The Guerilla battle of Tribes

May 17, 1846: The battle of Aberdeen

This was during the era of British government in India. The first revolt to happen was that of Sepoy mutiny in 1857 which demanded for a good penal system to jail the renegades of British rule. Thus the Cellular jail was formed in Andaman Island. The British made the jail and started shipping prisoners here but that didn’t fare well with the locals of the area. The natives were not friendly farmers but ferocious tribes looking for revenge from the British ‘white devils’ that seized their lands. The British had also killed a handful of these tribesmen which increased their hatred for them.  Now they were looking to get back at the British with every bit of spite they had against the British. They planned for days for a perfect strike and devised ruthless guerilla attack on the British who weren’t akin of these kinds of warfare.

And when the time was right, at the stroke of dawn, the guerilla cadres of tribes, armed with poisoned spear, bows and arrows, attacked the British through the coastal ways of the Islands and shunned the British with their diabolical fighting style and Machiavellian strategy. The poor Brits didn’t know what hit them. Many casualties were dealt by the tribes who were advantageous against all odds. The British had the wonder of gunpowder to their favor but that didn’t make up for the knowledge of the terrains the tribes had. The major parts around the Islands were jungles which favored the tribes in hiding and prancing in action when the enemy expected the least. This also proved o b the reason the British retreated from the coastal vanguard into the heart of the city. The tribes sought this as a chance to scrape off the Red coats off their lands. They pursued the British from the coastal areas to the city of Aberdeen which was the heart of British Andaman. The tribes showed great coordination and covert ingenuity unlike any other, even the modern Special Forces. The British had to call men in the hundreds to stop a band of sixty or so tribesmen. They efficiently delivered long range fire through bows and arrows and by accurately throwing poisoned spears at the British.

At this point the British army was successful in installing a counter action brigade just behind the falling men who were being slaughtered by the tribes. Just as the tribes moved into the heart of Aberdeen, they were leveled almost instantaneously by an outnumbered army. They were surrounded from all sides of the city by firing squads armed with muskets and they open fired on these few valiant tribesmen. The greatest strategic mistake the tribesmen did was to move from a strategically advantageous position into an enemy vanguard without any prior maneuvering. Soon after, they managed to slaughter ever last one of the tribesmen and those that survived fled into the jungles.

This was the story of the battle of Aberdeen which happened on very day of 17^th of May. This was the one and only showdown between the British and the locals of Andaman.  The British never bothered to advance into tribal land and the tribes never walked out of their jungles in the fear of the British. They both lived in mutual fear of each other for a very long time.

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Commanche Warfare

Tactics

Comanche warriors would spend their lives on horseback; spurning to fight on foot; and adopting their tactics of warfare to fit. For the Comanche, warfare was a way of life. Old men were considered unnatural-a warrior who could no longer maintain his prowess in war was an object of scorn and his council received no respect, and even at night, around the camp fire, the telling of war-stories about particular raids would occupy the bulk of conversation.

The Comanche, however, were never cavalry in the European sense. They did not adopt mass tactics like the Persians, Mongols or Huns, nor did they use shock tactics like European Knights. Instead they created tactics that were very much appropriate to the wide open regions (eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado, southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of northwest Texas) to which they were native. The Comanche rode and fought very much as individuals and they never pressing a charge home-instead relying on horse archery to defeat the opposition. To the great surprise of many an opponent, Comanche tactics were often extremely well synchronised and orchestrated. So much so that even professional European soldiers had difficulty in understanding, or even describing, the Comanche’s approach to warfare.
Comanches would approach an enemy at a gallop, weaving, each warrior apparently taking no orders from the war chief. These magnificent horsemen never formed a solid line, instead they formed a swirling, breaking, dissolving and regrouping mass of separate riders, thundering across the prairie, making difficult moving targets,. The whooping riders charged, broke off before contact, dodging and weaving whilst at the same time circling the enemy, showering them with arrows from all directions. The Comanche also employed a trick of hanging over the far side of their steed by a strap or thong thus almost being protected from ball or arrow.

Against this even massed musketry was of limited usefulness in facing such an attack. Trained from youth to bring down a buffalo from 50 yards the skilful warriors could fire twenty shafts in the time that it took one trooper with a musket to fire a shot and seek cover to reload. Such deadly archery could bring consternation to their foe, inflicting considerable casualties, stampeding the enemy horses, and even occasionally managing to break-up European defensive formation.

In fact the Comanche warriors were not overly impressed by firearms (although they were certainly keen to obtain them as a trophy when they could). Firearms may have been superior in mountainous or wooded terrain but in the open plain the Indians suffered no real hardship through a lack of them. The bow and arrow, or war-lance was their weapon of choice in battle. Against a swirling mass of fast moving individuals firearms could often be less effective than the cloud of ceaseless arrows being shot back in return. Nor could the Comanche tactics be effectively countered by a cavalry charge. The warriors would just retire, peppering the troopers with arrows as they did so. The scruffy looking Amerindian horses proving to be incredibly quick and agile, leaving the heavier mounts of even Spanish Lancers dissipated and exhausted in the open prairie. Occasionally some Brave, keen to count coup, might charge forward to engage in hand to hand combat with axe or lance whilst his comrades kept up the ceaseless barrage of arrows but for the most part, breaking the enemy’s resistance with overwhelming archery was much the preferred method of combat.

Appearance

The Comanche were a copper toned people usually dressed in buckskins (which were usually stained in a colour for effect and ornamentation). They frequently wore a kind of moccasin which was quite different to the small shoe worn by the other plains Indians, but instead a kind of combined boot and legging that reached from foot to hip. They did not adopt the feathered headdress, as so commonly depicted in Hollywood movies, until the reservation period, but instead devised a rather grim war helmet made from a buffalo scalp, complete with great thrusting horns, which give the warrior a terrifying appearance that no enemy ever forgot.
The Comanche took great care in the dressing of their hair. Their long locks being greased with buffalo dung or bear fat, parted along the top of the head and braided on each side. These braids being frequently decorated with silver, coloured cloth, beads, glass and tin. A single yellow feather worn in the scalplock was also a Comanche fashion during 18th century.
Warriors, particularly in the more southern regions, would wear a simple breechclout (protecting the sacred medicine bag that hung between the loins). Other medicine symbols were frequently worn including twisted thongs and berry heads, amulet bags, eagle feathers dyed red and eagle bone war whistles. Comanche warpaint was black, the colour of death, and normally consisted of broad stripes daubed across the face and forehead. The warpaint pattern was frequently copied onto their pinto ponies in the same pattern.

"The Comanche is a fine looking Indian…The squaws are dressed in deer skins, and are good looking women… appearance of a Comanche fully equipped on horseback, with his lance and shield by his side, is beautifully classic” (T.B. Wheelock, 1st Lt. Dragoons, Fort Gibson, 1834)