INDIANS : III. Warfare
In spite of many differences, the universality of the art of war is demonstrated by a study of the causes of conflict and the battle methods used by American Indian tribes. As in all armies, hierarchy of rank was important, and rank was determined by demonstrated bravery and proficiency. Most of the tribes had a war leader with lieutenants to aid him. Dress and insignia indicated rank and experience in battle. Accompanying the warriors on long marches or during sieges was a commissary force of hunters to supply food and other requirements. Rituals and dances fanned the martial spirit and celebrated victories. And like many soldiers the world over, warriors carried some sort of amulet into battle to guard them from harm.
Occasionally they raided neighboring tribes for stores of food or for women or slaves. Early in the eighteenth century, for example, Creek Indians, serving as mercenaries for British colonists, attacked and captured several villages of Yamasee and other tribes who were sent to slavery in the Carolinas.
Causes of war varied from tribe to tribe, but usually involved territorial rights, retaliation for aggressive acts, or rituals marking young males' coming to manhood through the performance of brave deeds. If the rituals resulted in the slaying of members of another tribe, a revenge attack was almost certain, and this could escalate into tribal warfare.
When Europeans brought the horse to North America early in the sixteenth century, that animal became the most prized object for raiders and made it possible for a young man to prove himself by capturing an enemy's horse rather than having to kill the man. The capture of horses often resulted in running fights, in which other deeds could be performed that added to a warrior's status. An individual's standing in a tribe was also measured by the number of captured horses in his possession.
Territorial disputes between tribes had little to do with land ownership; rather, they concerned the wild game and food plants on the land. For example, food shortages during the seventeenth century brought the Pequot into conflict with the Niantic, Narragansett, and other tribes of southern New England. Fearing the presence of the Pequot, the colonists in the area supported the opposition tribes, including a dissident branch of the Pequot—the Mohegan led by the legendary Uncas. So many Pequot were killed or scattered that the tribe virtually ceased to exist.
Any tribe occupying territory with particularly rich food resources was liable to attack by other tribes wandering in search of the essentials of life. From the beginning of European colonization to the ceding of the last tracts in the Far West, Indians had difficulty comprehending the Euro-American concept of ownership of land. But after their living space was taken by artful treaties and removal was forced upon them, they often resorted to war. Examples include the uprising during the 1670s that was planned for almost a decade by Metacom in New England and is known as King Philip's War. Two hundred years later, the Sioux and Cheyenne on the northern plains were fighting to recover their holy Black Hills. Red Cloud of the Teton Sioux succeeded in holding for almost a decade lands claimed by them along tributaries of the Yellowstone River, but military expeditions and rapid settlement eventually forced the Plains Indians onto reservations.
Efforts by some chiefs to unify tribes for war did little to slow the spread of European settlement. In the seventeenth century, Popé brought the Pueblos together to fight for independence from Spanish rule. During the revolt they killed hundreds of Spaniards and forced the survivors out of their towns. But because of dissension among the Pueblos and attacks from other tribes, the alliance collapsed. Within a dozen years the Spaniards had returned. In the 1760s Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, organized an alliance to drive the British from his people's Ohio valley homeland, but it failed. Early in the nineteenth century, Tecumseh persuaded warriors from at least fifteen distantly separated tribes to join his confederacy, but they too could not stop the onrush of settlement across Ohio and Indiana.
Only the Iroquois League, a highly advanced combination of tribes in New York State, was able to withstand, for almost two centuries, the efforts of Europeans to seize their living space. The Mohawks, Cayugas, Oneidas, Onondagas, and Senecas—and later the Tuscaroras—were agricultural peoples, living on land rich in crops, venison, and furs. Long before the coming of Europeans, they had put together a federation (similar to the confederation that created the United States). This provided them with a central government that was peaceful in intent but if necessary could apply military pressure to defend against their neighbors, the Hurons and Algonquins. After colonization began, the French, English, and Dutch learned to respect the fierceness of Iroquois resistance.
The Iroquois were among the first Indians to obtain firearms by trading furs and corn. But they overextended their range in search of furs for trading, and the resulting conflicts gradually weakened the league. After the outbreak of the revolutionary war, the Iroquois split into factions. Neutrality failed, and many allied with the British. Their lands became battlegrounds; fields and granaries were destroyed. After the war, those who had not fled to Canada or westward were confined to reservations.
Even with a strong government, the Iroquois civil leaders were never able to control their warriors or change their ancient manner of fighting. To Iroquois warriors, war was individual combat. They did not concentrate their forces on command, as the Europeans had since the days of the Romans. Nor did any of the tribes maintain a standing army as European nations did. Service as a warrior was voluntary, and although there were long-standing enmities between certain tribes, protracted wars were almost unknown. War parties varied greatly in size, but most of them were not much larger than a modern-day platoon. After the warriors and their leaders made a decision to organize a war party, volunteers were called for, and the war chief selected his lieutenants. Four or five days of fasting or feasting, prayer, dancing, singing, and other rituals might follow, and then after weapons were carefully inspected, paint applied to the body, and the proper amulets collected, the warriors departed.
Scouts went out two to four miles ahead of the party, reporting back to the war chief if they found wild game or traces of the enemy. When scouts sighted an enemy village, they quickly brought back information about its location, the number of lodges and horses, and the existence of suitable cover for an attack. If for some reason the party lost the element of surprise, or someone observed a bad luck sign or reported having a warning dream, the attack might be abandoned. But when the war chief decided upon an attack, the time most likely was at daybreak. Various signals directed the advance of the warriors—movements of hands, lances, or guns, or the sounding of eagle-wing or turkey-bone whistles. For signaling over long distances on the spacious plains, the warriors used smoke signals and flashing mirrors.
The Woodland Indians in the East fought mostly on foot, faithfully obeying their war leaders as they silently set ambushes or prepared for surprise assaults upon villages. But from the moment of the signaled attack, each warrior fought independently, seeking honors for himself. In the West, after the introduction of horses, the Plains Indians fought mostly mounted, and although sometimes described as the finest light cavalry in the world, they seldom charged in shock formations. Each horseman attacked as he pleased, often recklessly daring the fire of soldiers by seeking close combat in order to win honors by "striking coup." Warriors of the plains made their coup sticks from wooden poles, usually willow, about six feet long, and decorated with eagle feathers or bits of animal skins. Striking an enemy with a coup stick or weapon was the highest symbol of bravery, ranking above killing or scalping. George Grinnell, who lived with and studied the war customs of several Plains tribes, believed that the ceremony of counting coup was a survival of the times before Indians used arrows, when they fought hand-to-hand with clubs and sharpened sticks.
Scalping is a war practice that dates from antiquity. Before colonization, some North American tribes scalped their war victims, and some did not. The coming of Europeans undoubtedly accelerated the custom. In the struggle for control of North America, various nations offered bounties for the heads of enemy Indians or soldiers. Scalps were easy to remove with European metal knives and easier to transport than heads.
Before they had access to muskets and other firearms, the warriors' weapons were arrows, clubs, tomahawks, knives, and lances. Arrows were as varied as the tribes, but the heads were generally of two types—narrow and tapering like a lance or triangular. The latter were used in war, the heads often being loosely attached to the shafts so they would remain in the wound when the shaft was withdrawn. Some tribes cut grooves down the shafts to facilitate the flow of blood from the wound. In close encounters, a warrior trained from youth as a bowman could fire far more rapidly and accurately than an enemy armed with a muzzle-loader. After the introduction of breech-loaders and more rapidly firing rifles, arrows could be used effectively only in surprise attacks followed by swift withdrawals.
The war club was in general use across America and differed in material, shape, and decoration. A length of wood with a knob at the end was common among tribes of the forest. Sharp bits of stone or bone were added to the head; as metal became available blades and spikes were used. In the East war clubs developed into tomahawks, a hatchet-shaped weapon that was originally made of stone. After the Europeans came, the blades were metal, some actually made in Europe. Because of its war symbolism, the tomahawk was buried to represent peace and dug up for war.
To obtain greater range, especially on the plains, warriors used lances—poles as long as twelve feet or more with large stone or metal points shaped like arrowheads. Usually they were decorated with fur, eagle feathers, and strips of beads.
During the Civil War, tribes from Indian Territory fought on both sides. This experience, combined with years of observing uniformed soldiers in battle, gradually brought on modifications in their own comportment. In 1834, while approaching a Comanche village with a company of dragoons, George Catlin witnessed the maneuvers of several hundred warriors who galloped out at full speed to meet them. "As they wheeled their horses," he reported, "they very rapidly formed in a line, and 'dressed' like well-disciplined cavalry."
In 1867, George Armstrong Custer was similarly impressed with the defensive posture of a Cheyenne force outside a tipi village on the Kansas plains: "Most of the Indians were mounted; all were bedecked in their brightest colors, their heads crowned with the brilliant warbonnet, their lances bearing the crimson pennant, bows strung, and quivers full of barbed arrows.... In the line of battle before us there were several hundred Indians, while farther to the rear and at different distances were other organized bodies acting apparently as reserves."
Such developments in warfare came too late to have any substantial effects, although they played some part in the Indian victories in 1876 at the Rosebud and the Little Bighorn.
Angie Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States (1974); Thomas E. Mails, The Mystic Warriors of the Plains (1972); William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed., Handbook of North American Indians, 20 vols. (1977-).
Dee Brown
See also Uncas.
