ABSTRACT Between the Seven Years’ War and Dunmore’s War, rifles became both militarily and economically important, used by scouts, rangers, militiamen, and other light troops in the British Army, and by White market hunters who began to cross the Appalachian Mountains in large numbers after the French were defeated. The same colonists who acted as riflemen in the British Army and as market hunters also fought in paramilitary gangs which resisted British authority in the 1760s. Market hunters were some of the first British colonists to travel west of the Appalachian Mountains, and their activities threatened the sovereignty of various Native peoples by both competing with them for resources and with hunting trips acting as opportunities for exploration and the selection of future sites for colonization. Though American historical memory often points to the Revolutionary War (1775–1783) as the moment when riflemen became important, they could not have been significant in the 1770s without decades of previous activity.
John B. Weaver (Thu,) studied this question.