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.
Chief among the English veterans of King Philip's War, Benjamin Church commanded an “Army of the United Colonies” during 1676. Born in Plymouth, he later resided in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Neutral or formerly hostile Indians joined his ranger company, which skillfully conducted operations that anticipated the emergence of guerrilla warfare. Acting in concert with Indian allies, he led expeditions that successfully penetrated forests and swamps. John Alderman, a converted Indian serving under Church, killed Metacom on August 12, 1676, thereby effectively ending the war. The Wampanoag chief was beheaded, drawn, and quartered. His head sat atop a pike first in Boston and then in Plymouth, where locals displayed it for years. Over the next several decades, Church's companies conducted operations against the French and the Indians in Maine, Canada, and Acadia. They killed residents, looted property, burned houses, and slaughtered livestock. Published shortly before his death in 1718, Church's memoirs became the first manual for “ranging” in North America.
By 1676, the Virginia House of Burgesses had enlisted a force of rangers to operate along the Piedmont. Within the Old Dominion, Sir William Berkeley, the Royal governor, refused to authorize strikes against Indian villages. He tried to distinguish between friendly and belligerent tribes. To keep antagonists in the backcountry separated, the government planned to construct a network of forts. After the Doeg assailed English settlements, a 29-year-old planter named Nathaniel Bacon sought a commission from Governor Berkeley to command the militia. Bacon intended to wage a war of vengeance against all Indians. His anti-Indian rants rallied angry locals. Unwilling to wait for the government to act, he and his counterparts assaulted the Susquehannock and the Occaneechee. As a result of recklessness and incompetence, mayhem spread across Virginia.
Governor Berkeley reluctantly issued the commission to his challenger, though he ordered “General” Bacon to cease campaigning. In defiance of authority, Bacon offered to fund his own band of Indian fighters. On September 19, 1676, they seized Jamestown and torched it. When Bacon suddenly died of dysentery, the rebellion that he fomented collapsed. Thereafter, Virginia's gentry turned to mounted troops and a well-regulated militia for security.
In the Carolinas, extirpative war involved the collaboration of scalp hunters, slave raiders, and ranger companies. With their towns besieged by the spread of English settlements, the Tuscarora initiated a bloody fight in 1711. Instead of battling the Tuscarora warriors, John Barnwell commanded a search-and-destroy expedition aimed at their villages. With the help of Indian allies, they targeted noncombatants such as women and children. Two years later, James Moore led the largest expedition of the Tuscarora War, which killed and captured hundreds. The Tuscarora fled northward to find refuge. When the Yamasee attempted to resist English dominance, they found themselves suffering a similar fate. Responding to renewed Indian attacks on plantations in the lowlands, a company under George Chicken ambushed Yamasee warriors outside of Charleston in 1715. With the capital defended, they marched inland and began to annihilate, to enslave, and to dislocate the Yamasee. In addition to frightful atrocities and high casualties, the ferocity of the armed conflict caused starvation and
dispersion. After the mauling, the Yamasee escaped to Florida to live under Spanish protection.
More than a century of on-again, off-again warfare generated extreme violence in hundreds of communities near the Atlantic Coast. Colonial governments sanctioned wars of extirpation out of military necessity, or so English authorities insisted. Local forces targeted corn fields, stored provisions, and population centers in Indian country. Eventually, their antagonism drove many of the Indian tribes into the arms of their European rivals.
Imperial March
Conflicts among English, French, and Spanish interests in Europe involved the colonial population of North America in almost constant warfare. Major wars on the European continent shared a trans-Atlantic component that became intermingled with outbursts of violence in the woodlands. The Indians grew increasingly dependent on European commodities, while the profits from trade increased. Undoubtedly, the Europeans prized North America.
The European colonists in North America gave the wars for empire different names from their kinsmen across the Atlantic Ocean. From 1689 to 1697, the War of the League of Augsburg was known among the English colonists as King William's War. They knew the War of Spanish Succession from 1701 to 1713 by the name of Queen Anne's War. After 1739, King George's War in North America extended what the Europeans knew as the War of Jenkins's Ear or the War of Austrian Succession. To finance the wars for empire, the home governments increased expenditures, taxation, and debt.
Over the course of decades, the wars for empire brought grand armies and navies to the North American theater. Europeans marshaled forces composed of career officers and seasoned soldiers and sailors, who did not disband when hostilities officially ceased but remained “standing.” Royal regimes directed, maintained, and remunerated their service in distant provinces. With the increasing centralization of authority, the uniformed services became more disciplined and better organized. The massing of recruits from the lower echelons of society required harsh restraints and severe punishment for transgressions of regulations. They differed from previous companies, however, because the new kind of military assembled English, Scottish, Irish, Germanic, Spanish, or Swiss recruits into British regiments. Without regard to ethnic ties, military professionals served to achieve the imperial ambitions of the home government.
The colonial population of British America viewed military professionals with a great deal of suspicion. Based upon popular impressions, their presence denoted the evils of corruption, power, and tyranny. Critics warned that standing forces imperiled the rights of citizens and threatened to bond free men into slavery. They railed against potential despotism on the horizon. Such vitriol derived largely from the English experience with the schemes of Cromwell, who they remembered and reviled for organizing the New Model Army. Moreover, the English Bill of Rights in 1689 mandated that a military establishment must remain subordinate to the authority of Parliament. Whatever the prowess of military professionals, they often frightened provincials.
Provincials held to their assumptions of classical republicanism, that is, a polity comprising a responsible, active citizenry devoted to the “public good.” They pointed to historic examples from ancient Rome and medieval Europe to argue that mercenaries constituted a danger to civil society. In the absence of citizen soldiers and sailors, they said, communities relied upon “hirelings” to keep and bear arms. Furthermore, the anxieties about standing armies and navies reflected changes to the composition of many British units. If military duties fell to those from outside the settlements they defended, then the stakeholders feared the loss of their republican virtues. On the periphery of a growing empire, provincials kept a vigilant eye open for signs of governmental repression.
Nevertheless, provincials in Boston welcomed the sight of British regulars during the summer of 1711. The British commanders, Commodore Hovenden Walker and General John Hill, planned to lead 60 ships with 5,000 regulars on board to strike French Quebec. Departing for the St. Lawrence River, Canada loomed as a great prize that fired the enthusiasm of British Americans. However, the fleet actually sailed into a terrible squall before commencing the invasion. Many of the ships crashed, which prompted the Royal Navy to order the rest to return home. The disappointed provincials felt abandoned and betrayed in the end, while their strategic interests continued to grow apart from the objectives of Great Britain.
Despite colonial loyalty to the Crown, the Royal Navy neglected to provide significant military protection beyond monitoring the trans-Atlantic trade routes. The fleet experienced periods of stagnation and decline during peacetime but feverish shipbuilding and renovation during wartime. Comparable to the French and Spanish navies, the vessels of the British fleet represented powerful wooden machines driven by wind and muscle. Cannonading demanded that commanders deploy line-ahead tactics to achieve point-blank range. Naval guns remained extremely inaccurate, possessing an effective range of less than 300 yards. Good gunnery entailed firing with speed and volume – not accuracy. When ships docked at colonial seaports, naval impressment gangs often scoured the neighborhoods in search of sailors. At sea, the crews typically suffered from bad food, low pay, and physical abuse.
Not surprisingly, most British Americans preferred to volunteer for the crews of privately owned vessels prowling the Caribbean. In fact, the lure of profits from capturing enemy transport and supply ships prompted sailors to enlist for service on board the men-of-war. Ports such as New York and Charleston financially benefited from the actions of the privateers, who returned to North America with booty from their maritime adventures. Hence, provincial ships plundered the holdings of enemy ships and brought quick profits to the motley crews. Of course, the allure of privateering meant greater competition for finding experienced, worthy “Jack Tars” to man the ships of the Royal Navy.
When the Europeans clashed over trade routes and fishing rights, the conflicts soon spread to the interior of North America. In contrast to local skirmishes, imperial marches accentuated colorful rows of flag-waving regiments stepping in formation to the roar of cannons and muskets. Whereas the artillery and cavalry provided a vital component in most operations, the columns of infantry crossed the battlefields to deliver volleys. With respect to maneuver, the rank and file concentrated in complicated and fluid arrangements while absorbing minimal casualties. Officers eschewed violence against noncombatants, because the object of a pitched battle required closing within range of the enemy's lines. War unfolded in accord with rigid rules during the eighteenth century, while strategies and tactics largely reflected a chess-game affair.
For the British regulars, the standard infantry weapon was the Brown Bess – a flintlock musket. It included a smoothbore barrel that fired a lead ball about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Since the barrel lacked rifling, it seldom struck targets with accuracy. Its effective range for volley fire was approximately 100 to 150 yards, which surpassed earlier muskets. At best, its rate of fire measured three rounds per minute. Nevertheless, the impact of the ball tore flesh and shattered bones in horrific fashion. If firing the Brown Bess softened the enemy, then the infantry fixed a 14 inch socket bayonet and charged to break the opposing lines.
The long-rifle gradually replaced the Brown Bess in North America. Rifling the barrel, which involved forging spiral grooves that imparted a spinning effect to a bullet, increased the accuracy and range of arms in combat. By 1750, German-speaking gunsmiths in Pennsylvania had developed a light model that proved easier and faster to load than older European models. It became the forerunner of the “Pennsylvania” or “Kentucky” long-rifles. Utilizing handmade pieces, it required a customized bullet mold. The bullet was slightly smaller than the bore, but a patch of greased linen kept the fit tight after ramming. In the hands of a marksman, the muzzle-loader could hit a target at 200 yards. For fighting behind the cover of trees, bushes, and rocks, the long-rifle matched the operational imperatives of the threat environment.
The fight over borders raged throughout the eig
hteenth century, as British America continued to develop and to expand along the Atlantic seaboard. In 1732, London chartered the colony of Georgia. Four years later, General James Oglethorpe, a British Army officer serving as Royal protector of the colony, received an appointment as “commander-in-chief” of His Majesty's forces in both Georgia and South Carolina. His diplomacy made inroads with heretofore unfamiliar Native American bands and confederacies. The Creek Indians resided chiefly in the area extending west by north from the middle and upper Chattahoochee River. To the north and northeast of them lived the Cherokee; to the northwest, the Chickasaw; and to the west and southwest, the Choctaw. In effect, Georgia amounted to a military buffer for the British Empire in the lower south.
In 1739, General Oglethorpe planned joint operations to “annoy” the Spanish in Florida. Gathering 500 Indians, 400 South Carolina militia, 500 regulars, 400 rangers and Scottish Highlanders, and several British naval vessels, he conducted a siege of Fort San Marcos in St. Augustine. He eventually abandoned it, because his cannonading failed to penetrate the walls. In 1743, he struck St. Augustine once again to no avail. He returned to London that year to answer charges by a regimental officer and to impress upon Parliament the necessity of defending the Georgia coast.
After the British captured Porto Bello in Panama, the focus of King George's War shifted to the West Indies. In 1741, the Royal Navy organized a major offensive to capture the Spanish port at Cartagena, a seaport in South America. Virginia Governor William Gooch commanded the “American Regiment,” which included volunteers from 11 colonies and numbered more than 3,500 men. Led by Admiral Edward Vernon, the combined forces of the British sailed with over 9,000 men on board. They landed at Cartagena, but the regiments surviving the initial assaults faced a more dangerous enemy – yellow fever. Abandoning Cartagena, they tried to assail Cuba without success. By the time the “American Regiment” finally returned home, no more than 600 men remained alive. Remembering the British admiral of the fleet, one of the Virginians, Lawrence Washington, renamed his plantation Mount Vernon.
The American Military - A Narrative History Page 4