Certainly there's a durable myth that colonial militia and irregulars won by using the tactics of Native fighters, firing from behind rocks and trees with their accurate Kentucky rifles at British soldiers marching stolidly in lines in red coats. It fits in with other myths about American self-reliance.

Though it's possible it's still in print somewhere, no "standard" history published in the past few decades ( by someone like John Ferling, David Hackett Fischer, Bernard Bailyn, or Don Higgenbotham) would include this myth. While the militias were immensely important at the outset of the colonial revolt, their importance was in simply being a threat to British control. But when the conflict spread, the militias often mustered variously-equipped and poorly-trained. Although the American rifle companies would be useful in skirmishing, they could not stand up to a bayonet charge and were equally matched by Hessian rifle companies. Militia troops and commanders failed at the Battle of Long Island, and also at Brandywine. The Americans did not often defeat the professional soldiers of British army, and when they did, they were more trained and armed like those soldiers: often with, not American, but French arms and equipment. The American army over the course of the war became more like a regular army of the period, and militiamen became more like regular soldiers and not irregulars.