down a wanted criminal The word posse would later be widely used in the American Wild West when people banded together to hunt outlaws The other kind of civilian call-up in Anglo Saxon times was called the fyrd All men even noblemen of each particular shire or county were obligated to take up arms when needed They might have to help prevent civil unrest within their own area Or more likely they would have to respond to the main threat of the time Viking raiding parties The English Militia Grows The obligation to be part of a militia continued throughout English history By the sixteenth century the militia of England was well organized but badly trained Each region had to provide not only a list of eligible men for possible muster but also an inventory of any weapons armor or horses people owned that could be used in times of crisis They even kept a record of how much money people had so they could force them to buy their own weapons if necessary On paper it looked very efficient However the militia rarely met and almost never trained The nation’s leaders began to worry that they wouldn’t be prepared for real trouble So in the seventeenth century they organized several 6 The Colonial Minuteman
Civilian militia such as these reenactors pictured fought on the side of Parliament in the english Civil war of 1642 1651 elite militia forces These were mostly centered in the city of London The special militias met for frequent training and became very skilled Some took part in the English Civil War All this time the main military force still consisted of professional soldiers who did that as their primary job Militias were the backup force The Minutemen and Militias 7
American Colonies Build a Militia When England began establishing colonies in the New World the earliest settlers saw the need to continue the tradition of forming militias England was too far away to provide soldiers quickly in case of emergency Colonists were in danger from some Native American tribes or from settlers of other nations such as France who wanted to expand into territory the British had claimed Though the term minuteman is generally applied to the specialized militia active immediately before and during the American Revolutionary War the history of the minuteman concept goes back much farther In the 1630s about twenty thousand British citizens crossed the Atlantic to join the Massachusetts Bay Colony All men of sound body between the ages of sixteen and sixty had to join the militia The militia’s first operation in America was less than spectacular During the Pequot War in 1636 the Massachusetts Bay militia was sent to retaliate against a tribe after a local trader was killed Unfortunately no one seemed to know exactly which tribe was responsible The militia marched on a village possibly the wrong one and destroyed it but didn’t kill any Native Americans Then they marched home again This uncoordinated response led to increased hostility against the settlers by various tribes 8 The Colonial Minuteman
The Minutemen The four colonies then in existence Plymouth Connecticut New Haven and Massachusetts Bay joined in the New England Confederation and decided to reorganize the militia By 1645 a select group of the best militia members were chosen to be part of a rapid-deployment team These were all men under thirty years old with some natural ability and a strong enthusiasm to improve The idea was that these men could be ready to fight at a minute’s notice hence the term minuteman About 30 percent of the militia was made up of minutemen The minutemen and other militia members were also of vital importance during the series of conflicts collectively known as the French and Indian War These conflicts were about who would control the North American interior The common threat of the French and their allied tribes caused the colonies to unify The final overwhelming defeat of the French by the British ultimately led to the conflict for which minutemen are best known the American Revolutionary War With the big threat of the French gone once and for all the colonists didn’t have such a need for the support and protection of their homeland The Minutemen and Militias 9
