Warfare in Seventeenth Century North America (Atl. History)

Introduction

The exploratory, trading, colonial, and eventually imperial voyages and expeditions of European powers to North America inevitably generated conflict both among Europeans and with the indigenous inhabitants. There were many ways and processes in which all the players found paths to mutual profit, learned about each other, intermarried, and lived and played together, but the political imperatives of competition in Europe combined with increasingly ethnocentric perceptions of resource distribution, especially the control of land, brought frequent and bitter warfare. The sides were not always clearly drawn. Indians fought on all sides, pursuing interests, revenge, or merely survival. Europeans could become Indians, and Indians tried to become Europeans. Former subjects of Holland became effective soldiers in English expeditions against New France. Portuguese pilots guided English fleets in raids against a Spanish king who had also become the king of Portugal. Only since the 1990s have historians really begun to assess early North American warfare in a way that includes all these players to their full extent. To greatly simplify, the military history of the European expansion into North America has passed through three phases. Late-19th- and early-20th-century writers tended to focus on reconstructing campaign narratives of either the imperial conflicts (England versus France or Spain) or the localist experience of wars against “savages,” primarily in New England. Beginning in the 1960s historians and ethnohistorians increasingly turned their attention to the colonial experience as understood by the Indians: how did they perceive their interests, and what cultural structures determined their involvement in conflicts with each other and with Europeans? These historians more or less took for granted the European experience and expectations of war, believing that the military history from that angle was “done.” Furthermore, the historians reacted against the savage stereotype of the previous era and sought to shift the blame for what were undeniably vicious wars more squarely to the greed and duplicity of the Europeans. Since the 1980s, however, historians of the “Atlantic” variety deeply invested in the ethnohistoric scholarship, while reevaluating many aspects of the European experience, began to generate a more integrated story. In this new narrative Indians became key players and partners in what eventually becomes European expansion and domination. Indians, however, managed and manipulated their own destiny, even in the face of what we now know were truly devastating plagues. For the students of war, this new narrative has encouraged a reexamination of the nature of violence and of the effect of military changes in the Old World on imperial expansion and on colonial military institutions in the New World. This bibliography is not entirely restricted to the 17th century. It also encompasses the “precontact” problem, examining the military experience of Europeans and Indians prior to their contacting each other as well as the few 16th-century experiences in North America. North America is here defined to include what is now the United States and Canada but not the Caribbean or Central America. Historical trajectory and an Anglophone emphasis also mean a weighting herein toward the English colonies. Finally, the artificial time marker 1700 actually has some value. The first of the so-called imperial wars began in 1689 and is covered here briefly, but it makes sense to stop at that point, because the historiography of the imperial wars of the 18th century has a different focus and emphasis.

General Overviews

In accord with the discussion in the introduction, there are really two kinds of surveys included here. The older ones, such as Peckham 1964, Gipson 1936–1970, and Leach 1973, provide basic military narratives generally focused on English and French competition. They remain useful sources for that purpose. The more recent surveys incorporate the new ethnohistoric understanding of Indian warfare while asking more complex questions about European motivations and behaviors. Chet 2003, Grenier 2005, and Starkey 1998 in particular are focused on changes in European forms and practices of war (or not), and they present surprising disagreements. Steele 1994 is the best survey of Native American practices covering the whole colonial period, whereas Ferling 1980 and Lee 2011 may offer the best fully integrated analytic discussions of European versus Native American warfare and how each affected the other. It must be noted that almost all these surveys transcend the chronological boundary at 1700.

Chet, Guy. Conquering the American Wilderness: The Triumph of European Warfare in the Colonial Northeast. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003.
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Argues against the prevailing wisdom that Europeans only succeeded in their wars against Indians when they adapted Indian techniques. When the English held true to their traditional tactical emphasis on disciplined volley fire, especially on the tactical defensive, they were irresistible. The contact generation, still fully invested in this system, was therefore highly effective. The second generation had lost those skills and paid for it during King Philip’s War.
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Ferling, John E. A Wilderness of Miseries: War and Warriors in Early America. Contributions in Military History. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980.
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A classic and influential study that both surveys the period and defines an argument about changes in European warfare. Contends that early colonists arrived with a style of war that reflected the furies of the religious wars in Europe. Colonists then remained separated from the developing restraints in Europe, and the colonists’ wars with Indians retained “total war” methods. Furthermore, endemic colonial warfare encouraged a martial ethos in American culture.
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Gipson, Lawrence Henry. The British Empire before the American Revolution. 15 vols. Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1936–1970.
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An almost overwhelming survey of British expansion written from a centralized, “imperial” perspective, covering a vast geographic and chronological spread. Based primarily on British state and other official papers, it remains useful in this context especially for the early imperial wars against the Dutch and King William’s War (1689–1697). Each volume covers a discrete region and period.
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Grenier, John. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511817847Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An important and now frequently cited discussion of changes to (or development of) an American “way of war” during the colonial period. Colonists developed something Grenier calls extirpative war, involving destruction of Indian crops and villages, combined with creating units of “rangers” fighting Indian style and often recruited with the promise of scalp bounties. Taken together these practices constituted a new way of war, one that Grenier asserts carried over into the military practices of the United States.
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Leach, Douglas Edward. Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies in North America, 1607–1763. Macmillan Wars of the United States. New York: Macmillan, 1973.
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Part of a series on the wars of the United States, this volume is constructed to get the reader through the whole colonial period. Although written almost entirely from an English colonial perspective, the text retains value as an introduction to any given conflict from the period.
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Lee, Wayne E. Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500–1865. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
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Examines English and American wars, ranging from 16th-century Ireland through the American Civil War. Focused on the nature of violence in war based on various combinations of state capacity, military calculation, systems of soldier control, and cultural attitudes toward war and toward the enemy. Of particular interest to the discussion here is Lee’s examination of English colonial war precedents created in Ireland and England and the comprehensive look at Native American warfare.
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Peckham, Howard H. The Colonial Wars, 1689–1762. Chicago History of American Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
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Perhaps somewhat dated and not reliable on French matters, this book still holds value as a survey of the imperial wars between England and France (and Spain). Strictly narrative and operational.
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Starkey, Armstrong. European and Native American Warfare, 1675–1815. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.
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Examines Euro-Indian warfare rather than the English-French conflict and without necessarily being bound to a narrative of particular wars. Starkey argues that Native Americans took advantage of European technology to refine their style of war (after 1675) in such a way that colonists found it very difficult to deal with them for the duration of the colonial era and early American Republic. Concise and authoritative; well designed for classroom use.
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Steele, Ian K. Warpaths: Invasions of North America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
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Focus is on the Euro-Indian contest for North America. The chronological coverage is comprehensive (1513–1763), and the coverage is geographically broad along the Eastern Seaboard. The author divides the chronology primarily by the nature of Indian resistance to Europeans, which he sees as evolving (partly in response to the changing nature of the European presence). Good on Indian strategy, tactics, and attitudes toward war. A thorough, up-to-date, and comprehensive survey of Native American warfare.
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Reference Works

There are many encyclopedias of military history that incorporate this period, but the availability of Gallay 1996, Fogelson 2004, and Trigger 1978 render reference to other reference works unnecessary. The latter two are highlighted here because of their coverage of the Eastern Seaboard, but the other regional volumes in that series are useful for the rest of the continent as well. Nolan 2008 is a useful reference to the parallel events in Europe.

Fogelson, Raymond D., ed. Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 14, Southeast. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2004.
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Part of the Smithsonian series of handbooks on Indians divided geographically. Like the other handbooks, this text contains essays on specific Indian peoples as well as thematic essays on subjects, including war. Its later appearance in the series means that this particular volume is more up-to-date than some others. An excellent introduction to the study of any given subject related to Native Americans of the region.
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Gallay, Alan, ed. Colonial Wars of North America, 1512–1763: An Encyclopedia. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities: Military History of the United States. New York: Garland, 1996.
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Authoritative and comprehensive examination of the colonial wars with essays contributed by leading scholars in the field. Deliberately constructed to avoid an Anglocentric focus.
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Nolan, Cathal J., ed. Wars of the Age of Louis XIV, 1650–1715: An Encyclopedia of Global Warfare and Civilization. Greenwood Encyclopedias of the Modern World Wars. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2008.
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Many of the wars fought in North America (though not all by any means) were connected to military events in Europe and in the Atlantic. Researchers seeking some European context for American conflicts in the 17th century can turn here.
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Trigger, Bruce G., ed. Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 15, Northeast. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978.
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Part of the Smithsonian series of handbooks on Indians divided geographically. This volume covers the Northeast, which actually extends well south into Virginia. Like the other handbooks, this text contains essays on specific Indian peoples as well as thematic essays on subjects, including war. An excellent introduction to the study of any given subject related to Native Americans of the region.
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Primary Sources

Many of the primary sources for colonial history are available in printed, multivolume series, whether the various Calendars of State Papers of England or accounts organized by colony (e.g., the Colonial Records of North Carolina). Many of those collections are now being made available online as the copyright on the printed volumes expires. Those sources are too many and too varied to list here. The works cited instead include some of the most important sets of narrative sources from the three major European powers competing in North America with a special focus on the very early period of colonization. Those early sources are the best we have for comparing precontact Native American society and warfare with that of later periods as well as for the initial European response to cultural difference. These editions have been selected either for their convenience and comprehensiveness or because they are the most authoritative. Champlain 1971; Clayton, et al. 1993; and Haile 1998 are useful as being among the earliest sustained contact narratives, and they contain substantial discussions of conflict. Although Orr 1897, a collection of Pequot War (1637) narratives, is included, most of the classic narrative sources for pre-1675 New England (e.g., William Bradford, William Wood) are not, primarily because there are simply too many. Church 1975, Hackett 1942, and Rowlandson 1997 provide narratives of two of the great Euro-Indian conflicts that emerged in the 1670s and 1680s. Thwaites 1896–1901 covers a much broader period but is a central source for ethnographic detail of Native American warfare practices.

Champlain, Samuel de. The Works of Samuel de Champlain. Edited by H. P. Biggar. 6 vols. Publications of the Champlain Society. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971.
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Champlain led the first successful French colonizing ventures into North America, and he also engaged in substantial and sustained warfare and alliances with various Indian peoples. His description of fighting the Iroquois is a staple of discussions of the early European-Indian military and technological encounter.
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Church, Benjamin. Diary of King Philip’s War, 1675–76. Chester, CT: Pequot, 1975.
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Church is often considered the father of the “ranger” style of fighting. His diary primarily recounts his efforts to defeat and then track down the Wampanoag Metacom (known to the English as King Philip), but it also includes some of Church’s continued ranging efforts in later wars through 1704. His family followed his example, and this journal was first published by his great grandson in the early 18th century.
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Clayton, Lawrence A., Vernon James Knight Jr., and Edward C. Moore, eds. The de Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America in 1539–1543. 2 vols. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993.
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Hernando de Soto led a large Spanish force on a circuitous route through the North American Southeast from 1539 to 1543 searching for the wealthy equivalent of Tenochtitlan. He never found it, but the several chroniclers of his disastrous campaign (some of whom are less reliable than others) provide invaluable accounts of late Mississippian Indian societies and their methods of war as well as rapid Spanish improvisation in response.
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Hackett, Charles Wilson, ed. Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682. 2 vols. Translated by Charmion Clair Shelby. Coronado Cuarto Centennial Publications. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942.
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One of the most important, revealing, and well-studied episodes on the Spanish frontier in the American Southwest, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 successfully, if temporarily, forced the Spanish out of the region. The Pueblos’ methods of war had markedly changed by the time of their revolt, but these records nevertheless remain useful in examining intercultural military adaptation as well as the Pueblos’ perception of violence and its meanings.
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Haile, Edward Wright, ed. Jamestown Narratives: Eyewitness Accounts of the Virginia Colony, the First Decade, 1607–1617. Champlain, VA: RoundHouse, 1998.
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The early English narratives of the wars with the Powhatans at the beginning of English colonization retain extraordinary importance. This compilation gathers virtually all the most significant narratives of the first years of the colony, although generally without much critical commentary. John Smith is here, but for a critical edition readers should turn to Philip L. Barbour’s The Complete Works of Captain John Smith, 1580–1631 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986).
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Orr, Charles, ed. History of the Pequot War: The Contemporary Accounts of Mason, Underhill, Vincent, and Gardener. Cleveland, OH: Helman-Taylor, 1897.
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It has often been claimed that the Puritan New Englanders’ war with the Pequots in 1637 set the pattern for Anglo-Indian wars to come. This volume collects the four military narratives of the war. Other accounts exist but are embedded in much longer documents; these four are exclusively focused on the war. They are presented with almost no editorial comment.
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Rowlandson, Mary. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed; Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson and Related Documents. Edited by Neal Salisbury. Bedford Series in History and Culture. Boston: Bedford, 1997.
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This is the classic and deeply influential captivity narrative describing Mary Rowlandson’s capture and captivity by the Wampanoag during King Philip’s War. The many captivity narratives that followed Rowlandson’s tended to build from this original model. In addition, her narrative, though shaped by her male interlocutors, reveals a great deal about a Native American society at war. This edition, designed for classroom use, also includes substantial critical commentary and additional relevant documents.
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Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791. 73 vols. Cleveland, OH: Burrows, 1896–1901.
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The Jesuit missionaries to New France, as part of their spiritual discipline, believed it necessary both to understand their new charges (including their languages) and to report their experiences with them. For the historian the Relations is almost unique in its ethnographic detail. Thwaites’s classic English translation is marred in places but remains the standard reference for Anglophones.
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Essay Anthologies

By its very nature, dependent as it is on multilingual archival research and familiarity with a plurality of cultures operating in four continents, Atlantic history lends itself to anthologies presenting thematically arranged collective endeavors. The field is filled with them. Some appear in this bibliography in other relevant sections, and occasionally individual essays focused on military matters have been extracted and referenced separately. Those cited here merit particular notice either for being entirely related to warfare issues or for covering a wide chronological and geographic zone. Ethridge and Shuck-Hall 2009 and Hudson and Tesser 1994 are specifically focused on changes in the North American Southeast, for which a lack of documents on this early period necessitates the combination of archaeology and history. Lee 2011 and Raudzens 2001 offer useful correctives to sweeping theories about European military superiority.

Ethridge, Robbie, and Sheri M. Shuck-Hall, eds. Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.
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The shatter zone thesis sees the arrival of Europeans, especially those participating in the Indian slave trade, as creating dramatic ripple effects in Indian societies, breaking them apart, creating new ones, fostering and escalating wars, and more. The essays here explore those effects among the Westo, Catawba, Shawnee, Creeks, Choctaw, Natchez, and more.
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Hudson, Charles, and Carmen Chaves Tesser, eds. The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South, 1521–1704. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994.
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Like Ethridge and Shuck-Hall 2009, this volume tries to capture the complex interplay of peoples in the poorly documented North American Southeast in the early years of European contact. This volume’s essays, however, are more focused on the earliest contacts, especially the Spanish expeditions and their residual effects.
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Lee, Wayne E., ed. Empires and Indigenes: Intercultural Alliance, Imperial Expansion, and Warfare in the Early Modern World. Warfare and Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2011.
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This volume of essays examines the European success at procuring local allies in various locales around the Atlantic and compares this with similar processes occurring in the Old World. Several essays deal with war and diplomacy in North America, studying how the process of alliance produced cultural and technical military changes. Contains both synthetic overviews and microstudies of specific cases. Good for classroom use in advanced Atlantic history courses.
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Raudzens, George, ed. Technology, Disease, and Colonial Conquests, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries: Essays Reappraising the Guns and Germs Theories. History of Warfare. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2001.
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Argues that Jared Diamond’s influential explanation for European expansion, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: Norton, 2005), has hijacked more nuanced explanations. Explicitly takes on Diamond’s thesis and, although not confined to the Atlantic or to the 17th century, offers a useful examination of European expansion and the role of military activity (or not) therein. Approximately half the essays deal with issues centered in North America.
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Eastern Native American Warfare

For far too long the separate study of Native American warfare barely existed. Increasingly, however, historians have acknowledged not only the key role Indian resistance played in shaping the colonial experience but also the processes of cultural syncretism in ways of war. Investigating these and other questions has required examining Native American warfare as its own phenomenon. Bibliographically, however, this is not always easy to show. Very often studies of Indian warfare are included within studies of a single people. Or equally often a single Euro-Indian conflict will form the narrative component, supporting a larger thesis about Euro-Indian war. The latter studies are included under the Impact of Contact, perhaps most importantly Malone 1991. Some of the most influential people (or “tribal”) studies are cited here (although few of these are confined in any way to the 17th century). Starkey 1998, Steele 1994, and Lee 2011 (all cited under General Overviews) are essential to the discussion of Native American warfare. Some of the resources in this section (e.g., Trelease 2009, Salisbury 1982, Gleach 1997, Richter 1992) were chosen to provide geographic coverage, noting especially the Iroquois and New York, New England, and Virginia Indians, although Richter 1992 is also a critically influential study of Iroquois adoptive war that has significantly influenced the field. The southern experience is in Crane 2004 (cited under the Early Imperial Wars), Gallay 2002 (cited under Euro-Indian Conflicts), and Ethridge 2010 (cited under the Impact of Contact). Jones 2004 is geographically comprehensive if on a narrow topic. Lee 2007 and Baker and Reid 2004 both address large questions about the nature of Native American warfare. In general, however, the two major historiographical questions that continue to dominate the military history of Native American warfare are frustratingly simple, because they are so hard to answer: what did Indian warfare look like before contact, and how did contact change those patterns? These questions each get their own section, and indeed some of the most useful work is under the Impact of Contact.

Baker, Emerson W., and John G. Reid. “Amerindian Power in the Early Modern Northeast: A Reappraisal.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 61.1 (2004): 77–106.
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Argues for considering Indian warfare at the strategic, not just the tactical, level. Baker and Reid see the field treating Indians as practicing an inferior brand of warfare: “primitive,” doomed to fall before state-based, modernized European armies. The authors want Native warfare to be considered as rational within its own framework and contend that the strategic thought of the Wabanakis successfully defended them in the late 17th century and for decades to follow. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Gleach, Frederic W. Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures. Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
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Anthropological study of English and Powhatan cultural misunderstanding. Not only analyzes the Powhatans’ tactical methods but also draws two key conclusions. The first is that the Powhatans had an aesthetic of war in which certain forms of violence were used because they conveyed messages and satisfied a desire to express wit or irony. The second is that the 1622 attack was intended to be a lesson that would lead to reestablishing proper relations.
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Jones, David E. Native North American Armor, Shields, and Fortifications. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004.
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A useful survey of the defensive technology of the entire continent for a broad period, organized by region, as used by Native Americans. Not always as chronologically specific as one might like, but the text presents a substantial amount of archaeological data often unknown to historians.
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Lee, Wayne E. “Peace Chiefs and Blood Revenge: Patterns of Restraint in Native American Warfare in the Contact and Colonial Eras.” Journal of Military History 71.3 (2007): 701–741.
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Catalogues restraints on the frequency and intensity of Indian war, both ideological and structural, and suggests that precontact Indians were perfectly willing to wage “total war” but that such events were relatively rare because of a structural balance between offensive and defensive techniques.
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Richter, Daniel K. The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
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A full study of the Iroquois peoples that provides the context for and greatly expands the author’s deeply influential article Richter 1983 (cited under the Impact of Contact), which contains his specific argument about adoptive war. This book not only contains that argument but also situates the Iroquois within the larger strategic dilemma they faced as the “hinge” between French and English expansion.
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Salisbury, Neal. Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500–1643. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
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One of many surveys of early New England, this volume is better than most at examining the nature of conflict between the English and the Indians and how those conflicts evolved through a series of phases, corresponding roughly to the demographic presence of Europeans on the continent. Also offers a key examination of the Pequot War.
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Trelease, Allen W. Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century. Ithaca, NY: Fall Creek, 2009.
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Originally published in 1960. Not primarily a military history, this work is nevertheless still the most useful place to turn for studying conflict in the New York area in this period, especially the development of the diplomatic nexus between the Iroquois and first the Dutch and then the English (after 1664).
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Precontact/Protohistoric

Our understanding of Native American warfare prior to European arrival inevitably rests on archaeological evidence buttressed by ethnographic comparison and the earliest European witnesses. Lambert 2002, Milner 1999, and Dye 2009 provide crucial surveys of the archaeological evidence. Keeley 1996 offers a crucial theoretical stimulus to reevaluating the extent and violence of precontact warfare, a task more modestly tackled in Axtell 1981 but in that case on the highly emotive subject of scalping. Hudson 1997 and Snyder 2010, also archaeologically informed, tackle the sketchy documentary record of the very early Spanish contacts.

Axtell, James. “The Unkindest Cut; or, Who Invented Scalping? A Case Study.” In The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America. By James Axtell, 16–35. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
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Written to refute a 1960s revisionist argument that scalping was a practice originally foreign to Native Americans. Axtell conclusively demonstrates that it was in fact a precontact Indian practice (his historical argument has been buttressed by further archaeological work) but that its meaning shifted in the postcontact environment and it became more widespread.
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Dye, David H. War Paths, Peace Paths: An Archaeology of Cooperation and Conflict in Native Eastern North America. Issues in Eastern Woodlands Archaeology. Lanham, MD: AltaMira, 2009.
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A specialist of Mississippian warfare, Dye surveys each of the major periodizations—Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Woodland, and so on (with late Woodland divided into regions). This is the best single source for precontact warfare. Follows many archaeologists in focusing on the material causes of war (resource conflict), of which supposed motivations like vengeance or adoption were merely symptoms.
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Hudson, Charles. Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South’s Ancient Chiefdoms. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1997.
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Hudson has long been a leading ethnohistorian of late Mississippian society with a special expertise in the Spanish accounts of the region. This is a kind of summa of his work, intended for nonspecialist audiences but retaining a full scholarly apparatus. Nicely summarizes the Spanish–southeastern Indian conflicts and the cultural systems underlying each side.
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Keeley, Lawrence H. War before Civilization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
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Not specifically about North America but a key text in spurring the ongoing reevaluation of the lethality and frequency of and motivations for nonstate warfare. Keeley is an archaeologist irritated at the tendency within his discipline to downplay evidence for endemic lethal nonstate war. His figure of 25 percent annual death rates from war in most nonstate societies is now widely cited (and also disputed).
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Lambert, Patricia M. “The Archaeology of War: A North American Perspective.” Journal of Archaeological Research 10.3 (2002): 207–241.
DOI: 10.1023/A:1016063710831Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Surveys archaeological work across North America with regard to the evidence for Native American warfare. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Milner, George R. “Warfare in Prehistoric and Early Historic Eastern North America.” Journal of Archaeological Research 7.2 (1999): 105–151.
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Like Lambert 2002 and overlapping somewhat in content, this article is more focused on the Eastern Seaboard. An invaluable summary of the many archaeological discoveries relevant to precontact warfare in eastern North America. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Snyder, Christina. Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
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Since Richter 1983 (cited under the Impact of Contact), most generalizations about Indian captivity assume some form of adoptive warfare. Snyder reminds us that capture could have a variety of meanings, from adoption to a source of income to simple forced labor within an Indian society.
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The Impact of Contact

Much of the most important work on Native American warfare has focused on this question, often unfortunately leaning on a poorly established understanding of what precontact warfare looked like. Malone 1991 was only intended to speak to southern New England, and even within that region there are problems with the author’s interpretation. Nevertheless this remains one of the most widely cited studies, because the thesis is so simple and compelling. Patrick M. Malone argues that prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Indians of New England did not practice a particularly lethal form of war. Meanwhile, the arriving Europeans were accustomed to the ferocious violence of the European Wars of Religion (see Ferling 1980, cited under General Overviews) and therefore quickly turned to that form of war against their Indian enemies. The Mystic massacre during the Pequot War (1637) becomes the famous exemplar of this European tendency, and the supposed Narragansett outrage that the killing of escaping Pequots was “too furious, and slays too many men” (John Underhill, Newes from America [New York: Da Capo, 1971], pp. 42–43) was rendered iconic first in Hirsch 1988 and then again in Malone 1991 (with further commentary in Karr 1998). Abler 1992 joined the discussion by pointing out a variety of forms of cultural difference that contributed to violence escalation, an argument in some ways furthered by Lipman 2008. Malone’s argument also has a technological dimension, suggesting that the Indians quickly learned to use European firearms (usually more effectively than Europeans) and also to practice their form of total war, including burning settlements. Fausz 1979 earlier made a similar argument about firearm adoption among the Virginia Powhatans. Richter 1983 shows clearly how the Iroquois practice of adoptive warfare was stressed by the postcontact disease and conflict environment, leading the Iroquois to increase the frequency of their wars in the 17th century, seeking ever more adoptees to restore their demographic power. Keener 1999 returns to technological issues, finding that even the simple adoption of iron axes greatly changed the efficacy of Indian assaults on fortified places. Many of the works listed here are bouncing off one or more of these issues of escalation as a result of contact (or not) within the Native American ideology and practice of war.

Abler, Thomas S. “Scalping, Torture, Cannibalism, and Rape: An Ethnohistorical Analysis of Conflicting Cultural Values in War.” Anthropologica 34.1 (1992): 3–20.
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Incisively argues for different expectations of wartime violence among Europeans and Indians. Examines the four titular behaviors: Indians practiced scalping, torture, and ritual cannibalism; they never raped female captives; Europeans had a different tradition of torture and quickly adopted scalping; but they never took up cannibalism. This conflict of rules enabled each to label the other barbarous and contributed to an escalation of violence.
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Ethridge, Robbie. From Chicaza to Chickasaw: The European Invasion and the Transformation of the Mississippian World, 1540–1715. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.5149/9780807899335_ethridgeSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The opening chapters describe the nature of the Mississippian people’s resistance to Hernando de Soto with some discussion of their warfare. The text then turns to the 17th-century creation of a “shatter zone” caused by the English desire for Indian slaves. The ripple effects of that trade spread throughout the Southeast, transforming Native societies by creating new configurations of peoples.
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Fausz, J. Frederick. “Fighting ‘Fire’ with Firearms: The Anglo-Powhatan Arms Race in Early Virginia.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 3.4 (1979): 33–50.
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Contends that the initial shock and fear created by firearms successfully deterred and then defeated the Powhatans in 1609–1614. Afterward, however, the Powhatans learned to trade for, capture, and use firearms, which they did very successfully between 1615 and 1622. Furthermore, they became more adept users of them than their English enemies. Finally, claims that the mortality of wounds created by firearms moved Indian tactics away from open battle. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Hirsch, Adam J. “The Collision of Military Cultures in Seventeenth-Century New England.” Journal of American History 74.4 (1988): 1187–1212.
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Widely read and cited; examines the Anglo-Pequot conflict of 1637. Europeans expected to fight a conventional style of open battle mediated by specific, well-understood rules of conflict. The Pequots had different expectations of war with different rules, and they did not seek open battle. The early stages of the conflict generated incongruence and frustration, leading to English escalation and the total destruction of Mystic. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Karr, Ronald Dale. “‘Why Should You Be So Furious?’ The Violence of the Pequot War.” Journal of American History 85.3 (1998): 876–909.
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A response to Hirsch 1988. Karr notes that the colonists did not arrive with a strictly one-dimensional, conventional understanding of combat. They employed a variety of styles of warfare in both the Old World and the New, some of which provided models for the extremity of the violence used at Mystic. The real issue unleashing violence in 1637 and afterward was the Indian inability to establish “reciprocity” within the European system. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Keener, Craig S. “An Ethnohistorical Analysis of Iroquois Assault Tactics Used against Fortified Settlements of the Northeast in the Seventeenth Century.” In Special Issue: Warfare and Violence in Ethnohistorical Perspective. Edited By Neil L. Whitehead. Ethnohistory 46.4 (1999): 777–807.
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Analyzes archaeological and documentary evidence of how the Iroquois attacked palisades. Key to this story is the change in the technological basis. Keener sees the availability of iron axes as a tipping point in rendering palisades vulnerable to assault. The new vulnerability of fortified towns represented an important shift in the balance of offensive and defensive technology and helped the Iroquois in their major defeat of the Huron. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Lipman, Andrew. “‘A Meanes to Knitt Them Togeather’: The Exchange of Body Parts in the Pequot War.” William & Mary Quarterly 3d ser., 65.1 (2008): 3–28.
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Zooms into a specific manifestation of cultural difference in wartime: the meaning and use for the body parts of enemy dead. For Indians, they could serve as objects of exchange, symbolizing and reinforcing relationships, whereas for Europeans, they could be used as objects of display, signifying dominance or control. These differences emerged strongly only during the Pequot War. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Malone, Patrick M. The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians. Lanham, MD: Madison, 1991.
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Deeply influential but flawed examination of changes in Native American warfare in New England. Malone asserts that European total war techniques shocked New England Indians, who nevertheless quickly adopted them. His analysis of the Native adoption of firearms, their preference for flintlocks, and their development of marksmanship and even some rudimentary repair capabilities remains useful.
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Richter, Daniel K. “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 40.4 (1983): 528–559.
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Extremely influential. Richter describes the Iroquois “mourning war” complex, in which the deaths of relatives could inspire a military response: an attack to procure captives, some to adopt, others to torture in an expiation of grief. Disease and increasing conflict led to even more mourning wars in an ultimately self-defeating attempt to restore their demographic stability through adoption of captives. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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The European Military Background

It is essential to understand the ongoing European experience of war in order to understand what occurred in North America. Ferling 1980, Starkey 1998, and Lee 2011 (all cited under General Overviews) spend significant time situating the North American experience within European precedents. The works listed here focus more exclusively on Europe. There is of course an enormous literature on European warfare for the era 1500–1700; our emphasis on North America, however, allows us to concentrate on several select issues. One of the most important historiographical issues for early modern European military history is the question of how or whether the European states achieved military dominance over the rest of the world. Much of this literature has fallen under the rubric of whether Europe experienced a “military revolution,” which thus gets its own section here, the Military Revolution. Anglophone scholars have been the most active in examining European–North American connections when it comes to warfare, hence England and Ireland here and no separate section on France or Spain. Scholars of New France increasingly look at the transatlantic connection but mostly for the 18th century. Many studies of the Spanish Empire and its military precedents in Spain exist, but most focus on Central and South America. Issues of ideology and its relationship to colonization and military activity have been studied more comparatively and are not restricted to the English colonies in this section.

The Military Revolution

A much debated subject. The basic contention is that the onset of gunpowder led to a radical transformation of European military systems, a transformation that granted the Europeans a competitive advantage during the early modern era. The exact components of the changes, the chronology, the causative role of gunpowder, and even the supposed superiority of European militaries have all been subject to exhaustive scrutiny. Parker 1996 (originally published in 1988) remains the standard statement, whereas Rogers 1995 collects the various arguments on the subject. Black 2011 restates the various objections to Parker 1996.

Black, Jeremy. Beyond the Military Revolution: War in the Seventeenth-Century World. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
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Black has been one of the most strenuous critics of the military revolution formulation of Parker 1996. Black instead points to changes at the very end of the 17th century as being more important while also discounting European superiority on a worldwide comparative basis during the 16th and 17th centuries. This survey offers a strong comparative discussion for military systems around the world during this period.
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Parker, Geoffrey. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
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Originally published in 1988. Identifies a transformation of warfare in Europe between 1450 and 1650. Siege artillery undermined the castle, leading to the creation of bastioned artillery fortresses, which in combination with tactical changes led to the firing of volleys by disciplined infantry formations. The fortress and disciplined infantry played a role in securing European expansion, but even more critical was the use of the improved artillery technology aboard ships.
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Rogers, Clifford J., ed. The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Transformation of Early Modern Europe. History and Warfare. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995.
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The indispensable accumulation of essays that originated the military revolution debate (Parker 1996 was not the first) and which responded to Geoffrey Parker’s formulation.
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England and Ireland

There are two issues here. One is the question of whether the English experience of colonizing Ireland affected England’s military and colonizing practices in North America (see Lee 2011, cited under General Overviews). Canny 1976 and Canny 2001 give the critical history of the relevant events in Ireland. The other is the extent to which England participated in the more general European military revolution. England had long been considered a latecomer to those changes, but scholarship is increasingly showing that England was not as isolated from those developments as previously thought. Furthermore, as Brewer 1989 and Wheeler 1999 show, England (later Great Britain) was precocious in creating more sophisticated financial mechanisms applicable to wartime spending. Boynton 1967 is foundational on the somewhat different issue of the transference of the English militia system to the North American colonies.

Boynton, Lindsay. The Elizabethan Militia, 1558–1638. Studies in Political History. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967.
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A classic work much cited in studies of colonial militia systems (see Colonial Military Institutions and Infrastructure). Boynton reviews the key changes in the English militia system when that institution was being transplanted to and reinvented in the first English colonies overseas.
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Brewer, John. The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783. New York: Knopf, 1989.
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Although much of this book deals with the 18th century, Brewer’s analysis is central to understanding English fiscal capacity in King William’s War. Identifies a post–Glorious Revolution trend that allowed Britain to develop into what Brewer calls the fiscal-military state.
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Canny, Nicholas P. The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: A Pattern Established, 1565–76. Hassocks, UK: Harvester, 1976.
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A central text in describing how English efforts in 16th-century Ireland established certain patterns for English colonization overseas, including attitudes toward “others” and strategic understanding of what is necessary to bring an alien people under control. Suggests that during this period the English shifted away from considering the Irish as potential subjects and moved toward replacing them through a process of plantation (colonization).
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Canny, Nicholas. Making Ireland British, 1580–1650. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198200918.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A monumental study of the ongoing process of English/British colonization and control of Ireland in the later plantation period up through the rebellion of 1641. Closely examines the Munster plantation of the 1580s and the early-17th-century plantation in Ulster. A key comparative context for similar efforts in North America.
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Wheeler, James Scott. The Making of a World Power: War and the Military Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1999.
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An important precursor to Brewer 1989. Almost entirely a study of war financing in 17th-century England arguing that the English Civil War (especially) forced Parliament to invent more sophisticated and successful methods of raising income, greatly enhancing the potential military power of England.
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Ideology

A key theme in understanding military activity in the Atlantic world and North America is the role ideology played in shaping violence and war against both the Indians and imperial competitors. A vibrant and complex subfield, exemplified by Pagden 1995 and Seed 1995, has emerged, comparing the different European religious and national ideologies related to colonization. Cañizares-Esguerra 2006 presents something of a contrast, arguing for as much similarity as difference, at least among Spaniards and the English. There is also a long-standing discussion of how or whether European ideologies evolved toward a racist and eliminationist view of Native Americans, here represented by Oberg 1999. Many of the works listed here are not strictly military histories, but without understanding what Europeans thought about Native Americans and about their own legitimacy as colonizers, it is impossible to understand the wars they fought against them. Furthermore, works like Dederer 1990 and Schwoerer 1974 have examined how attitudes toward war and institutionalized militaries affected colonial military systems. Little 2007 provides a different perspective entirely, examining the role of English and Indian ideologies of gender and how they affected wartime experiences, a theme also taken up by Romero 2011.

Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge. Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550–1700. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
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In contrast to works like Seed 1995 and Pagden 1995, which find very different discourses in Spanish and English justifications of colonization, Cañizares-Esguerra sees unity in a “satanization” of the continent. Spaniards and the English (the latter much influenced by the former) shared a view that the continent was dominated by Satan’s influence and needed purging, violently if necessary.
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Dederer, John Morgan. War in America to 1775: Before Yankee Doodle. American Social Experience. New York: New York University Press, 1990.
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A neglected but sophisticated intellectual history of the methods of colonial warfare. Dederer identifies several significant influences on English colonists’ understanding of war: classical texts, biblical texts, the more immediate history of European warfare, and recent colonial experiences of war.
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Little, Ann M. Abraham in Arms: War and Gender in Colonial New England. Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
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Reinterprets early English-Indian conflict through an analysis of competing notions of manhood. Not a connected narrative but rather a reexamination of the ways specific conflicts or experiences were mediated, or inflected, by attitudes toward gender. In Little’s analysis, visions of appropriate gender behavior affected choices about war.
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Oberg, Michael Leroy. Dominion and Civility: English Imperialism and Native America, 1585–1685. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
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Divides the English into “metropolitans” and “frontiersmen.” The former tended to cleave to a vision of incorporating the Indians as subjects (after a suitable process of civilizing and converting). The frontiersmen, for reasons of greed or emerging racism but ultimately driven by a desire for more land, resisted such a paternalistic approach, favoring violent expulsion.
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Pagden, Anthony. Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain, and France c. 1500–c. 1800. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
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Indispensable comparative treatment of differing European ideologies of colonization and the resultant consequences on Native American populations (compare Cañizares-Esguerra 2006). The British justified their control, asserting that the land was vacant, and lacked any vision for incorporating Native Americans. The Spanish claimed dominion over people, not land, and that claim required a just war conquest theory.
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Romero, R. Todd. Making War and Minting Christians: Masculinity, Religion, and Colonialism in Early New England. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011.
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Like Little 2007, explores similarities and differences in European and Indian notions of masculinity and the behaviors necessary to sustain it. Includes one section on warfare that also emphasizes certain key similarities in both culture’s view of men’s role in war, but also finds evidence for growing English disenchantment with Native methods.
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Schwoerer, Lois G. “No Standing Armies!” The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth- Century England. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.
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Key study of the roots of the well-known English dislike of standing armies—a dislike famously transferred to the English colonies. Centers on the events of the English Civil War and the post-Restoration attempts to create a standing army. Includes an extended discussion of how England, before the English Civil War, was predisposed to be antistanding army because it already had an antimilitary bias or ideology.
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Seed, Patricia. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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Comparable to Pagden 1995. Argues for different cultural outlooks among the various European powers on how one comes to “own” territory. Finds the English to have been unique in their emphasis on habitation: claiming or discovering was insufficient, one must also inhabit. In contrast, the Spanish cultural system emphasized dominion over people justified by the need to convert.
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Colonial Military Institutions and Infrastructure

For as much as European precedents were central to the development of colonial military institutions and even colonial ways of war in North America, there remained significant change and significant variability both within and among the various European powers. A major focus of study has been the militias of the various English colonies, each of which had its own institutional history and trajectory. As with the institutional studies, examinations and comparisons of technology and fortification techniques can provide a useful handle on how the competing European powers understood the military challenge of North America. The two works Verney 1991 and Webb 1979 are institutional, but neither is about the militia per se nor about technology and infrastructure.

Verney, Jack. The Good Regiment: The Carignan-Salières Regiment in Canada, 1665–1668. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991.
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A study of the only French regular regiment dispatched to Canada in the 17th century, a unit that has often been credited with having dealt a serious blow to the Iroquois in 1666. Follows the regiment from its post in France through deployment, campaign, partial settlement in Canada, and ultimate redeployment to France of the remainder. A compartmentalized campaign/regimental history that is not fully contextualized within ongoing French-Indian relations. Nevertheless useful.
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Webb, Stephen Saunders. The Governors-General: The English Army and the Definition of the Empire, 1569–1681. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979.
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Contends that England’s early experience in the New World was built around “garrison government” by military veterans and officials. The military aspects of the empire became stronger after 1676. Exhaustively researched, this is a valuable survey of the influence of military men and military thinking on the English colonies around the Atlantic with a special focus on Jamaica and Virginia and the conflicts engendered there by the imposition of military government.
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Militia

The militia is often considered an almost paradigmatic part of the English colonial experience. Often lauded as a component of incipient American democracy, in fact the militia as a military force went through significant changes over the colonial period, often very different in each of the colonies. Most of the English colonies had only a few years’ life in the 17th century, and most institutional studies of colonial militias spend the majority of their bulk dealing with the 18th century. The major exceptions are Virginia (Shea 1983), Massachusetts (Breen 1980, Zelner 2009), and Connecticut (Selesky 1990). Maryland’s militia remains poorly studied. For these reasons, most of the militia studies are not listed here, although Whisker 1997 can offer a basic survey of those militias not otherwise mentioned. The 17th-century French Canadian militia needs additional study, but Eccles 1983 is a good start. Spanish military systems are discussed in the West and the Southwest.

Breen, T. H. “The Covenanted Militia of Massachusetts Bay: English Background and New World Development.” In Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America. By T. H. Breen, 24–45. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
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Suggests that the tremendous turmoil created in England by the attempt to create the “perfect militia” between 1625 and 1628 was much in the minds of the Massachusetts Bay Colony leaders when they created their own covenanted militia—particularly in regard to the extent of popular participation in election of officers. The essay then follows the rise and fall of that trend.
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Eccles, W. J. The Canadian Frontier, 1534–1760. Rev. ed. Histories of the American Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983.
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A basic survey of French Canada until the British conquest. Provides an added dimension to discussion of the 17th-century conflicts between the French and the English. Eccles’s own interest in French colonial military structure is reflected in this text. For more, see his Frontenac: The Courtier Governor (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1959; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003).
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Selesky, Harold E. War and Society in Colonial Connecticut. Yale Historical Publications. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.
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Although mostly about the 18th century, this text also contains an extensive discussion of the earlier period. Selesky finds that during King Philip’s War more than 75 percent of adult males saw militia service, but those numbers required some conscription beyond the usual call-up of community militia. Those conscripted tended to be unmarried, propertyless young men. Much of the argument is about the evolution of this system into something different in the next century.
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Shea, William L. The Virginia Militia in the Seventeenth Century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.
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Operational and institutional history of the Virginia militia. Finds four key phases, from the veteran professional force of the initial landing to a more traditional community militia of the 1620s, to a regulated system based on 1650s English models, and finally to a further remodeled force after Bacon’s Rebellion. An excellent source for the militia’s campaigns in the various Indian conflicts as well as the basic outline of its organizational evolution.
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Whisker, James Biser. The American Colonial Militia. 5 vols. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1997.
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There are a variety of unpublished dissertations and monographs dedicated to various colonies’ militia systems and their evolutions. This comprehensive and thoroughly researched effort to describe all the colonial militias, however, is the place for researchers to begin. Primarily an institutional history consisting of an overview volume and additional volumes organized by region. An indispensable reference.
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Zelner, Kyle F. A Rabble in Arms: Massachusetts Towns and Militiamen during King Philip’s War. Warfare and Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
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Zelner’s examination of different towns in Essex County, Massachusetts, finds that the heretofore oft-ignored institution of the town militia committee exercised significant control over who served in expeditions out of the county. Their choices tended to emphasize those men with a specific social profile: they were young, unmarried, not the first born, and lacking in strong community ties; they were often not farmers and often were troublemakers of some kind.
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Weapons and Forts

In part because of late-20th- and early-21st-century archaeological work, especially at Jamestown, European colonial fortifications increasingly appear to be useful for analyzing the transfer of European military practice to North America. De Quesada 2010, Chartrand 2005, and Chartrand 2011 are introductions to this still emergent subject. An older literature has examined the arms and armor of the colonists (Peterson 1956, Brown 1980), and that subject has been reenergized by the finds at Jamestown (Straube 2006).

Brown, M. L. Firearms in Colonial America: The Impact on History and Technology, 1492–1792. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1980.
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A detailed and comprehensive look at weapons development around the continent, including all the European powers and even the influence of Native Americans. A virtually complete reference work but idiosyncratically organized. Attempts, among other things, to establish a connection between firearms production and later industrialization. For the earlier period, however, the text is useful for examining change and evolution from European precedents as well as for tracing some aspects of the gun trade with Indians.
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Chartrand, René. French Fortresses in North America, 1535–1763: Québec, Montréal, Louisbourg, and New Orleans. Fortress 27. Oxford: Osprey, 2005.
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Chartrand has made a career of studying French colonial fortifications. Although this volume is published by a house noted for general interest volumes, it is nevertheless a valuable introduction to the topic, and its liberal use of illustrations and reconstructions is most helpful. Chartrand has two additional volumes from Osprey on French fortifications in different regions primarily concerning 18th-century developments.
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Chartrand, René. The Forts of Colonial North America: British, Dutch, and Swedish Colonies. Fortress 101. Oxford: Osprey, 2011.
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Like Chartrand 2005, this volume is published by a house noted for general interest volumes, but this is still a useful survey. Those interested in more detailed studies should pursue the archaeological reports on sites discussed in this volume, especially the series of volumes on Jamestown by William Kelso.
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de Quesada, Alejandro. Spanish Colonial Fortifications in North America, 1565–1822. Fortress 94. Oxford: Osprey, 2010.
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Much like Chartrand 2005 and Chartrand 2011. A popular presentation of Spanish colonial fortification by a respected scholar, lavishly illustrated and with good bibliographic references. An excellent starting point.
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Peterson, Harold L. Arms and Armor in Colonial America, 1526–1783. New York: Bramhall, 1956.
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Perhaps replaced by Brown 1980, this remains a classic account of (nonartillery) firearms in North America. The first part of the book covers 1526–1688 and includes Spanish, French, British, Dutch, and Swedish arms and armor. No single thesis drives the work, but those seeking to understand technological capabilities and changes during this period will do well to begin here.
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Straube, Beverly A. “‘Unfitt for Any Moderne Service’? Arms and Armour from James Fort.” In Special Issue: Jamestown, 1607–2007. Post-Medieval Archaeology 40.1 (2006): 33–61.
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A complete review of the arms and armor from the Jamestown excavations. Argues against seeing the early colony as poorly equipped with outdated equipment. The colonists adjusted body armor to provide better protection against Indian arrows, and they continued to use skirmishing weapons considered outmoded by their European equivalents. Dependent on the matchlock in the early years, the colonists rapidly adopted the snaphaunce, which was more suitable to local conditions. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Euro-Indian Conflicts

Much of the late-20th- and early-21st-century work on Euro-Indian warfare in the early period of colonization has focused on how those conflicts altered the conditions of life and social organization among Native Americans. Those works have therefore been cited under the Impact of Contact. This has been especially true for the wars in the Southeast (e.g., Ethridge 2010, cited under the Impact of Contact) but is true for the Northeast as well, and thus Malone 1991, Hirsch 1988, Karr 1998 (all cited under the Impact of Contact), and other works are grouped in that section, although they are also narratives of specific conflicts. The works here tend either to be more strictly narrative accounts of a single Euro-Indian war or to make a specific argument about the nature of that conflict. For 17th-century North America, a number of seemingly paradigmatic Euro-Indian conflicts have received substantial coverage. Fausz 1990 and Vaughan 1978 treat the early English-Powhatan conflicts in Virginia, including the 1622 “massacre” (see also Gleach 1997, cited under Eastern Native American Warfare). Cave 1996 presents a full narrative of the Pequot War (1637) in Connecticut, whereas Lepore 1998, Schultz and Tougias 1999, Drake 1999, and Warren 2014 examine King Philip’s War (1675–1676) from different perspectives. For the Pueblo Revolt (1680), see the West and the Southwest. The French conflict with the Iroquois has also garnered substantial attention, and several works in other sections pick up part of that story, but White 2011 also offers an important interpretation of the wider context of those conflicts. The Southeast (outside of Virginia) did not see such conflicts until the 18th century (English raids into Spanish Florida, the Yamassee War, the Tuscarora War), but the smaller wars with the Carolinian coastal peoples are covered in Gallay 2002 and Ethridge 2010 (cited under the Impact of Contact). In many ways the Early Imperial Wars were as much Euro-Indian wars as anything else, so the researcher should also turn to that section.

Cave, Alfred A. The Pequot War. Native Americans of the Northeast. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.
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Detailed narrative of the war. Explores the origins of the war in trade competition among a variety of players. Confirms that older presumptions about Pequot aggression were not the root of the conflict but denies that it was caused by Puritan greed for land or control of trade. Instead, finds a Puritan ideology that saw the Indians as the devil’s servants.
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Drake, James D. King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England, 1675–1676. Native Americans of the Northeast. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999.
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Both a narrative and a thesis-driven recounting of King Philip’s War. Although this war is usually conceived as a strictly English-Indian war, Drake argues that sides were not so clearly drawn. Indeed, he asserts that prewar New England had become a deeply intertwined society of English and Indians and that the outbreak of war found as many Indians fighting with the English as against—hence the titular claim for the conflict as a civil war.
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Fausz, J. Frederick. “An ‘Abundance of Blood Shed on Both Sides’: England’s First Indian War, 1609–1614.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 98.1 (1990): 3–56.
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Fausz is the author of a number of important articles on the early English-Powhatan wars, and his dissertation remains important for the study of the 1622 war. This article is cited here because it is one of the few to consider the whole period of initial fighting (1609–1614) as a single integrated conflict and to narrate it as such. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
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Gallay sees early South Carolinians artificially inciting wars to generate Indian captives. This economic incentive for Indians to enslave other Indians, by implication, massively changed their motivations for war and presumably their style of war. Eventually, desperate Carolina Indians turned their now unified anger on South Carolina in the catastrophic Yamassee War of 1715.
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Lepore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. New York: Knopf, 1998.
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Beautifully crafted analysis of the colonials’ perception of themselves and of their enemies during King Philip’s War with an extended epilogue on the memory of the war in American history. Discovers the New Englanders reacting strongly against a perceived threat to their “Englishness,” leading them to fight a merciless style of war, which further undermined their sense of themselves. They therefore rewrote the history of the war to justify their conduct.
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Schultz, Eric B., and Michael J. Tougias. King Philip’s War: The History and Legacy of America’s Forgotten Conflict. Woodstock, VT: Countryman, 1999.
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In some ways a more standard operational account of the war. The first and third sections provide a narrative well seeded with primary source accounts of the war. The middle section is more encyclopedic, providing additional details about the communities and battles discussed in the other sections. Not driven by a thesis and in many ways more helpful to a traveler in the region than to a scholar.
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Vaughan, Alden T. “‘Expulsion of the Salvages’: English Policy and the Virginia Massacre of 1622.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 35.1 (1978): 57–84.
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Vaughan contends that the first generation of colonists to Jamestown arrived with a “willing to be friends” attitude, hoping for accommodation (compare Oberg 1999, cited under Ideology). The 1622 war (often called the 1622 massacre) marked a turning point, after which English attitudes toward Indians became uniformly intolerant and separatist. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Warren, Jason W. Connecticut Unscathed: Victory in the Great Narragansett War, 1675–1676. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.
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An important corrective to standard narratives. Argues that alone among New England colonies, Connecticut successfully cultivated alliances and military support from Native Americans and as a result suffered much less damage during King Philip’s War. Also argues that white Connecticut forces retained European tactics rather than adapting Indian ones.
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White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. 2d ed. Cambridge Studies in North American History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
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An indispensable and influential classic covering a vast chronological range and much of the northern half of the continent. This book coined the now widely used term “middle ground,” meaning a physical and metaphorical space within which neither European (here, mostly French) nor Indian society was capable of dominating and therefore within which both sides learned to live with the other, mutually adapting some of the other’s ways.
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The Early Imperial Wars

Given how central Native Americans were to the imperial conflicts, there is a certain artificiality in dividing the Euro-Indian wars from them, but it is true that the addition of European powers to the equation changed the game. From a Native American perspective, the motives for attacking the English frontier remained essentially the same—a sense of pressure on land and the requirements of vengeance—but the material support for doing so vastly increased. Meanwhile, English strategies now had to include attacking French bases in Canada rather than just fending off or retaliating for frontier raids. The imperial wars are defined broadly here to include, for example, the 16th- and early-17th-century Anglo-Spanish conflict (Lane 1998) as well as the mid-century Anglo-Dutch wars, best covered in the larger surveys, for example, Gipson 1936–1970 (cited under General Overviews). Traditionally, however, the term has been applied to the predominantly Anglo-French wars, beginning with King William’s War of 1689–1697, which had very substantial European and oceanic components in addition to the fighting in North America (mostly in New England). That war too is usually folded into larger studies of the imperial wars but here appears as a key part of Eames 2011 and Drake 1897. Crane 2004 offers a broad Southern perspective on the early imperial wars often missing from standard surveys that focus on the Northeast. Francis Parkman’s famously prejudiced if colorful versions are not included here.

Crane, Verner W. The Southern Frontier, 1670–1732. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004.
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A comprehensive history of the arrangement and rearrangement of power and trade in the Southeast after the founding of the Carolina Colony. Still extremely useful for its narrative of European powers’ intentions and involvements although now much supplemented by the ethnohistoric work on southeastern Indians. Still the best single source for a narrative of the early imperial conflicts (English, French, and Spanish) in the region.
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Drake, Samuel Adams. The Border Wars of New England, Commonly Called King William’s and Queen Anne’s Wars. New York: Scribner’s, 1897.
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A truly antiquated history but nevertheless a fully composed narrative of operations in both the titular conflicts. Filled with local knowledge and sometimes too reliant on undocumented local tradition but one of the best sources to turn to for an outline of events and the perspective of the English decision makers.
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Eames, Steven C. Rustic Warriors: Warfare and the Provincial Soldier on the New England Frontier, 1689–1748. Warfare and Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2011.
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Based on the author’s 1988 dissertation but only revised for publication in the early 21st century. Argues that the conflicts that occurred between King Philip’s War (1675–1676) and the French and Indian War (1754–1763) were fundamentally different from those before and after. Investigates New Englanders’ tactical and operational methods. Generally supports Grenier 2005 (cited under General Overviews), but there is much more here on the attritional quality to New England warfare and the role of frontier fortification.
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Lane, Kris E. Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500–1750. Latin American Realities. Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 1998.
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Produced for a series in Latin American history with a focus on the Caribbean and South America, this shows the ways the English sought to plunder the Spanish. Self-confessedly designed for students and written from secondary sources. Useful because many other popular histories of piracy only deal with the later so-called golden age at the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th.
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The West and the Southwest

Extraordinary work expanding our understanding of “American” history has been done since the 1990s. For generations, historians have focused on the English colonies as part of a historiography that looked forward to the creation of the United States. That story inevitably included the wars with the French and the Spanish, but those nations entered the story as combatants against the English colonies. Since the 1960s there has been greater attention to the role of Native Americans within that story, but the literature still had a tendency to serve as a kind of prelude, albeit now more integrated and complex, to the formation of the famous thirteen colonies that fought to throw off British imperial control. Increasingly, however, historians are attending to the formation of peoples and cultures in regions later absorbed into the United States but never “English.” These are difficult stories to tell, often requiring close attention to archaeology and knowledge of Spanish and French (and of the relevant archives). The majority of this work, especially the work on warfare, has been concerned with the 18th century, when European records become fuller, but some work as well as much archaeology has investigated the earlier periods. In general these studies can be divided into two broad groups according to their regional focus. The first is those that attempt a central continental perspective, examining regions generally beyond substantial European colonial presence, exemplified here by Secoy 1992, Calloway 2003, and DuVal 2006. The second is those that look more specifically at the Spanish-Indian interaction around Spanish colonies, especially in the American Southwest. LeBlanc 1999 provides some necessary prehistory, nicely supplemented by Carter 2009. Weber 1992 is the standard survey of the Spanish in North America, and Knaut 1995 is a retelling of the Pueblo Revolt, the most famous conflict in 17th-century Spanish North America. Most of the works here are not specifically about warfare, and indeed the usual focus within these literatures is on trade, intercultural interaction, and ethnogenesis. But conflict was necessarily a part of the story.

Calloway, Colin G. One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark. History of the American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.
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A monumental synthetic survey of the midcontinental region and the Southwest from prehistory through the end of the 18th century. Not a history of warfare by any means, but any attempt to understand what was happening in the Midwest and beyond the Mississippi prior to 1800 can begin here.
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Carter, William B. Indian Alliances and the Spanish in the Southwest, 750–1750. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009.
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The traditional narrative of Pueblo-Athapaskan relations is that the latter more nomadic peoples parasitically raided the former and continued to do so after the arrival of the Spanish. Carter finds instead a long history of cooperation and alliance between some Pueblo people and their traditional enemies, especially as they both reacted to the arrival of the Spanish. Includes a reexamination of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
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DuVal, Kathleen. The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent. Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
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Titled deliberately to play off of Richard White’s “middle ground” (see White 2011, cited under Euro-Indian Conflicts). DuVal argues that the Indians living along the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers (mainly Quapaws, Osages, Chickasaw, and Caddo) had no need to accommodate Europeans and reach that middle ground. This was a “Native ground,” and their power, culture, and diplomatic methods dominated the region until the 19th century.
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Knaut, Andrew L. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.
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The Pueblos revolted from Spanish control in 1680 and successfully chased the Spanish colonizers from the region. This treatment focuses on the Pueblos’ absorption of Spanish culture and the emergence of a substantial class of mestizos. The Pueblos nevertheless clung to their core values, nurtured their resentment of the Spanish, and acquired sufficient knowledge of Spanish power and weakness to enable their success in 1680.
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LeBlanc, Steven A. Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999.
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A key examination by an archaeologist of the problem of warfare among the southwestern Indian peoples prior to European contact. Rejects the image of peaceful farming folk, instead finding frequent, significant, and society-shaping warfare. Presents three chronological periods: early (pre–900 CE), middle (900–1250 CE), and late (post–1250 CE). Contends that conflict arose mainly from environmental changes and the resultant pressure on resources. The extent and violence of southwestern prehistoric warfare remain controversial, but this is a good starting point.
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Secoy, Frank Raymond. Changing Military Patterns of the Great Plains Indians, 17th Century through Early 19th Century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
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Originally published in 1953. Primarily interested in the impact of the horse (arriving via the Spanish and then the Apaches) and the gun (arriving from a variety of directions) on the plains. Not up-to-date on archaeology of the prehistoric era but useful for studying the transmission of the gun and the horse across the plains in the 17th century.
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Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. Yale Western Americana. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.
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The indispensable starting point for any discussion of the Spanish in North America. Focused on Florida and the Southwest from the first Spanish contacts in the early 16th century through the end of the 18th century. No single argument or any particular focus on warfare but conflict, the impact of contact, ideology, and all the other key issues in warfare are embedded throughout this examination.
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