Loaded. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

policing was in addition to the traditional English constabulary that investigated and detained European residents for infractions of laws.

      British slavers from Barbados moved in large numbers to the South Carolina colony after 1670, and brought the slave patrol practice with them.⁴ By 1704, the South Carolina colonial government had codified slave patrols and embedded them within the already existing volunteer militias, whose principal role was to repel Native Americans whose land they had appropriated. Members of slave patrols were drawn from militia rolls in every locale. The South Carolina structure of slave patrols was adopted in other colonies by the mid-eighteenth century and would remain relatively unchanged until the Civil War. Following U.S. independence, this structure and practice was applied to what became the Cotton Kingdom, following the U.S. wars against the Muskogee peoples that ended in their forced relocation to Indian Territory.⁵

      Virginia was the first of the thirteen English settler colonies in North America, but there were fewer enslaved Africans there, and they were more widely dispersed than in South Carolina, as Virginia settlements were long surrounded by resistant Native communities. The Virginia militia was founded for one purpose: to kill Indians, take their land, drive them out, wipe them out. European settlers were required by law to own and carry firearms, and all adult male settlers were required to serve in the militia. Militias were also used to prevent indentured European servants from fleeing before their contracts expired, in which case they were designated “debtors.” Despite militia vigilance, many escaped on ships in ports.