![]() ![]() Beginning in the 1770s, early American women would participate in a conflict that was at once a colonial war, a revolutionary war, and a civil war. Even if these women did not participate in the masculinized theater of the militia drill, they did know how to produce ammunition and fire a musket. For European women attempting to colonize contested regions of the continent, military readiness was part of everyday life. Other Indigenous women commanded troops as leaders of their polities, forging and shattering alliances with their Indigenous and European peers. In some Indigenous polities, women decided when to wage war and which enemy captives would live or die. Nevertheless, war making, particularly in periods of endemic war, required the active participation of men and women. It is true that in most early American societies, warfare was considered a masculine activity. Early American women incited, fought in, and brokered peace in conflicts that ranged from regional to nearly continental in scale during the 17th and 18th centuries. ![]()
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