On the morning of 8 September 1755 Colonel Ephraim Williams marched south from the camp at Lake George with about 1,000 Massachusetts and Connecticut provincials. With them were some 200 Mohawk allies under Theyanoguin, known to the British as Hendrick. Waiting in the woods along the road were Baron Dieskau's French regulars and Canadians, with Native allies that included Kahnawake Mohawks and Abenakis. In the ambush that followed, remembered as the Bloody Morning Scout, Williams was shot in the head while rallying his men, and Hendrick was killed. Williams had written his will weeks earlier, leaving money for a free school in western Massachusetts. It became Williams College.

The warrior is easy to miss at first: he crouches on a branch high up the trunk, aiming his musket past it at the road below. He wears a red feathered headdress, a blue breechcloth and red leggings. The tree is the centrepiece of the set: a tall, weathered trunk with one dead limb, branches in orange, red and yellow autumn leaves, and a base of grey rock, a fallen log and leaf litter. Pair it with its companion piece, A Clear Shot – Native Warrior Firing from a Summer Tree, and post Native Warrior Kneeling Firing No.2 in the rocks below. Then march a provincial or British column into range. 42nd Grenadier Officer Firing Pistol makes a natural target.

W. Britain model 16136. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single foot figure with a sculpted autumn tree, rocks and fallen log on a groundwork base. Boxed.