64 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
that time, the non-Indigenous population of the English colony in
North America had increased sixfold, to more than 150,000, which
meant that settlers were intruding on more of the Indigenous home
lands. Indigenous resistance followed in what the settlers called
King Philip's War.21 Wampanoag people and their Indigenous al
lies attacked the settlers' isolated farms, using a method of guerrilla
warfare that relied on speed and caution in striking and retreating.
The settlers scorned this kind of resistance as "skulking," and re
sponded by destroying Indigenous villages-again extirpation. But
Indigenous guerrilla attacks continued, and so the commander of
the Plymouth militia, Benjamin Church, studied Indigenous tactics
in order to develop a more effective kind of preemption. He peti
tioned the colony's governor for permission to choose sixty to sev
enty settlers to serve as scouts, as he called them, for what he termed
"wilderness warfare." In July 1676, the first settler-organized ranger
force was the result. The rangers-60 settlers and 140 colonized In
digenous men-were to "discover, pursue, fight, surprise, destroy, or
subdue" the enemy, in Church's words. The inclusion of Indigenous
fighters on the colonists' side has marked settler colonialism and for
eign occupations ever since. 22 The settler-rangers could learn from
their Native aides, then discard them. In the following two decades,
Church perfected his evolving method of annihilation."REDSKINS"
Indigenous people continued to resist by burning settlements and
killing and capturing settlers. As an incentive to recruit fighters,
colonial authorities introduced a program of scalp hunting that
became a permanent and long-lasting element of settler warfare
against Indigenous nations.23 During the Pequot War, Connecticut
and Massachusetts colonial officials had offered bounties initially
for the heads of murdered Indigenous people and later for only their
scalps, which were more portable in large numbers. But scalp hunt
ing became routine only in the mid-167os, following an incident
on the northern frontier of the Massachusetts colony. The practice
began in earnest in 1697 when settler Hannah Dustin, having mur-