Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

History

Committee Chair

Max Flomen

Committee Co-Chair

Joseph Hodge

Committee Member

Joseph Hodge

Committee Member

Brian Luskey

Committee Member

Jason Phillips

Committee Member

Kelly Watson

Abstract

The rifle was one of many material objects which colonists of British North America brought with them from Europe. Starting in the early eighteenth century, German-speaking settlers in Pennsylvania began to manufacture rifles from locally made and imported parts. These rifles became associated with other material objects – namely a system of dress, which included wearing a whitetail deer’s tail in the hat, the hunting shirt, and forms of Native American dress – which became emblematic of some British colonists who used rifles in hunting and war. Rifles became militarily important in the Seven Years’ War, where Native American warriors, French soldiers, and British regulars, provincials, and militia all used them. They were most significant for the British, who deployed them on the New York, Pennsylvania, and Southern frontiers. After the Seven Years’ War, colonists from the Appalachian frontier, which stretched from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas, participated in the colonial economy by hunting deer, as well as other large mammals, for their skins. They also used rifles to continue the conflict with Native Americans, and as both an instrument and symbol of resistance to British authority. When the American Revolutionary War began in 1775, some colonial leaders tried to make riflemen a symbol of their movement, but riflemen’s poor performance in the opening months of the war halted these efforts. Once riflemen had time to train and get used to life in the army, they served effectively as part of combined arms formations throughout the Revolutionary War. Revolutionary American leaders did view riflemen as specialists in war against Native Americans, where they were willing to use violence to make western lands open for future settlement by white colonists. After the American War for Independence, riflemen continued to wear their distinct dress, and surveyors and explorers who made US westward expansion possible used rifles in order to feed themselves on their expeditions. Riflemen retained a military role as well, serving in the Northwest War (1785 – 1795) against the Miami-Shawnee Confederacy, and in the War of 1812. After this latter conflict, white male citizens of the United States embraced riflemen as a symbol of their country and its military abilities. The history of rifles and riflemen show how material culture shaped both conflict in early America, and the identity of the men who founded a new republic in the late eighteenth century

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