Myths and Misconceptions: Long Knife, Big Knife and Sharp Knife

According to popular frontier and western legend, repeated time out of mind, the Natives called Settlers Long Knives or Big Knives because of either a) the large utility knives carried by such Settlers, or b) the bayonets used by soldiers fighting Indians.  While this might be true in certain instances, or with particular people or incidents, there was a founding origin for the term Long Knife when used to refer to a White man. 

Francis Howard, 5th Baron Howard of Effingham, came from an old and storied branch of the noble Howard family in England.  One of his ancestors was a captain in the Spanish Armada in 1588.  In 1683, he was appointed Governor of Virginia by Charles II in 1683 and certainly felt himself entitled to all the deference and perks of his position and family name.  Though appointed in Virginia, he hoped at some point to be transferred to become Governor of New York and often spent time in that colony.  Twice during his tenure as Governor of Virginia he conducted negotiations with the Iroquois Confederacy.  Relations with the England and the Iroquois were, at this point during the Beaver Wars, touchy at best and the Iroquois had broken their Covenant Chain agreements with the English due to encroaching settlement on their hunting range.  Howard promised and paid them money for the land taken.  Impressed with this particular Englishman, the Natives took his last name as a play on the Dutch word for cutlass, a hower.  They called Howard Asserogoa, which meant long knife or big knife.  Howard was never able to get on the good side of his own colonists in Virginia and was recalled in 1693.

Natives bestowed nicknames on people they either respected, or they hated.  The name Asseragoa came to be accepted as a title for the Governor of Virginia, whoever he happened to be.  In turn, the English version, Long Knife or Big Knife was used by the Iroquois and tribes in the Ohio Valley to refer to men from Virginia, especially frontiersmen from Virginia.  George Rogers Clark took pride in the name, referring to his men as Long Knives even after they had settled in Indiana.  In time, the name came to designate any American soldier or frontiersman in arms against the Natives and became common usage on the frontier and even in the west.  The term Long Knife or Big Knife is often confused with the not-so-nice nickname the Creeks gave to Andrew Jackson.  He was Sharp Knife, because of his punitive military strikes on the Creeks during the Creek War and the hard bargains he drew in treaties.