” He states that “...until the late 19th century, civilized soldiers were at a slight disadvantage in fire weaponry when facing primitive bowmen.””
He is pretty close. Until repeating arms were common, bows were pretty much superior. Comanches with bows pretty much rolled back the Texas frontier about 150 miles and held it until revolvers came out.
I’ve used a basic osage plains bow with metal tipped dogwood arrows and it was shocking how fast and accurately it will snap out an arrow. A guy with a muzzle loader would be doomed and usually was.
As far as superiority of a muzzleloader over a bow in the rain...a flintlock was even worse.
And very few indian attacks were done in the rain or in winter for common sense reasons alone. That “sense to get out of the rain” thing.
I disagree.
The Indians transitioned from bows to muzzleloaders as fast as they could get them.
There is no question that Indian mounted warriors were superb fighters.
A bow might be superior in a one on one encounter; but men with muzzleloaders repeatedly bested bowmen in force on force encounters.
The big advantage of even muskets over bows is need for training. It took years of practice to make a good bowman but only weeks to train a musketeer.