Battle

Yesterday, I posted some photos from a reenactment of the French and Indian War. That post mostly featured the British camp and what it looked like. I have some more pictures here from the actual battle they recreated.
The British side, obviously.  There was a pretty large group of them.  They mostly kept in lines that advanced forward, sometimes individually, sometimes not. More of the British side.  Some of the men were dressed in very fancy outfits, but others were dressed to represent the poorer classes who participated.  Here are some of the latter. You'll notice a woman standing in this picture.  She's what is called a Molly.  Women were often an important part of the battlefield.  They stood behind men and did things like give them water.  During the Revolutionary War, some of these Mollys would even fire cannons.A bunch on the British side firing their guns all at once.  Sometimes individual soldiers would shoot their rifles, other times they would fire as a unit.  If you look on the way left corner, you can see a Molly sitting in the grass. The British continued to advance on the French and Native Americans.  Here they are getting much closer to them. A close-up of one of the Mollys. A unit of Scottish soldiers firing all at once. A side view of the British soldiers. The French side of the battle.  They were defending this fort.  At the end of the battle, they retreated into the fort.
One of the things I wanted pictures of but couldn't get close enough to see was the Native Americans who sided with the French.  They would make all sorts of noise and then come out and shoot some of the British, and then retreat back into the trees, repeating this several times over.  
The battle was very impressive.  There were eight hundred reenactors there, so there was a lot of impressive coordination and organization that went on to pull this off. 

The British Camp

I went out to this historical reenactment at one of the local parks.  I've actually never been to one of these before, despite being a total history nerd.
So, I've posted some pictures here of the event this weekend.  These are from the British camp.  There were several camps: one for the British, another for the French, one for the Native Americans siding with the French, a marketplace, and a docking area.   


This first picture here is of a tepee.  One of the things I was looking out for here was the depiction of Native Americans.  They were a pivotal part of the French and Indian War, and I was wary of how they might be depicted.  The problem is I don't really know much about Native culture, so it's hard for me to judge how good or bad it was.  This seemed alright to me. 


This is a picture of the first people I talked to.  My friends and I weren't sure if we could take pictures or not, so I asked a "local."  Turns out that it's considered weird not to take pictures, and that you don't have to ask reenacters, because they expect it.  The young woman here was nice enough to explain to me that she was a loose woman, and that her clothes were very close to what people back then would have considered being naked.  As I talked to others, I could tell that people loved this and that they were passionate about history, but also interested in having fun.  Everyone was very friendly
A Native American.  I thought that the Native Americans all sided with the French, but when I looked it up, I discovered that the Iroquois and the Cherokee, among others, sided with the British, so this was completely appropriate.Another picture of the same Native American.A tea kettle sitting out on the lawn.  One of the things I noticed was that a lot of people had tea kettles out in front of their tentsA couple that we met.  This fine young gentleman was kind enough to show us his rifle and explain how it worked.  Basically, when you pulled the trigger, it used flint and steel to set off a small spark that sent the bullet flying.A close-up of his gun.  The dish soap and other things are out because he was using them to clean his gun when we came upon him.  If you look closely you can see that the woman has pink toenails.Like a lot of other people, this man also had his knife out.More of the man's cleaning kit.  The tin sitting on the top of the chest was filled with small white pieces of cloth that were used to load the bullets into the gun.More people, also cleaning out their guns.  This was just after a battle, so I suspect that's why everyone was cleaning right at this momentIt's easy to forget that these people were basically out camping for months and sometimes years at a time.  The whole British camp smelled like a camp site.  It make me hungry for s'mores.Another tent.Most of the tents were white, but this one was one of the few that wasn't.These were some of the nicest people we met.  They were sitting around telling jokes, and I joked back that I didn't know the Monty Python boys were at this war.
As always, there are some more photos over at my Flickr site, if you want to see more.