Native American warfare

Tribes affected: Pantribal

Significance: The causes and modes of Indian warfare before contact with Europeans reflected the social values and religious beliefs of the various Indian cultures; the arrival of Europeans modified and intensified Indian warfare

Warfare was endemic among the Indian peoples of North America before European contact. War was most emphasized and most frequent in the Northeast, Southeast, and Great Plains culture areas. It was much less emphasized in the Great Basin, Plateau, and California culture areas and among many of the peoples of the Southwest culture area. In many places there were traditional alliances, and individual tribes often had traditional enemies with whom war was more or less constant. The practices and motives discussed below applied—with specific cultural variations—throughout North America.

Economic Causes of War

Before the arrival of Europeans, there seem to have been few economic reasons for waging war. Traditional subsistence economies offered little incentive to attack neighbors and few effective means for occupying and exploiting a neighbor’s lands. There were examples, however, of a tribe yielding part of its territory because of repeated raids by a neighbor. Another exception, found especially in the Northeast, occurred when a powerful tribe forced a weaker one to acknowledge its client status and pay an annual tribute. The two were then allies with reciprocal responsibilities, but one tribe was dominant. The Pequot, for example, forced a number of weaker tribes to become tributaries. In the Northeast in the early seventeenth century, tribute came to be paid in wampum. There were other exceptions to the weakness of economic motives in aboriginal warfare, such as the raids of Athapaskan-speaking hunter-gatherers on the settled Pueblo peoples of the Southwest after the Athapaskans arrived there about 1500 c.e.

Mourning War

In eastern North America and in the Great Plains, the most common form of warfare has been labeled “mourning war” by historians. Mourning war resulted from grief over the death of a family member. Usually, but not always, the lost loved one had been slain by an enemy. Among the Iroquois of the Northeast, such grief was expected to be extreme, even temporarily incapacitating, and it could only be assuaged by securing an enemy life in retaliation. Such revenge was also necessary to quiet the angry spirit of the slain. It was a moral duty, therefore, to join in such a raid. The family of the deceased, especially the women, would urge kinsmen to join a raiding party. To refuse would be to risk the charge of cowardice. A raiding party would be organized under the leadership of a recognized warrior or war chief; with the appropriate rituals performed, the party would set out for an enemy village. Typically, there were a number of nations with whom a tribe considered itself always at war. Such a war party might be very small (a half-dozen men or even fewer), or it might number a hundred or more. In either case, its aim was to kill a few of the enemy—or, even better, to take prisoners—and to return with no casualties of its own. Such raids had no purpose other than to inflict a few deaths and thereby relieve the grief of suffering kinsmen. These raids, the most common mode of aboriginal warfare, had no economic motive.

Adoption of captives

A captive brought in by a raiding party would belong to the warrior who had taken him (or her), typically by being first to lay hands on the victim. An adult male captive would be required to “run the gauntlet”—when blows would be rained on him by the assembled people, who in this way acted out their rage. The successful warrior would then make a grieving friend or relative a present of the prisoner. The recipient would decide the captive’s fate: If adopted, the prisoner would become a member of the family, taking the place of a lost son, husband, daughter, or other family member. Raiding for prisoners was a widely practiced means of restoring families and of maintaining numbers in tribal groups experiencing population decline. In time, hundreds of white captives were adopted in this way, and the accounts that some of them wrote (“captivity narratives”) are a fascinating historical source. Captives rejected as unsuitable for adoption were usually killed—often tortured to death by burning—thereby appeasing the spirits of the grieving. The use of torture among Native Americans was part of religious ceremonies, with the prisoners being dedicated to the god of war. These torture rituals were probably most elaborate among the Iroquois and Huron.

Public War

The raiding parties that characterized mourning war were typically organized and carried out without reference to or permission from any village or tribal council or authority. There was sometimes a “higher” form of war, however, in which tribal chiefs in council, or sachems and their councils, made decisions for or against war that involved an entire people. Participation in such a larger war was left to individual decision, however. There was no compulsion, largely because participation in war was so bound up with religion and personal magic.

Warfare, Religion, and Magic

A prisoner burned by the Iroquois was dedicated to Aireskoi, their god of war, and great care was taken to keep the prisoner alive through the night-long burning with firebrands so that he might be taken outdoors at dawn and placed on a special raised platform. When the first sliver of the sun appeared, the charred but still living victim was killed by a blow. Then the body was butchered and boiled in a kettle, and the flesh was shared in a community-wide feast. If no human enemies had been sacrificed for a time, the Iroquois might sacrifice a bear to Aireskoi, with apologies.

Before joining a war party, a warrior would devote much care to purification rituals in order to strengthen his personal magic or “medicine.” If the warrior felt doubts about his medicine, or if his preparation rituals were inadvertently spoiled, it was understood that he was to abandon the project. Village shamans would perform augury rituals to divine the raid’s prospects, and unfavorable signs would produce its cancellation. Each warrior had a personal medicine pouch or bundle with sacred objects connected with his tutelary spirit. Among some peoples, such as the Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Creeks of the Southeast, the leader of a war party carried on his back a special wooden box, about a foot wide by a foot-and-a-half high, filled with sacred objects of proven power. Pre-raid and post-raid war rituals, in which the entire village participated, served to strengthen group solidarity.

War Honors and Personal Status

War was so important in the cultures of many American Indian societies that success in war was the principal means of attaining personal esteem and status. As a result, war trophies and war honors had a special significance in many cultures. The best-known example is the taking and displaying of scalps. Most historians agree that scalping—the removal of the skin and attached hair from the top of the head—was widely practiced in pre-contact North America. Jacques Cartier reported the custom along the St. Lawrence River in 1535, and members of the Hernando de Soto expedition (1539-1543) reported it in the Southeast at almost the same time. While each tribal group had its own particular customs, the curing and preserving of enemy scalps for display on certain ceremonial occasions was a widely practiced custom. In such ceremonies, the warrior was permitted to recite his war exploits, while other warriors or elders affirmed them. Among many peoples of eastern North America, it was the practice for men to wear their own hair in a special “scalplock,” with the rest of the head shaved.

In the Southeast culture area, the winning of war names and titles was of fundamental importance. Among the Creek, for example, a warrior winning recognition would be given a traditional war name owned by his clan (“Crazy Snake” was one) in an impressive ceremony. In the Chickasaw ceremony in which war names were conferred, the recipients wore red moccasins and other special adornments. Creek warriors were ranked in three grades: warriors, big warriors, and war chiefs. Promotion through these ranks depended on war exploits, especially the number of scalps taken. Before taking scalps (and being recognized as a warrior) a Creek continued to do the menial work required of boys.

Among the Plains tribes, although scalps were taken, they did not have the importance as war honors that scalps had in the Northeast and Southeast. Among Plains Indians, the “coup” (from the French for “a blow”) was more important. A warrior “counted coup” by touching an enemy with his hand or with a “coup stick.” Many Plains warriors carried a specially decorated Native American coup stick to be used to “strike coup.” This was a light wand, not a weapon. Among the Cheyenne, it was striped like a barber’s pole. To touch the person of an enemy during battle, as opposed to shooting him with a bow or gun, was to demonstrate one’s fearlessness. Killing an enemy, therefore, unless it involved touching him, was less honored than counting coup. To be the second, third, or even the fourth to touch an enemy carried merit in a recognized scale of honors. The Cheyenne allowed three men to count coup on the same enemy, with the first to touch him accorded the greatest merit. The enemy need not even be alive; to be the first to touch the body of a fallen enemy also conferred honor. Other war honors were earned by taking something from the enemy in battle, such as a shield, a gun, or a horse. Capturing horses from an enemy camp by stealth, especially a horse picketed near its owner’s tipi, was another feat conferring honor. These graded war honors both emphasized personal courage and encouraged military aggression in the form of raiding.

War honors were recognized and publicized in a number of ways. In war dances before and after a raid, the entire band or village celebrated such achievements. A warrior’s exploits could be painted on his tipi cover. He recited his deeds on special occasions, and many Plains tribes used a special symbolism in the construction of feather headdresses or war bonnets. An Assiniboine wore an eagle feather for each slain enemy. As in eastern North America, the winning of war honors and the quieting of the grief of mourners were the principal motives of aboriginal warfare on the Plains.

European American Influences on Warfare

The arrival of European fur traders and colonists began to modify Indian warfare patterns in the early seventeenth century, because European guns were deadlier than aboriginal bows and warclubs. Even in the early seventeenth century, muskets had a much longer effective killing range than did bows, so that a group armed with muskets could inflict heavy losses on an enemy armed with bows. Indians quickly recognized the advantages of the new weapons (and the superiority of steel knives, hatchets, and arrowpoints) and exerted themselves to obtain them. This was imperative, because warriors armed with traditional weapons were vulnerable not only to European soldiers but also to Indian enemies equipped with European weapons. Almost the only way to obtain these weapons was through the fur trade.

The fur trade, and in the Southeast the deerskin trade, had ramifications that extended ever more deeply into eastern North America, intensifying warfare and providing new economic motives for it. Some of the most spectacular and best-documented effects occurred in the wars of the Iroquois, especially with their traditional enemies, the Huron.

By the 1620’s the Iroquois were obtaining guns in significant numbers at the Dutch trading post of Fort Orange (Albany, New York), near the junction of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers. The beaver, which provided the bulk of the pelts in the trade, were trapped out by about 1640 in the home territories of the Iroquois nations. Their scarcity started the Beaver Wars. By the 1640’s, to obtain furs, the Iroquois were raiding far to the north to intercept Algonquian and Montagnais hunters as they were carrying their catch to market, as well as raiding the villages of their neighbors—Hurons, Eries, Neutrals, Petuns, and Susquehannocks—to drive them out and win their hunting territories. Within a few years, the Iroquois were raiding into Ohio and as far west as Illinois. The scale of these attacks, especially the number of deaths produced, eclipsed that of traditional warfare. In these same years, a series of severe epidemics sharply reduced the populations of Iroquois villages, bringing an even greater need for captives to maintain numbers. This intensified warfare cost more lives, necessitating more raids for captives. The Huron Confederacy and the Erie, Neutral, and Petun nations were destroyed, and entire villages of the defeated were adopted as Iroquois. By the end of the seventeenth century the Iroquois themselves acknowledged defeat.

Although the eruption of the Iroquois was the most extreme example of the European American impact on Indian warfare, the effect was felt everywhere. On the Plains, the arrival of the horse (and later, the gun) had profound consequences. As Plains Indians became mounted, economic motives for warfare appeared. Capturing horses became the most common reason for raids.

Bibliography

Axtell, James, and William C. Sturtevant. “The Unkindest Cut: Or, Who Invented Scalping?” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 37 (July, 1980): 451-472. An excellent scholarly inquiry into a tradition that has been seen as a stereotype of Indian culture.

Ewers, John C. “Intertribal Warfare as the Precursor of Indian-White Warfare on the Northern Great Plains.” Western Historical Quarterly 6 (October, 1975): 397-410. A look at pre-contact war among various Indian nations.

Hudson, Charles. The Southeastern Indians. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976. A thorough examination of the Southeast nations and warfare in social and political terms.

Richter, Daniel K. The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. A study of traditional warfare and how it was influenced by the arrival of Europeans.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 40 (October, 1983): 528-559. A brief treatment of the Iroquois reasons for and approach to warfare.

Smith, Marian W. “The War Complex of the Plains Indians.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 78 (1937): 425-461. Discusses the culture of and motives for warfare of the Plains tribes.

Trigger, Bruce G. The Children of the Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. 2 vols. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1976. An examination of the social and political worlds of traditional warfare and the effects of European contact.

Wallace, Anthony F. C. Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. A study of the mental world of the Iroquois people, carrying their history into the period after their defeat.