Abstract
Observing the frontiersmen he encountered in the Carolinas on the eve of the American Revolution, English traveler J.F.D. Smythe paid particular attention to their attire. Along with their fringed linen hunting shirts—a garment known mostly in Pennsylvania and points south prior to the war—he noted that their powder horns, carved with a "variety of whimsical figures," were a key element of the backwoodsmen's style. By the 1770s, they had also become important recordkeeping tools on which soldiers, settlers, and American Indians etched their names, war records, and other significant information.
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