Keep Your Powder Dry

Captain Merriweather Lewis had a problem:  President Jefferson had tasked him with exploring the new lands to the west of the new nation, so Lewis was to lead a party of 38 men across the continent to the Pacific Ocean and return.  Along the way, they were expected to map routes, explore the countryside, live off the land, and secure safe passage through dozens of Indian tribes' territories.

Naturally, this was to be a heavily-armed party: while they certainly did not want to fight hostile Native Americans, they had to be prepared to do so in an emergency, and they would need to kill wild game for food (and protection).  Unfortunately, sufficient amounts of gun powder and lead shot were extra weight that would have to be carried across the continent, and over rivers, mountains and prairies that lacked a single road-- twice.  All in all, this was a logistical nightmare.

Author's Note.  The party was made up of 38 men and one woman: Sacajawea.  Sacajawea was married to the one of the men on the expedition and was, at least for a while, an interpreter and possibly a guide.  Today, she is the only member of the expedition who has been honored by having her likeness on a one dollar coin.  Unfortunately, the coin proved to be unpopular and was soon discontinued.  It is a shame that the US Treasury didn't ask a historian to explain more about the role of Sacajawea on that expedition.  The Native American woman proved to be an excellent companion, in part because she was nursing an infant.  Suspicious Native American tribes were somewhat reassured by the peaceful intentions of a party accompanied by a breast-feeding woman.  If the treasury had put that image on the coin, it would have been much more popular--every teenage boy could be counted on to have at least one in his pocket.

Lewis, and his partner Clarke, came up with several clever ideas.  One was to carry the gunpowder in lead foil casks.  As the gunpowder was used, the foil casks could be melted down and cast into bullets.  The journals of the expedition do not give much of a description of this, but the expense records still exist, and show that Lewis bought 420 pounds of sheet lead and paid a plumber to fashion 52 canisters, each weighing 8 pounds and holding 4 pounds of gunpowder.  After a lot of trial and error, historians have estimated that each was about 4 inches wide and 10 inches tall.

It would seem that about half the gunpowder was carried this way, with the rest being carried in the usual heavily tarred 24 pound barrels.  Still, the expedition found another way to conserve its precious gunpowder: they took along--and frequently used--an air-powered rifle.

 

The gun they took along was a far cry from a traditional BB-Gun.  This was a real weapon.   It was accurate, powerful, much quieter than a normal rifle, had very little recoil, and could fire about a dozen times a minute.  Where did this wonder weapon come from?

Toward the end of the 18th century, a Tyrolian master gunsmith, Bartolomeo Girandoni, had created a weapon that was an engineering marvel: The Girandoni air rifle.  Using a hand pump, the shooter could pressurize a tank in the butt of the rifle sufficiently for the firearm to fire a .46 caliber ball up to 80 times before the air tank had to be recharged.  Accurate out to about 150 feet, at fifty feet it was accurate enough to put ten rounds in a group about the size of a quarter.  The Austrian Army actually used the weapon in combat against the Turks.  How such a weapon made its way across the ocean to America is still a mystery.

The weapon could be fired rapidly since the rifle held 22 balls in a tubular magazine.  In all, the rifle was a marvel--the only drawback was that the rifle was a little fragile and recharging the air tank required that a hand pump had to be stroked 1500 times!  And for normal military use, the weapon had a significant disadvantage:  it was far too delicate to mount a bayonet.  Until the middle of the 19th century, traditional military doctrine held that the firearm was used to develop a hole in the line that was exploited by the bayonet.  In almost all such engagements, far more casualties were cut or stabbed than shot.

While there is no record of the expedition's actually hunting with the rifle, it did prove extremely useful.  When the expedition encountered a new band of Native Americans, the group staged a demonstration of the air rifle.   In particular, they demonstrated how rapidly the gun could be fired.  This subtly gave the natives at least the suggestion that all the men on the expedition might be similarly armed.  If 38 men could each fire 22 times...  Well, it was certainly a powerful hint that it might be best to leave the expedition alone!  (They presumably never demonstrated how long it took to recharge that air tank!)

Lewis recorded in his journal that the rifle was demonstrated every time a new tribe was encountered.  Only after that were the various gifts and trade goods distributed among the natives.  

“My Air-gun…astonishes them very much, they cannot comprehend it’s shooting so often and without powder…”  -Meriwether Lewis, Jan. 24, 1806

Every history book tells us that the expedition was successful and remarkably peaceful.  How much of this was due to the demonstration of the charms of Sacajawea and how much was due to the impression made by the weapons of the party, I leave to you.