Colonial American military history
Colonial American military history is the military record of the Thirteen Colonies from their founding to the American Revolution in 1775. Beginning when on August 29, 1643, the Plymouth Colony Court allowed & established a military discipline to be erected and maintained. Rangers Rangers in North America served in the 17th and 18th-century wars between colonists and Native American tribes. Regular soldiers were not accustomed to frontier warfare and so Ranger companies were developed. Rangers were full-time soldiers employed by colonial governments to patrol between fixed frontier fortifications in reconnaissance, providing early warning of raids. In offensive operations, they were scouts and guides, locating villages and other targets for task forces drawn from the militia or other colonial troops. The father of American ranging is Colonel Benjamin Church (c. 1639–1718). He was the captain of the first Ranger force in America (1676). Church was commissioned by Plymouth Colony Governor Josiah Winslow to form the first ranger company for King Philip's War. He later employed the company to raid Acadia during King William's War and Queen Anne's War. Benjamin Church designed his force primarily to emulate Native American patterns of war. Toward this end, he endeavored to learn from Native Americans how to fight like Native Americans. Americans became rangers exclusively under the tutelage of the Indian allies. (Until the end of the colonial period, rangers depended on Indians as both allies and teachers.) Church developed a special full-time unit mixing white colonists, selected for frontier skills, with allied Native Americans to carry out offensive strikes against hostile Native Americans in terrain where normal militia units were ineffective. Under Church served the father and grandfather of two famous rangers of the eighteenth century: John Lovewell and John Gorham, respectively. Rogers' Rangers was established in 1751 by Major Robert Rogers, who organized nine Ranger companies in the American colonies. These early American light infantry units organized during the French and Indian War were called "Rangers" and are often considered to be the spiritual birthplace of the modern Army Rangers. Provincial troops Provincial troops were raised by the colonial governors and legislatures for extended operations during the French and Indian Wars. The provincial troops differed from the militia, in that they were a full-time military organization conducting extended operations. They differed from the regular British Army, in that they were recruited only for one campaign season at the time. These forces were often recruited through a quota system applied to the militia. Officers were appointed by the provincial governments. During the eighteenth century militia service was increasingly seen as a prerogative of the social and economic well-established, while provincial troops came to be recruited from different and less deep-rooted members of the community. The first provincial forces in British North America were organized in the 1670s, when several colonial governments raised ranger companies for one year's paid service to protect their borders (see above). The major operations during King William's War were conducted by provincial troops from Massachusetts Bay. During Queen Anne's War