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The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814
This book explores the evolution of Americans' first way of war, to show how war waged again Indian noncombatant population and agricultural resources became the method early Americans' employed and, ultimately, defined their military heritage. The sanguinary story of the American conquest of the Indian peoples east of the Mississippi River helps demonstrate how early Americans embraced warfare shaped by extravagant violence and focused on conquest. Grenier provides a major revision in understanding the place of warfare directed on noncombatants in the American military tradition, and his conclusions are relevant to understand US "special operations" in the War on Terror.
246 pages, Hardcover
First published January 31, 2005
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About the author
John Grenier
3 books3 followersJohn Grenier is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force and an associate professor of history at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 22, 2016
If you want to understand the current culture of violence in the United States, I highly recommend this book. I found out about it while reading An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, who quotes it extensively as she chronicles the genocide of Native Americans. As a descendant of settler-colonialists, I also found Grenier's work helpful in my efforts to understand my ancestors, and any intergenerational transmission of trauma that may have impacted my family and cultural systems.
August 28, 2019
Often overlooked or underappreciated in surveys of American military history, the colonial period is nonetheless a crucial period of American military development. Military history as a subject receives much attention academically as well as within popular culture in the United States but at times the bulk of writing and other media appears to focus on conflicts whose method of war making and objectives are relatively easy to digest, regardless of how accurate the popular conception of those conflicts may be. The Second World War features prominently partly due to the sociopolitical consequences of its outcome and its widespread effect on the American home front. Conflicts like the Vietnam War and Civil War are also examined frequently due to their impact on American history as well, but the specific period between 1600 and the early 1800s is crucially underexamined. The American Revolution has long been the subject of publications often seeking to justify modern political aims through a reinterpretation of its events, but this glut of attention has yet to find its way to the various other conflicts that occurred between the founding of the American colonies and the War of 1812.
John Grenier appraises the various conflicts between Europeans and Native Americans during the colonial period in the pages of The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier. In examining the many smaller conflicts that dotted the landscape of early American military history, Grenier effectively constructs a strong case that the prevailing consensus surrounding the history of American war making ignores its roots: namely, that extirpative warfare aimed at enemy noncombatants forms the crux of early American war making and that military historians since then have done their best to avoid discussing this fact.
Grenier argues that this tendency to ignore what he calls the “first way of war” practiced in many diverse conflicts not only with Native American nations but also with rival European colonials stems from the influence of Hans Delbrück and Claus von Clausewitz on historians like Russell F. Weigley. Acknowledging in the introduction that Weigley’s interpretation of American military history is influenced in this way, Grenier first examines not only how influential Clausewitz and Delbrück have been on the study of military history but additionally elaborates on how their position within the study of war making influenced their outlook on ranger tactics in general. This early step in Grenier’s analysis is crucial. Popular conceptions of war making are still heavily influenced by sources such as Clausewitz and tend to privilege the analysis of symmetrical warfare between states which has dominated military academia. Despite this, throughout history there have always been units which engaged in petite guerre in order to achieve objectives for the kinds of larger armies that typically garner more attention, a fact which Grenier further examines later on in a discussion on the role of petite guerre in continental military organization.
In addressing the biases of military historians in neglecting this type of warfare, Grenier lays out the objective of the book: an examination of the war making practiced by Anglo colonists and whether or not the kind of extirpative warfare seen in the period constituted a uniquely American style of warfare.. Drawing from a plethora of primary sources, Grenier charts the evolution of this first way of war and its acceptance by colonial militaries not just as an option in war but almost exclusively as the primary method of achieving many goals.
Much of the book is dedicated to covering the many conflicts that have gone unexamined by military historians within the colonial period. From the start, Grenier identifies how extirpative warfare was not some invention that arose out of interactions between Native populations and Anglos but rather a practice that originated in internecine conflicts such as the Thirty Years’ War which led not only to a willingness to utilize the practice but which also led early colonists to especially view it as a military necessity and a deterrent to bend Native populations into submission. As interactions between Native populations and colonists repeatedly ended in cycles of bloodshed, Grenier charts the evolution of the first way of war from the initial extirpative tactics through the unique addition of practices like scalp taking and the eventual emergence of men like Benjamin Church, whose adoption of the “skulking way of war” began to create a distinct American style of war making. Grenier’s analysis is packed with a diverse range of primary sources documenting the gradual adoption of ranging and subsequent attempts by British military commanders to either do away with the practice or adopt it into existing military organization. The eventual adoption and normalization of ranging by not only colonial forces but British regular infantry as well, as highlighted by the conflict in Acadia and British failures to establish control outside of a few “islands of British influence surrounded by [hostile natives],” effectively illustrates how extirpative warfare and ranging necessarily functioned as offensive strategies meant to target noncombatant populations and could not be used in a defensive manner. In this example and others, Grenier illustrates how the first way of war was continuously developed by inhabitants of the American colonies until it would eventually come to define early American war making.
Interestingly, Grenier does not focus too much on the role that prejudice towards Native populations likely played in Anglo decisions to commit extirpative warfare. Some reviewers criticized this decision and the way Grenier addresses it early on, and such criticism is understandable. Grenier claims that racism did not fuel colonist’s violence towards Native populations could use further explanation than a paragraph and a single footnote, but throughout the book Grenier provides other reasons for the continual use of such extreme violence, notably the economic incentives of displacing or exterminating Native populations.
While his expressed justification for not examining the role of racism in justifying extirpative warfare is admittedly rather poorly elaborated upon, throughout the book Grenier does discuss how practices like scalp taking made the first way of war not just a tool for justification of racial warfare but an economic incentive to commit extreme acts of violence. This is important in the context of military history because economic incentive does often play a role in motivating individuals to band together and wage war. While Grenier focuses on how scalp taking and seizure of Native territory typically led to colonists practicing extirpative warfare even if it distracted them from achieving more concrete military objectives, a further discussion on how this privatization of war in early American history is mirrored by the increasing role of private military corporations in modern war making might have helped strengthen his case that the first way of war defined American war making in spite of the accepted consensus on what defines American military history. For other historians at least, the continued importance of scalp taking and land seizure throughout The First Way of War certainly opens a new avenue of analysis for future work concerning the privatization of warfare.
As Grenier moves into the 1790s and early 1800s, the efforts of the early American military to downplay the importance of ranging in favor of regular infantry and the eventual return to the first way of war are examined. Grenier’s account no longer focuses solely on the extreme violence committed in the final push to remove Native populations from the eastern half of the United States but touches upon the struggle between military officials focused on utilizing regular infantry to do so and the semi-official ranger groups that had made the first way of war their specialty for so long. Grenier highlights how efforts by military authorities failed and their eventual return to ranging tactics to deal with Native populations up until the War of 1812. More could have been made of this period as it represents the first attempts on the part of American military officials to downplay the role of extirpative warfare in establishing the United States as a governing body, but the material concerning President Washington’s preference for diplomacy with Native populations and the tensions this created with frontier settlers would likely require a book of its own.
The First Way of War is an important text not only for historians but for the general public as well as it highlights a crucial period in American history and examines the exceptional violence that was often utilized to create the United States. While many readers of the book may already know to some degree the violence visited upon Native Americans during the early expansion of the colonies, few likely know how central to the growth of the colonies extirpative warfare was. Grenier effectively demonstrates why this period of history is underexamined and proceeds to analyze it in depth. As expressed above, there are some aspects of the book that require more explanation, but aside from those few issues Grenier has gone above and beyond in pushing academic military history beyond its traditional scope of unit movements, maps, and casualty numbers to create a work that effectively challenges the conventional narrative of American military history.
Bibliography
Grenier, John. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Joyner, Wesley T. Review of The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, by John Grenier. Michigan Historical Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2010, 133-134.
John Grenier appraises the various conflicts between Europeans and Native Americans during the colonial period in the pages of The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier. In examining the many smaller conflicts that dotted the landscape of early American military history, Grenier effectively constructs a strong case that the prevailing consensus surrounding the history of American war making ignores its roots: namely, that extirpative warfare aimed at enemy noncombatants forms the crux of early American war making and that military historians since then have done their best to avoid discussing this fact.
Grenier argues that this tendency to ignore what he calls the “first way of war” practiced in many diverse conflicts not only with Native American nations but also with rival European colonials stems from the influence of Hans Delbrück and Claus von Clausewitz on historians like Russell F. Weigley. Acknowledging in the introduction that Weigley’s interpretation of American military history is influenced in this way, Grenier first examines not only how influential Clausewitz and Delbrück have been on the study of military history but additionally elaborates on how their position within the study of war making influenced their outlook on ranger tactics in general. This early step in Grenier’s analysis is crucial. Popular conceptions of war making are still heavily influenced by sources such as Clausewitz and tend to privilege the analysis of symmetrical warfare between states which has dominated military academia. Despite this, throughout history there have always been units which engaged in petite guerre in order to achieve objectives for the kinds of larger armies that typically garner more attention, a fact which Grenier further examines later on in a discussion on the role of petite guerre in continental military organization.
In addressing the biases of military historians in neglecting this type of warfare, Grenier lays out the objective of the book: an examination of the war making practiced by Anglo colonists and whether or not the kind of extirpative warfare seen in the period constituted a uniquely American style of warfare.. Drawing from a plethora of primary sources, Grenier charts the evolution of this first way of war and its acceptance by colonial militaries not just as an option in war but almost exclusively as the primary method of achieving many goals.
Much of the book is dedicated to covering the many conflicts that have gone unexamined by military historians within the colonial period. From the start, Grenier identifies how extirpative warfare was not some invention that arose out of interactions between Native populations and Anglos but rather a practice that originated in internecine conflicts such as the Thirty Years’ War which led not only to a willingness to utilize the practice but which also led early colonists to especially view it as a military necessity and a deterrent to bend Native populations into submission. As interactions between Native populations and colonists repeatedly ended in cycles of bloodshed, Grenier charts the evolution of the first way of war from the initial extirpative tactics through the unique addition of practices like scalp taking and the eventual emergence of men like Benjamin Church, whose adoption of the “skulking way of war” began to create a distinct American style of war making. Grenier’s analysis is packed with a diverse range of primary sources documenting the gradual adoption of ranging and subsequent attempts by British military commanders to either do away with the practice or adopt it into existing military organization. The eventual adoption and normalization of ranging by not only colonial forces but British regular infantry as well, as highlighted by the conflict in Acadia and British failures to establish control outside of a few “islands of British influence surrounded by [hostile natives],” effectively illustrates how extirpative warfare and ranging necessarily functioned as offensive strategies meant to target noncombatant populations and could not be used in a defensive manner. In this example and others, Grenier illustrates how the first way of war was continuously developed by inhabitants of the American colonies until it would eventually come to define early American war making.
Interestingly, Grenier does not focus too much on the role that prejudice towards Native populations likely played in Anglo decisions to commit extirpative warfare. Some reviewers criticized this decision and the way Grenier addresses it early on, and such criticism is understandable. Grenier claims that racism did not fuel colonist’s violence towards Native populations could use further explanation than a paragraph and a single footnote, but throughout the book Grenier provides other reasons for the continual use of such extreme violence, notably the economic incentives of displacing or exterminating Native populations.
While his expressed justification for not examining the role of racism in justifying extirpative warfare is admittedly rather poorly elaborated upon, throughout the book Grenier does discuss how practices like scalp taking made the first way of war not just a tool for justification of racial warfare but an economic incentive to commit extreme acts of violence. This is important in the context of military history because economic incentive does often play a role in motivating individuals to band together and wage war. While Grenier focuses on how scalp taking and seizure of Native territory typically led to colonists practicing extirpative warfare even if it distracted them from achieving more concrete military objectives, a further discussion on how this privatization of war in early American history is mirrored by the increasing role of private military corporations in modern war making might have helped strengthen his case that the first way of war defined American war making in spite of the accepted consensus on what defines American military history. For other historians at least, the continued importance of scalp taking and land seizure throughout The First Way of War certainly opens a new avenue of analysis for future work concerning the privatization of warfare.
As Grenier moves into the 1790s and early 1800s, the efforts of the early American military to downplay the importance of ranging in favor of regular infantry and the eventual return to the first way of war are examined. Grenier’s account no longer focuses solely on the extreme violence committed in the final push to remove Native populations from the eastern half of the United States but touches upon the struggle between military officials focused on utilizing regular infantry to do so and the semi-official ranger groups that had made the first way of war their specialty for so long. Grenier highlights how efforts by military authorities failed and their eventual return to ranging tactics to deal with Native populations up until the War of 1812. More could have been made of this period as it represents the first attempts on the part of American military officials to downplay the role of extirpative warfare in establishing the United States as a governing body, but the material concerning President Washington’s preference for diplomacy with Native populations and the tensions this created with frontier settlers would likely require a book of its own.
The First Way of War is an important text not only for historians but for the general public as well as it highlights a crucial period in American history and examines the exceptional violence that was often utilized to create the United States. While many readers of the book may already know to some degree the violence visited upon Native Americans during the early expansion of the colonies, few likely know how central to the growth of the colonies extirpative warfare was. Grenier effectively demonstrates why this period of history is underexamined and proceeds to analyze it in depth. As expressed above, there are some aspects of the book that require more explanation, but aside from those few issues Grenier has gone above and beyond in pushing academic military history beyond its traditional scope of unit movements, maps, and casualty numbers to create a work that effectively challenges the conventional narrative of American military history.
Bibliography
Grenier, John. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Joyner, Wesley T. Review of The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, by John Grenier. Michigan Historical Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2010, 133-134.
February 11, 2022
LtCol John Grenier USAFR wrote this book in 2005 while teaching history at the USAF Academy. I’d never heard of it. My loss. It’s cited frequently in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.
Grenier says that the American way of war ( he calls it the first way) has always been about excessive violence and total destruction of the enemy and his resources to include non-combatants- women and children. Grenier argues that Weigley got the American way of war wrong as he focused on professional soldiers( regulars) and totally dismissed the irregulars. Sherman’s total war on the South and aerial bombardment of European populations during World War II were not aberrations in how Americans fight. They were a return to the tactics of the colonists and frontiersmen- the irregulars.
Grenier lays it all out from 1607 to Andrew Jackson. “Instead of racism leading to violence, in early America violence led to racism.” Basically Rogers Rangers and the many colonial and state militias calling themselves rangers were nothing but contract killers. They were incentivized by a bounty on every scalp. At a time when the average daily wage for a day was 2 shillings ( 200 shillings = 10 £) a scalp was 10 £. Killing Native Americans was a revenue stream and a path to financial gain. They rarely distinguished between friendly Native Americans either. Advocates of peace in both tribal and colonial communities were targeted by frontiersmen as well. It was all about the insatiable lust for land.
Sobering and disturbing and true and largely unknown by the majority of Americans.
Grenier says that the American way of war ( he calls it the first way) has always been about excessive violence and total destruction of the enemy and his resources to include non-combatants- women and children. Grenier argues that Weigley got the American way of war wrong as he focused on professional soldiers( regulars) and totally dismissed the irregulars. Sherman’s total war on the South and aerial bombardment of European populations during World War II were not aberrations in how Americans fight. They were a return to the tactics of the colonists and frontiersmen- the irregulars.
Grenier lays it all out from 1607 to Andrew Jackson. “Instead of racism leading to violence, in early America violence led to racism.” Basically Rogers Rangers and the many colonial and state militias calling themselves rangers were nothing but contract killers. They were incentivized by a bounty on every scalp. At a time when the average daily wage for a day was 2 shillings ( 200 shillings = 10 £) a scalp was 10 £. Killing Native Americans was a revenue stream and a path to financial gain. They rarely distinguished between friendly Native Americans either. Advocates of peace in both tribal and colonial communities were targeted by frontiersmen as well. It was all about the insatiable lust for land.
Sobering and disturbing and true and largely unknown by the majority of Americans.
July 27, 2025
This book was required reading for my European Conquest of North America class. I found this book to be tedious and boring, but it did provide some useful information about the introduction of gunpowder weaponry to Indigenous communities.
March 11, 2023
Great book and very informative on the American war making of the colonial era and by extension through the present. From John Smith in 1609 to Jackson in 1814 the total war, the extirpative war waged on the indigenous nations east of the Mississippi, (Atlantic coast, trans Appalachian, Ohio valley), would be commonly known today as ethnic cleansing, genocide, forced displacement, crimes against humanity and international crimes. I was amazed at how many wars with the Indians happened in those years and during the Revolutionary war This is not the colonial history I learned in school. It is although the history that should be taught. Grenier in his book "The First Way of War" describes a quickly developed method of waging war to beat the Indians by killing in addition to warriors, old men, women and children. Scalping the same for bounty money burning their towns and destroying their food stores and field. It was also at this time that the Rangers developed. Woodsmen that were near equals in the wilds to the Indians and could take the battle to them. Gorham's and Roger's Rangers are the historical start of today's Army Rangers. A dramatic story of the brutality of the time was that of Hannah Dustan. Captured by an Abenaki raiding party and for 2 weeks marched north towards Canada, was able to get hold of a hatchet and at dawn killed 10 of the 12 captors, then scalp them, made her way back to Haverhill and claimed the bounty for the 10 scalps. I read this book because it was referenced a number of times in Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz's book "An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States". Grenier describes as did Ortiz more so, an amazing indigenous culture of towns, cultivation (the three sisters, corn, squash, and beans), forest management and wildlife management that sustained the lives of the indigenous peoples very well.
March 17, 2009
In the beginning... the european settlers killed the natives and took their land. Grenier will tell you this again, and again, and again in a manner designed to draw attention to his skills as a researcher.
December 24, 2023
Significantly more academic (heavily footnoted, to the point the footnotes nearly exceed the text in certain sections) than I had expected from seeing this book referenced by other authors. Notwithstanding, this is an excellent investigation into the planning, usage, and ultimate goals of the "first way" of war. That term, as I knew and other readers will discover, is a bland nicety for war based on the total annihilation of an enemy, not merely savagely killing the combatants, but also murdering the any/all non-combatants, destroying their homes/shelters/fortifications/buildings, slaughtering their livestock and pets, and burning the rest to ashes. Yep, it IS that. And, as Grenier details, this "first way" was the preferred method of warfare for Settler Colonial Peoples (Brits, French, Americans, Scots, Irish, and even some Native Peoples collaborators) during the time period he analyzes. Not exactly what most Americans think of when (or if) they think about the manner in which their "great nation" was forged, huh? But since few Americans would acknowledge their nation was and is a Settler Colonizer (yep, still...) I doubt many are worried about how America came to be. History?!? It's in the past! Ugh.
This is a serious book for the serious reader, but also for that reader who is willing to accept the truth that Settler Colonialism's "first way" of war is how you make your enemy disappear from history and how you justify the White "christian" Nationalism at the heart of the US "patriot".
This is a serious book for the serious reader, but also for that reader who is willing to accept the truth that Settler Colonialism's "first way" of war is how you make your enemy disappear from history and how you justify the White "christian" Nationalism at the heart of the US "patriot".
February 2, 2024
I like how the author lets the participants speak for themselves. This is not to the benefit of most of those who are doing the speaking (many come across as at best possessed of a depraved indifference for Native lives, at worst as homicidal maniacs) but that's the point--my students can't just attribute the horror to the "opinion" of the author, because he never really states much of an opinion. He just relates what the participants said and did. And if you care about the fate of the Native Americans caught in the headlights of the Anglo-American settler colonial project, that's a good thing.
December 28, 2014
The First Way of War by John Grenier traces the history of Special Operations from the earliest colonies in America through the War of 1812. It is well written and provides much interesting insight and context that is missing from the standard texts that start with Robert Rogers and his Rangers.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the American military history, conflict with Native Americans, Special Operations, or guerrilla warfare.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the American military history, conflict with Native Americans, Special Operations, or guerrilla warfare.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews