Long Knives
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You might be looking for the Nazi purge known as the Night of the Long Knives
Long Knives or Big Knives was a term used by American Indians of the Ohio Country to designate British colonists in North America. After 1750 it was restricted to the colonists of Virginia, in contradistinction to those of New York and Pennsylvania. George Rogers Clark spoke of himself and men as "Big Knives," or Virginians, in his speeches to the Indians in 1778 after the capture of Illinois. In the latter part of the American Revolutionary War, down to and during the War of 1812, the term was used to designate Americans. The origin is thought to have been the swords carried by colonial military officers.
[edit] References
- Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940.
