The American Military

by Brad D. Lookingbill

  The Militia

  The English word “militia” comes from the Latin term miles, meaning soldier. In ancient Greece, the city-states required military service from all able-bodied citizens. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the concept of localized militia spread across Europe and migrated to England. Thus, the militia system that the English-speaking people inherited owed much to assumptions about citizen soldiers in antiquity.

  During the middle ages of Europe, the English militia system resonated with feudalism. It took the form of the Anglo-Saxon fyrd, which required every freeman between the ages of 16 and 60 to take up arms in defense of the community. In 1181, the English King Henry II declared in his “Assize of Arms” that men should keep and bear arms in service to the realm and in allegiance to their lord. Subsequent laws in England placed constraints on the employment of a well-armed militia, especially beyond the boundaries of the kingdom. Local governments formed militia based upon notions of social order, basic rights, and civic obligations. Consequently, English monarchs turned to mercenaries to undertake foreign ventures.

  English monarchs expected the ruling classes to lead collective efforts to protect the homeland. The aristocracy dominated the officer ranks while celebrating the virtues of service, honor, and chivalry. The knights of the realm deferred to the nobility of a hierarchical order, thereby placing the king at the apex but fixing the masses at the base. The yeomanry across the countryside mustered on occasion as infantry, although they tended to remain adjuncts to the mounted and armored cavalry. Feudal armies defended fortified castles, which arose on commanding points of terrain as bulwarks against all gathering threats. Common law referred to the notion of posse comitatus, which derived from the Latin phrase for “force of the county.” In an emergency, a sheriff wielded the legal authority to conscript any able-bodied male over the age of 15 to pursue and to arrest bandits. In other words, the English population assumed a shared responsibility for maintaining peace and security.

  The reign of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558 to 1603 produced significant refinements to the militia system of England. Rather than expending resources to support all members of the militia, she preferred to focus domestically on a smaller portion of the whole. They were dubbed “trained-bands,” or trainbands. They constituted a select group of militia, who received better armaments and experienced frequent drilling. By 1573, trainbands in London included 3,000 men. Ten years later, as many as 12,000 men appeared on the English muster rolls as members. Generally, the Elizabethan trainbands protected property, policed towns, and erected defenses.

  By the end of the sixteenth century, English soldiers and sailors showed more interest in raiding Spanish treasure than in colonizing the western hemisphere. Closer to home, English monarchs devoted blood and treasure to the military subjugation of Ireland. No army of professionals sailed in mass for North America, leaving settler societies more or less to defend themselves against all enemies. In 1585, Sir Walter Raleigh funded a fleet of five ships and a handful of military veterans to establish a fortress on Roanoke Island. They returned to England a year later, but the colonists sent to the island by Raleigh in 1587 were lost.

  Arriving in 1607, the first English colonists of Virginia included a few military veterans such as Captain Christopher Newport. They built a simple, triangular fort in a settlement known as Jamestown. They encountered a Pamunkey chieftain named Powhatan, who governed the Native people along the James River through tribute, diplomacy, and trade. Called a Werowance, or great ruler, he asserted supremacy over a host of Algonquian-speaking groups. They affiliated with what came to be known as Powhatan's Confederacy. Powhatan initially considered the strangers from England as potential allies in a struggle to extend his power still further over Indian tribes around the Chesapeake Bay. In addition to their loyalty, he desired to acquire technologically advanced swords, hatchets, guns, and powder.

  Instead of submitting, the Virginia Company authorized the colonists to raise a militia to plunder Powhatan's Confederacy. During 1609, Governor Thomas West, who was known as Lord De La Warr, increased the number of soldiers at Jamestown and turned the settlement into a garrison. With greater military discipline, their regimen replicated the conventions of the Elizabethan trainbands. Accordingly, all adult males were required to buy, to maintain, and to carry muskets. Among the mercenaries, Captain John Smith commanded several sorties inland. Five expeditions occurred during 1610, which killed Indians, burned wigwams, and confiscated food. Raids on Indian cornfields amounted to “feed fights.” They sparked retaliation against Jamestown and the surrounding settlements. The relations between the Indians and the Virginians grew more adversarial, because the colonists frequently stole to survive.

  Though usually protected by palisades, Indian villages lacked defenses against the spread of European diseases along the North American coast. In 1620, a group of religious dissenters called Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower and landed at Cape Cod. They established Plymouth Plantation on the site of an abandoned Indian village already decimated by smallpox. Only one experienced English soldier, Myles Standish, arrived with the Pilgrims, even though he did not adhere to their particular doctrines. Nevertheless, they elected him as their captain and military commander. He owned a snaphance musket, rapier sword, double-edged dagger, and body armor, but he found that most colonists knew nothing about armed conflict. Within a year, they built a fort at Plymouth Plantation. For conducting watch patrols near the settlement, they organized a four-squadron militia in 1622. Hauled from the Mayflower and emplaced upon a hill, imposing cannons discouraged an Indian attack.

  Initially, the Indians preferred to trade with the Pilgrims rather than to attack them. Known as wampum, beads cut from white or purple shells found along Cape Cod excited the Algonquian speakers. The beads were drilled and threaded into decorative strings and elaborate belts. Like their Dutch counterparts in New Netherlands, English traders used their tools to turn the sacred objects into a commodity for exchange. Massasoit, a Wampanoag chieftain, viewed the English colonists as potentially useful for combating his enemies, the Narragansett, who received arms and supplies from the Dutch. In fact, he encouraged the Pilgrims to employ their militia to preemptively strike the Massachusetts, another rival group in the area. For several decades, the Plymouth Plantation maintained a military alliance with their Wampanoag neighbors in the area.

  With the arrival of more colonists, the Massachusetts Bay Company established the first enrolled militia regiments of New England. On December 13, 1636, the General Court directed towns to muster men into units for local service. Nevertheless, deferments from training days went to officials, ministers, students, craftsmen, and fishermen. Most towns prohibited non-English inhabitants from serving at all. To guarantee a rapid response to attacks, the General Court passed a law on August 13, 1645, directing each militia unit to select a third of its members for a heightened state of readiness. They would respond to alarms “at half an hour's warning” with their arms, ammunition, and equipment. Laws regulating the service of a citizen soldiery achieved vitality in New England at the same time that the militia system declined as an institution in Oliver Cromwell's England.

  With the exception of Pennsylvania, all of the original 13 colonies established a form of compulsory militia service. Requirements varied from place to place, but individuals on government rolls ranged in age from as young as 16 to as old as 60. Men were required to own a basic weapon such as a musket, which fired using a matchlock or flintlock mechanism. Most units trained once or twice a year. Some formed patrols to capture runaway servants and slaves. Local authorities maintained reserve supplies of musketry to arm those unable to buy them and collected stores of ammunition and small cannons for major campaigns. The colonial assembly appropriated the money for supplies and exercised fiscal control over the funding of expeditionary forces. The colonial governor often acted as the “commander-in-chief” of the militia and mobilized the members through secular and religious appea
ls. The militia mustered reluctantly for duties that took them away from their homes or left their families unprotected.

  Often neglected by their mother country, the English colonists raised four types of militia. First and foremost, the standing militia included the citizenry enrolled in local units to provide defense and security. Secondly, colonies organized specialized companies from the militia for patrolling the backcountry as well as for apprehending fugitives. Third, expeditionary volunteers came from the standing militia and received special inducements or bounties to serve during longer campaigns. Lastly, militia relied upon impressed, hired, or conscripted individuals – usually convicts or vagrants – who were coerced into service to fill a levy assigned to a county or town. Whatever the exact force composition, the militia provided a large pool of able-bodied men from which colonial governments drew for strength in times of trouble.

  Skulking

  The growth of the English colonies and their encroachment upon Indian country escalated the violence along the Atlantic seaboard. While the colonists shifted the balance of power to the coastal towns, the natives of the woodlands fought them in ways that the English pejoratively called “savage.” From the tidewater of Virginia to the forests of Massachusetts, the key attribute of Indian warfare was skulking.

  When skulking against enemies, Indian warriors preferred indirect actions over frontal assaults. War parties gathered with remarkable stealth and avoided direct engagements whenever possible, instead seeking victory by surprise and with the calculated use of terrain. Their approach to a threat environment involved nonlinear tactics – concealment and surprise, skirmishing, movement, envelopment, and, when the enemy's ranks collapsed, hand-to-hand combat. Because stone tools appeared scarce in areas with deep alluvial soils, they armed themselves with long bows, wooden swords, spears, knives, and clubs. Their weaponry suited a swift raid against an isolated settlement but seemed less conducive to pitched battles in open fields. They utilized speed and cover to strike and to retreat out of harm's way without suffering heavy casualties. An ambush often awaited any pursuing colonials.

  Skulking helped to develop and to preserve the martial spirit of the Native Americans, because it underscored the symbolic meanings of the struggle for power. In most battles, warriors confronted foes to earn honors or to claim prizes. In a one-on-one match, an individual revealed bravery and strength by catching an opponent off guard. War parties attacked men, women, and children, to be sure, but they did so primarily to seize them for captivity, adoption, or exchange. According to the concept of a “mourning war,” the vanquished were apportioned among the aggrieved to compensate for previous losses. Through stylized and ritualistic combat, military actions settled scores without necessarily causing massive destruction.

  The Europeans observed that Huron, Iroquois, and Muskogee warriors removed scalps from the heads of victims, although the practice was not a universal one. Of course, body parts taken by warriors in battle often represented trophies for exhibition at home. They also wore them as badges or ornaments with traditional clothing. They typically consisted of removable appendages such as the head, fingers, or ears. The scalp represented a very special kind of prize, because it involved removing a portion of an enemy's crown with only a knife. Some cultures encouraged the removal of a small hair-braid or scalp-lock, often decorated with paint or jewelry. Although the practice of taking a scalp appeared in pre-contact North and South America, the specific forms of scalping varied from tribe to tribe.

  Once drawn into the European web of trade, Indian tribes became entangled with the economic and political system of the colonists. Officials offered scalp bounties to encourage strikes against those deemed hostile to the interests of the Europeans, who demanded proof of success on a raid. The need for proof prompted the colonists to encourage and to reward the taking of scalps, which permitted the victims to survive the bloody acts on occasion. In fact, the bounties fostered the spread of metal knives to tribes previously unfamiliar with the practice of hair removal. In terms of Indian warfare within the Americas, scalping turned skulking into a tactic of terror suitable to the woodlands.

  In addition, the permanent presence of Dutch and English traders along the coast and in the valleys transformed the technologies and tactics of Indian warfare. Most warriors lost any inhibitions against slaughtering their enemies, especially when population centers appeared vulnerable. Firearms proved instrumental in precipitating the changes over time, although the adoption of the European musket involved many factors. Indian tribes showed an immediate preference for the flintlock over the more common and inexpensive matchlock. They became quite adept at utilizing the former in deadly hit-and-run raids, employing the new weaponry more or less as skillfully as they used their bows and arrows. They also learned how to repair arms, to cast bullets, and to form European-style perimeters. As the fighting over contested grounds intensified, the range and accuracy of the muskets made skulking even more effective.

  By the end of the seventeenth century, an extraordinary style of combat evolved in the woodlands. Innovations in techniques made the Indians formidable on raids, which drove many colonists to turn to the same tactics that they bitterly denounced. Furthermore, the employment of friendly Indians provided colonial governments with their best countermeasures to belligerent tribes. Since the English previously described a patroller as a “ranger,” mixed companies that maneuvered in the forests appropriated the term. “Now we are glad to learn the skulking way of war,” boasted Reverend John Eliot of Connecticut.

  Effective tactics, however, could not compensate for strategic weaknesses. Whereas indigenous populations relied on European trade for firearms and for gunpowder, their fragile economies could not sustain a spirited resistance. Their diffuse organizations for war became a liability against the military discipline of the invaders. Known as “fire-water” in many communities, alcohol as a trade commodity negatively impacted the behavior of war parties. Vulnerable to disease and to fragmentation, the Indians lacked the cohesiveness to prevail in a long war against the Europeans.

  Despite superior weaponry, the Europeans required more than a century to conquer the Native Americans east of the Allegheny and Appalachian Mountains. The colonists appeared inefficient when operating in a threat environment conducive to the dispersion of armed forces. Victory required first understanding and respecting Indian warfare and then devising defensive and offensive concepts that fully exploited the advantages of technology and logistics.

  Wars of Extirpation

  The English colonists tended to view the Indian villages as obstacles to their expansion into the North American interior. Colonial arms trading with Indians, though officially outlawed, took away the upper hand that the English militia initially possessed in their clashes with Indian warriors. Muskets, pikes, knives, swords, lances, and tools proliferated with destructive results. To reduce the Indians' advantages in the woodlands, military leaders decided to undertake offensives before their enemies could strike backcountry settlements.

  In the Tidewater Wars of Virginia, intense fighting erupted on March 22, 1622. Powhatan's brother and successor, Opechancanough, launched a surprise attack along the James and Appomattox Rivers that wiped out one-quarter of Virginia's settler population in a single day. The Virginians counterattacked by hitting the Nanesemond, Chickahominy, and Pamunkey villages. A major battle occurred during the summer of 1624, when an expedition of armored Englishmen sailed up the York River to confiscate Indian corn. The Pamunkey and their allies defended their cornfields but were mauled by English musketeers. Sporadic but intense fighting continued until 1646, when the aged and feeble Opechancanough was captured and killed. After a peace treaty ended the Tidewater Wars, the Indians relocated to a reservation and paid an annual tribute to the King of England.

  From 1636 to 1637, tensions over trade relations in New England led to the Pequot War. The Pequot – an Algonquian word meaning “destroyers” – resided at the mouth of the Connecticut River,
where they dealt with Dutch traders from Manhattan Island and English colonists in the Massachusetts Bay. The death of two traders sparked fears that the Pequot planned a widespread uprising against the English and their Indian allies. Militia companies from New England towns and warrior bands from the Mohegan and the Narragansett villages launched preemptive strikes against the Pequot. A kind of “holy war,” which entailed massive casualties among noncombatants, ensued along the Mystic River. On May 26, 1637, Captain John Mason urged the English militia to torch Fort Mystic and to kill the Indians gathered behind the palisades. With the aid of allies, they sat fire to wigwams, shot fleeing men, captured women and children, and divided the spoils. They killed as many as 700 at Fort Mystic and drove the Pequot into hiding. Some survivors sought refuge in “praying towns” and converted to Christianity. Others became the property of Caribbean slave traders. The Pequot name was outlawed in New England thereafter.

  Relations between the English colonists and the Wampanoag tribe deteriorated after the death of Massasoit, although his successors sought to keep peace. By the early 1670s, Metacom, a chieftain of the Wampanoag and a descendant of Massasoit, began to organize a pan-Indian movement to drive the colonists from the woodlands altogether. The inter-tribal forces of King Philip – as the English dubbed the Wampanoag leader – moved swiftly and killed thousands of farmers and townspeople. However, the English militia struck back. Honing their skills in fields of battle, they evolved into mobile units capable of operating on multiple fronts to harass their adversaries. During the “Great Swamp fight” near Kingston, Rhode Island, inter-colonial forces led by Josiah Winslow, the governor of Plymouth, attacked a Narragansett fortress on December 19, 1675. As many as 600 Indians perished that day. With the tide turning in favor of New England, King Philip's War became a rout.