In 1756, New York State was still a British colony, and the French and the Indians were constant threats to Edward and his family. When his father was called away to watch for a raid from the north, only Edward was left to protect Mama and little Trudy. His father had shown him how to use the huge matchlock gun, an old Spanish gun that was twice as long as he was, but would Edward be able to handle it if trouble actually came?

review from my 13 year old
“It tells the story of Edward and his grandparents who came to the U.S. during the time period of the French-Indian War. His father is in the militia. Everyone else is left alone (children and mother) and a raid came near them. Instead of choosing to go to Grandma’s, they stayed. They had their large gun brought from Holland which the Mother says not to fire til she says so. The raiding party comes to the house and the gun is fired. There is a fire. Then the father comes home.”

*YMMV, obviously guns, shooting.

Also a true story.

Here is one perspective http://www.readathomemom.com/2017/03/reading-through-history-matchlock-gun.html

Here is a quote from Wikipedia “ The book has been accused of depicting Native Americans as "horror, the ultimate nightmare [...which] may very well be one of the worst descriptions of Native people in children’s literature, certainly in the 20th century", and "eulogiz[ing] an American past in which the indigenous populations were regarded as sub-human, and every effort made to exterminate them."[1]”

Clearly a book that can have strong feelings raised. I encourage you to read this book for yourself and some of the other Library Thing reviews. ( )

Not bad, but feels like an excerpt rather than a book, or an abridgment. There was no background, no motivation to help understand why the characters behaved the way they did. And it was very slight, not enough detail to make a full story. ( )

NA

Walter D Edmonds, teacher and historical writer, wrote the classic adult historical fiction book, Drums Along the Mohawk that was made into a popular movie. With his children’s book, The Matchlock Gun, he demonstrated his mastery not only of colonial New York history in the 1700s, America’s western frontier at the time, but also of world history. He presents it in a way that is not dry or preachy, but his casual adjectives and descriptions such as St Francis Indians, the Spanish gun from Bergom Op Zoom, and that Mama is a Palatine disliked by her Dutch mother-in-law show the depths of his knowledge and create a clear picture for us of those times.
The French and their Algonquian allies raided the American settlements before we were a nation, hoping to secure this country for their own, fighting the English, Dutch and Palatine settlers that had established themselves here. Through the young boy’s eyes we hear the story of the events around 1757 leading up to and including the Indian raid. Not a casual onlooker, Edward does his part to protect his family.
Some people ask me why I am interested in stories of the past that appear to us today to be racist or “politically incorrect”. We read that the boy’s Dutch grandmother barricaded herself in the house with her slaves and there is no understanding of why the St Francis Indians (Native Americans to us today) are visiting this horror on the frontier farmers. It is important to see the world through their eyes and not to forget our history. More importantly, I think we should not clean history up too much to suit todays norms or we may not remember the lessons we can learn from the past. There were Dutch slave owners in New York and New Jersey and the state of Rhode Island had the largest slave population in the country for a time. Historical writing is a wonderful starting point for looking into the realities of a situation.
The hard feelings between the Dutch and the Palatines lasted a long time and the divisions between the Dutch and the English were so strong, that after the English conquered New York in 1664 and the Dutch rebellion conquered it back for a year in 1673-1674, some of the Dutch refused to live under English rule and moved to New Jersey. The English and the French took even longer to make peace with each other on this side of the Atlantic. As a descendant of all of the parties involved, the Palatines, Dutch, French and St. Francis Indians, this book is a treasure, showing through the eyes of a child, the simple realities of life and survival on the frontier of New York State in the 1700s. It is still a good book for very young children and interesting and informative adult reading. ( )