after all, only human and have never been known as an academic or intellectual.
In addition, I understand there will be a great many who couldn’t care less about this bygone world I myself find so hopelessly intriguing. (Imagine that!?!) As a perfect example, my two brothers absolutely adore the game of golf. Eat, sleep and breathe it! I, on the other hand, have never played and couldn’t care less… Different strokes (pun intended) for different folks, huh? Lesson learned: every-one you come into contact with is not necessarily going to like what you like or enjoy the same things you enjoy. (I get it.) Consequently, for my occasional displays of shall, we say “over-exuberance”, I fear I must apologize as well. Personal enthusiasm notwithstanding, my own hopeful, little wish is - after all these years, I may have touched on a nerve within those kindred souls who indeed, find this brand of hands-on, backwoods living history so irresistible as I do. Perhaps inspire them to maybe even give it a whirl. Look it over, taste it, feel it, try it on for size… To this end, if I have assisted one single person in discovering the thrill of seriously reliving the everyday existence of our courageous, uniquely skilled, early American frontiersmen, then I feel all my clumsy, ungainly efforts have been repaid in full.
John Curry