Part of their “savage-looking equipments” may have been their flag. A sketch of it by a historian in the mid-nineteenth century shows the dark image of a timber rattlesnake, coiled and ready to strike, and the words “Don’t Tread on Me.” The same symbol was adopted at the same time by the backcountry militia of Westmoreland County in Pennsylvania and by other western units.52 Here was another idea of liberty, different from the collective consciousness of New England towns, and the liberty-as-hierarchy
