In her 1988 article Rayna Green said that “one of the oldest and most pervasive forms of American cultural expression… is a ‘performance’ I call ‘playing Indian.’” The Indian, in this context, is an amalgamation of white stereotypes of Native people, and the performance of “playing Indian” is carried out by white bodies, using the Indian to explore their own identities, fears, and cultures.
As the American Revolution dawned, the Indian was everywhere. Hunting shirts, the makeshift uniform of the Continental Army, were at the center of a movement around “playing Indian.” By exploring the discourse around the hunting shirt, and the performance of “playing Indian” that accompanied it, we can better understand the role of the Indian, and backcountry culture, in forging an early American military identity during the early 1770s.
The fringed hunting shirt, often worn with leather leggings, was part of a long tradition of Native-British hybrid fashions in the American backcountry, the land beyond formal colonial town and city boundaries where Native and non-Native people worked and traded alongside each other. Native people and white traders often adopted elements of each other’s dress to signal their openness for trade. This was known as Indian dress, and its history in the Mohawk valley has been well-researched. The hunting shirt was the Virginian version, combining European construction and materials with the fringed decorations common in the dress of Eastern Woodland tribes in the early eighteenth century.
George Washington, a Virginian with significant backcountry experience, repeatedly advocated for Indian dress as a military uniform. In July 1758, he wrote, “I wou’d not only order my Men to adopt the Indian dress, but cause the Officers to wear it also, and be the first to set the example myself . . . leaving my regimentals at this place, and preceding as light as any Indian in the woods.” Alongside other frontiersmen, he advocated for hunting shirts as a uniform for the Virginia militia, which adopted them in March 1775. When he was put in command of the Continental Army in July 1775, Washington ordered that hunting shirts be given out as provisions.
Washington did not merely prescribe Indian dress as a uniform; he also adopted the images and performances that accompanied Native American military practices. He wrote that the hunting shirt was “a dress justly supposed to carry no small terror in the enemy.” During the French and Indian War, Washington openly criticized formal European battle techniques, urging his commanders to utilize the guerrilla tactics of the Shawnee, Abenaki, and Lenape. As the leader of the Continental Army, he was able to put his Indian fantasy into practice. In June 1777, Washington instructed Colonel Daniel Morgan to “dress a Company or two of true Woods Men in the right Indian Style and let them make the Attack accompanied with screaming and yelling as the Indians do.”