A New One on Me

Today, Susan and I attended an encampment/reenactment of the French and Indian War held about twenty miles from our house. I’d never even heard of reenactments of the French and Indian War previously, so this was a new one on me. We heard about it this morning on the TV news and decided to check it largely because we didn’t have anything planned for the day and it seemed like a good way to kill an hour or two.

Coincidentally, the event was held at a place called Infirmary Mound Park, named for the pre-historic Indian burial mound located on the property, so I guess it was an appropriate venue for the event. I’m sad to say it wasn’t much of a reenactment. There were nine French soldiers, two Indians, and five or six British soldiers. That doesn’t allow for much in the way of tactical accuracy, so instead, they fired a few volleys, the two Indians looked fierce (see the photo with this post), and the small crowd seemed to eat it up.

The encampment featured half a dozen or so tents for either side, and not much else, other than some women reenacting period dress and cooking and serving period food over campfires. There was one sutler, selling buck skinning supplies. There were probably forty or so spectators there, in part because they changed the time of the actual reenactment at the last minute due to predictions of bad weather (that never materialized).

The reenactors themselves varied in their authenticity. Most of the French soldiers wore glasses, and none of them were period appropriate. Here they are in 1750’s uniforms and modern spectacles. It made them look extremely farby. The two Indians cut pretty intimidating figures; one of them had even pierced the septum of his nose and had run a piece of metal through it. The British soldiers didn’t look too terribly bad, but there were also only six of them, too few to make a difference.

I think it might have been a very interesting event had there been sufficient manpower on both sides. It kind of whet my appetite to see another similar event, only with more men. I likewise think it would be interesting to see a Revolutionary War reenactment, which is something else I have never seen.