III. PHYSICAL SETTING

C. Human Figures

3. Colbert’s Partisans

c) Garb Worn by the Whites and Blacks

These people would have been attired in various frontier dress. Some would be wearing the familiar buckskins, moccasins, and coonskin caps; others would be clad in linsey-woolsey jeans and coats, embroidered, or plaid shirts, shoes, stockings and hats; a few would be dressed like the Chickasaws, except they would be wearing trousers instead of breechclouts and leggings; Captain Colbert would be dressed as a gentleman.[80]

d) Arms and Accoutrements Carried by the Whites and Blacks

Colbert’s men were armed with rifled-muskets and carbines, while their side arms were tomahawks, knives and daggers. They would have worn powder horns and bullet pouches.[81]

e) Physical Description of Captain Colbert

Silbestre Labadie recalled that Captain Colbert was about 60 years old, possessed of good health and a strong constitution. An active man despite his years, Colbert had a “violent temper,” and was capable of “enduring the greatest hardships.” He had lived among the Chickasaws for 40 years, and boasted that he was owner of a “fine house” and “some hundred and fifty” blacks.[82]

f) Illustrations

Two illustrations found in The American Heritage Book of the Revolution provide good examples of promiscuous garb similar to that worn by most of Colbert’s partisans. These illustrations appear on pages 339 and 340 of the subject publication. The first, the original found in the Tennessee State Archives, is titled “Gathering of the Mountain Men,” and the second, from the Preston Davis collection, is titled “Crossing the Pee Dee.”

Captain Colbert’s attire would have been similar to, but not as ostentatious as, that worn by Col. Guy Johnson in the Benjamin West painting found on page 317 of The American Heritage Book of the Revolution.

The Book of The Continental Soldier by Harold L. Peterson, published by the Stackpole Company, has drawings of representative arms and accoutrements carried and won by Colbert’s partisans.