Reading the gun literature of the 18th century, I’m frequently struck by how many of the topics discussed on TMF and similar groups are essentially the same ones being discussed back then. A lot of what they talked about is surprisingly modern in its conclusions, they had a lot of stuff figured out correctly. Not so with some of it, though, and it’s rather amazing how many of those same topics are still being discussed, today, and how many of their errors have come down to us intact after 200-300 years and are still being hotly debated. There is a large body of “knowledge” about how our guns work which is just plain wrong, but it persists beyond all reason. Considering how much has been learned since those days, how far the science of ballistics has advanced and how much evidence contrary to those old beliefs has accumulated, that’s hard to understand.
How is it that we can maintain a mistaken belief in the face of later, better evidence? Why is it so difficult for us to fold the correct information into our belief system? People who study these things say it’s because that’s the way our brains work, and that it happens to all of us to a greater or lesser degree. It’s an old question, and many people have tried to answer it. Tolstoy said, "I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."
This persistence of wrong information over long periods of time fascinates me, and it was recently brought to mind by an amazing example I ran across. This isn’t directly related to our guns, but illustrates how efficiently errors can be passed along over long intervals of time.
In his 1709 book, _A New Voyage to Carolina; Containing the Exact Description and Natural History of That Country: Together with the Present State Thereof. And A Journal of a Thousand Miles, Travel'd Thro' Several Nations of Indians. Giving a Particular Account of Their Customs, Manners, &c._, by John Lawson, Gent. Surveyor-General of North Carolina, Lawson said:
“Of the Horn-Snakes I never saw but two, that I remember. They are like the Rattle-Snake in Colour, but rather lighter. They hiss exactly like a Goose, when any thing approaches them. They strike at their Enemy with their Tail, and kill whatsoever they wound with it, which is arm'd at the End with a horny Substance, like a Cock's Spur. This is their Weapon. I have heard it credibly reported, by those who said they were Eye-Witnesses, that a small Locust-Tree, about the Thickness of a Man's Arm, being struck by one of these Snakes, at Ten a Clock in the Morning, then verdant and flourishing, at four in the Afternoon was dead, and the Leaves red and wither'd. Doubtless, be it how it will, they are very venomous. I think, the Indians do not pretend to cure their Wound.
Almost 70 years later, Nicholas Cresswell, an educated young Englishman, wrote in his journal in Leesburg, Virginia:
“Tuesday, June 4th, 1776. Dined at Mr. Mason's, where I saw the part of a Horned Snakeskin about 5 foot long. This is the most venomous Snake that is known. It is covered with scales like a fish, Black and white on the back, the belly white with a small hair in its tail like a cockspur from whence it takes its name. It does not crawl on its belly like other snakes, but tumbles tail over head and by that means strikes its Horn into its enemy, which is of such a poisonous nature it is instant death. I have been informed by several credible persons, some of them offers to swear, that if it strikes its horn into a tree in full leaf it withers and dies in twenty-four hours. I never saw this, but have not the least reason to doubt the truth of it. They had cut the head off this snake. They tell me it had small horns and was about 9 foot long. When they had disabled it, it roared like a Calf.”
The German physician Johann David Schoepf, chief surgeon of the Ansbach troops fighting for Britain, said in his book, _Travels in the Confederation (1783-1784)_ :
“In the mountains one hears much now and again of a Horn or Thorntail-snake which has at the end of its tail a horny sting with which it can not only give a man and beasts fatally poisonous wounds, but can kill trees struck by its sting. But in regard to this I have no reliable evidence.”
Nearly 200 years after that, in the Foxfire Book, southern Appalachian mountains of Georgia, about 1970, Lon Reid discussed hoop snakes:
“They’s just like hoop on a barrel just twisted over and rolled at’y’. Some folks calls ”˜em a horn snake. They cling by the’ end of their tail just as hard as they can be, and then they stick that tail in th’ air and that’s th’ reason they roll. My daddy said one o’them old hoop snakes was a’rollin’ after some man, and it was just nearly up with him. Said this fella’ jumped behind a big honey locust, and said that snake just turned over and hit it with his tail, y’know. That’s what they hit y’with---that horn. He said that big old locust tree was wilted before twelve o’clock, That could hit a man and kill him dead as a hammer.
“My brother said he killed one’r two up yonder where he lives. He said their tail was as hard as it could be all over th’ end. They roll after y’.”
Notice the persistent, detailed similarity of the tales, horned tail, rolling instead of crawling, roaring/hissing, trees killed in hours, eye witness accounts, and the attempts to assure the validity of the tale by reference to reliable, creditable sources, father, brother, those willing to swear, eyewitnesses, and in Lawson’s case, personal accounts of a sort.
Lack of background knowledge and unfamiliarity with basic physics seems a common thread among those who believe strange things about our guns. That, and an ability to believe the unbelievable”¦ if you are going to believe rifles are more accurate than smoothbores because the spin of the rifle bullet prevents the demon which rides bullets and steers them off course from hanging on, first you must be able to believe in demons. To paraphrase an old saw, it must be believed in order to be seen.
There is a valuable warning to us in this. Wrong information can be preserved down through the years, centuries, with just as much validity as the correct. The fact that a belief is old does not necessarily make it right, and we have to work hard at separating the grain from the chaff. We do, don’t we?
And the horned snake will get’cha if you don’t watch out.
Spence
How is it that we can maintain a mistaken belief in the face of later, better evidence? Why is it so difficult for us to fold the correct information into our belief system? People who study these things say it’s because that’s the way our brains work, and that it happens to all of us to a greater or lesser degree. It’s an old question, and many people have tried to answer it. Tolstoy said, "I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."
This persistence of wrong information over long periods of time fascinates me, and it was recently brought to mind by an amazing example I ran across. This isn’t directly related to our guns, but illustrates how efficiently errors can be passed along over long intervals of time.
In his 1709 book, _A New Voyage to Carolina; Containing the Exact Description and Natural History of That Country: Together with the Present State Thereof. And A Journal of a Thousand Miles, Travel'd Thro' Several Nations of Indians. Giving a Particular Account of Their Customs, Manners, &c._, by John Lawson, Gent. Surveyor-General of North Carolina, Lawson said:
“Of the Horn-Snakes I never saw but two, that I remember. They are like the Rattle-Snake in Colour, but rather lighter. They hiss exactly like a Goose, when any thing approaches them. They strike at their Enemy with their Tail, and kill whatsoever they wound with it, which is arm'd at the End with a horny Substance, like a Cock's Spur. This is their Weapon. I have heard it credibly reported, by those who said they were Eye-Witnesses, that a small Locust-Tree, about the Thickness of a Man's Arm, being struck by one of these Snakes, at Ten a Clock in the Morning, then verdant and flourishing, at four in the Afternoon was dead, and the Leaves red and wither'd. Doubtless, be it how it will, they are very venomous. I think, the Indians do not pretend to cure their Wound.
Almost 70 years later, Nicholas Cresswell, an educated young Englishman, wrote in his journal in Leesburg, Virginia:
“Tuesday, June 4th, 1776. Dined at Mr. Mason's, where I saw the part of a Horned Snakeskin about 5 foot long. This is the most venomous Snake that is known. It is covered with scales like a fish, Black and white on the back, the belly white with a small hair in its tail like a cockspur from whence it takes its name. It does not crawl on its belly like other snakes, but tumbles tail over head and by that means strikes its Horn into its enemy, which is of such a poisonous nature it is instant death. I have been informed by several credible persons, some of them offers to swear, that if it strikes its horn into a tree in full leaf it withers and dies in twenty-four hours. I never saw this, but have not the least reason to doubt the truth of it. They had cut the head off this snake. They tell me it had small horns and was about 9 foot long. When they had disabled it, it roared like a Calf.”
The German physician Johann David Schoepf, chief surgeon of the Ansbach troops fighting for Britain, said in his book, _Travels in the Confederation (1783-1784)_ :
“In the mountains one hears much now and again of a Horn or Thorntail-snake which has at the end of its tail a horny sting with which it can not only give a man and beasts fatally poisonous wounds, but can kill trees struck by its sting. But in regard to this I have no reliable evidence.”
Nearly 200 years after that, in the Foxfire Book, southern Appalachian mountains of Georgia, about 1970, Lon Reid discussed hoop snakes:
“They’s just like hoop on a barrel just twisted over and rolled at’y’. Some folks calls ”˜em a horn snake. They cling by the’ end of their tail just as hard as they can be, and then they stick that tail in th’ air and that’s th’ reason they roll. My daddy said one o’them old hoop snakes was a’rollin’ after some man, and it was just nearly up with him. Said this fella’ jumped behind a big honey locust, and said that snake just turned over and hit it with his tail, y’know. That’s what they hit y’with---that horn. He said that big old locust tree was wilted before twelve o’clock, That could hit a man and kill him dead as a hammer.
“My brother said he killed one’r two up yonder where he lives. He said their tail was as hard as it could be all over th’ end. They roll after y’.”
Notice the persistent, detailed similarity of the tales, horned tail, rolling instead of crawling, roaring/hissing, trees killed in hours, eye witness accounts, and the attempts to assure the validity of the tale by reference to reliable, creditable sources, father, brother, those willing to swear, eyewitnesses, and in Lawson’s case, personal accounts of a sort.
Lack of background knowledge and unfamiliarity with basic physics seems a common thread among those who believe strange things about our guns. That, and an ability to believe the unbelievable”¦ if you are going to believe rifles are more accurate than smoothbores because the spin of the rifle bullet prevents the demon which rides bullets and steers them off course from hanging on, first you must be able to believe in demons. To paraphrase an old saw, it must be believed in order to be seen.
There is a valuable warning to us in this. Wrong information can be preserved down through the years, centuries, with just as much validity as the correct. The fact that a belief is old does not necessarily make it right, and we have to work hard at separating the grain from the chaff. We do, don’t we?
And the horned snake will get’cha if you don’t watch out.
Spence
