The Wild Frontier Page 4
The war between the Iroquois and the Hurons finally ended in 1684. Francis Parkman had little sympathy for what happened:
It was a strange and miserable spectacle to behold the savages of this continent at the time when the knell of their common ruin had already sounded. Civilization had gained a foothold on their borders. The long and gloomy reign of barbarism was drawing near its close and their united efforts could scarcely have availed to sustain it. Yet in this crisis of their destiny these doomed tribes were tearing each other’s throats in a wolfish fury, joined to an intelligence that served little purpose but mutual destruction.27
About 1776 there was an Iroquois civil war. Mohawks attacked Oneidas, and Oneidas attacked Mohawks. Iroquois fought Iroquois at the Revolutionary War battles of Bennington and Saratoga, both of which were won by the Continental army.28
Speaking of the Iroquois, Albert Gallatin,* secretary of the treasury to Jefferson and Madison, tellingly noted that Iroquois “conquered only to destroy; and, it would seem, … solely for the purpose of gratifying their thirst for blood…. They made a perfect desert of the whole country within 500 miles of their seats.”30
In the 1830s, Catlin discovered that the Crow and the Blackfeet “are always at war, and have been, time out of mind.”31 The Mandans were engaged in “almost continued warfare.”32 He generalized that “many different and distinct nations, [were] always at war with each other.”33
Catlin learned that little parties of 6 or 8 Delawares† from 2,000 miles away had visited tribes in the Upper Missouri. In several instances, the visitors, after being feasted and having solemnized articles of everlasting peace, received many presents, “and [having] taken affectionate leave, have brought away 6 or 8 scalps with them.”35
In 1846 an Indian agent in the Upper Missouri Agency remonstrated with a Sioux chief about the perpetual wars Indians had with one another. The chief answered, “If their great-grandfather desired them to cease war with their enemies, why did he not send each of them a petticoat, and make squaws of them at once?”36
In 1855 a group of 250 Comanche warriors out on a buffalo hunt encountered by chance a group of their old enemies, the Apache. There was a battle in which both sides lost about 17 men. Nelson Lee, who had been captured by the Comanche, observed that
at that time a deadly strife existed between the tribes, and it would have been a scandalous violation of an Indian’s idea of manhood to have separated without a bloody tilt at arms…. When a warrior dies on the field of battle, their joy knows no bounds.37
Dozens of writers have commented on the warlike nature of the Indians. The warlike nature and bold provocations of some tribes or groups of warriors led to violence and injustices that might not otherwise have taken place.38 An important conclusion was that “combat among different tribes or among different bands within a tribe was, if anything, far more frequent than war between Indians and whites.”39 Harold E. Driver even concluded in Indians of North America that “probably as many Indians were killed fighting each other after White contact as were killed in wars with the Whites.”40 The World Book Encyclopedia states forthrightly that
the European settlers did not bring the first warfare to North America. Indian tribes had fought among themselves for thousands of years. They struggled constantly for the best hunting grounds and village sites, for revenge after the killing of a tribesman, and for personal glory…. But not all tribes were equally warlike. Some, including the Iroquois and the Apache, fought almost all the time.41
Edward H. Spicer in The American Indians agreed:
A … characteristic of the … peoples of the northern plains was that they became especially concerned with and adept in warfare. The competition for hunting grounds was intense as more and more Indians moved into the region. Thus for survival they developed fighting techniques, and warfare became a major orientation of their cultures.42
Warfare performed several valuable functions for the tribes. Bil Gilbert reported a Cherokee chief in the 1700s saying to an English agent that the idea of making peace with another tribe was not attractive because the Cherokee must then immediately look for another tribe with whom they could engage in “our beloved occupation.”43
Carl Waldman listed a variety of functions served by war in tribal culture:
as ritual, a rite of passage to manhood or a means of achieving godlike qualities, such as among the Plains warrior societies; as economy, for a source of sustenance through raiding, as practiced by the Apaches of the Southwest; as limited political purpose, a way to establish tribal confederacies, as in the case of the Iroquois League of the Northeast; and as official state policy, as demonstrated by the Aztecs of Mesoamerica, who maintained their social structure through military expansion.44
The Cheyenne fought for the joy of combat and to gain the approval of others. War was a great hunt, and the young braves went to war with pleasure. To enjoy life fully, to feel satisfied, they needed someone to fight, and in their wanderings across the Plains, it was seldom difficult to find strangers to attack. To the Cheyenne, anyone who was not of their own tribe was an enemy.45
THE SIOUX started west around 1750 because their enemies, the Chippewa, had obtained guns from the French. The Sioux forced western tribes to move.46 Sioux author Vine Deloria candidly admitted that the Sioux
have a great tradition of conflict…. And when we find no one else to quarrel with, we often fight each other…. During one twenty-four-year period in the last century the Sioux fought … against the Crow, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Mandan, Ankara, Hidatsa, Ponca, Iowa, Pawnee, Otoe, Omaha, Winnebago, Chippewa, Cree, Gros Ventre.47
Francis Parkman expressed the same view about the Sioux attitude toward warfare:
War is the breath of their nostrils. Against most of the neighboring tribes they cherish a rancorous hatred, transmitted from father to son, and inflamed by constant aggression and retaliation.48
Harold E. Driver found even more significance in the Indian obsession with war:
No young man ever thought of getting married or of being accepted as an adult citizen until he had slain an enemy and brought back a scalp to prove it. So important was this achievement to the individual that when war parties failed to contact the enemy and to obtain the necessary scalps, they sometimes killed members of their own tribe, whom they accidentally encountered on their way home, rather than return empty-handed and in disgrace.49
In the 1780s, Jefferson came to a similar realization. “Their [Indian] souls are wholly bent upon war. This is what procures them glory among the men, and makes them the admiration of the women. To this they are educated from their earliest youth.”50
Intertribal warfare finally reached the point where, Brian Dippie claimed, “[m]any treaties negotiated by the government … attempted to establish boundaries between the tribes in the hope of ending internecine warfare.”51 Clark Wissler, who lived with 10 Indian tribes in 1905,52 noted another indication that Indians were natural enemies. “Many Indians were ambitious to collect scalps but usually preferred Indian scalps.”53
Carl Waldman, however, concluded that land was the central issue in a majority of Indian wars.54 He stated that the fighting among the Indians was for the same purpose that had occurred before and that would occur again when the settlers came, namely, “a stronger people pushing aside a weaker one while expanding territorially.”55 Robert M. Utley and Wilcomb E. Washburn also found in Indian Wars that the Sioux (this applies to almost every tribe) “fought for possession of hunting grounds, in defense against the forays of equally aggressive enemies, and in reprisal when an enemy scored a success.”56
The depth of feeling one tribe could have against another was illustrated when General George Crook was trying to get Crow scouts in the Great Sioux Wars. He called a general council with his officers and tribal chiefs. Old Crow, the paramount chief, made this statement:
These are our lands by inheritance. The Great Spirit gave them to our fathers, but the Sioux stole them from us. They hunt upon our mountains. They f
ish in our streams. They have stolen our horses. They have murdered our squaws, our children…. Our war is with the Sioux and only them. We want back our lands. We want their women for our slaves, to work for us as our women have had to work for them. We want their horses for our young men, and their mules for our squaws. The Sioux have trampled upon our hearts. We shall spit upon their scalps.57
Crow-Sioux enmity erupted again in 1877 when 5 Sioux chiefs approached the camp of General Nelson A. Miles under a flag of truce. They were a peace faction which was gathering strength. Miles had anticipated their arrival, so he had instructed his Indian scouts to honor anyone approaching under a white flag. As the Sioux approached the camp of the Crow scouts, the Crows ambushed and massacred the Sioux, their ancient enemies.58
A trapper and hunter named Wootton—but called Uncle Dick—noted that before the settlers came, the Indians not only robbed and plundered and stole from one another, but killed, scalped, mutilated, tortured, and enslaved. When the settlers came, they did these same things to them.59
THE SIGNIFICANT wars among Indians are described in Appendix A, which lists more than 500 known intertribal wars60 between 1622 and 1890. Wars that are not important to the subject of this book are merely listed in skeletal fashion, giving only the date and the belligerents. Probably there was not a time between 1622 and 1890 when Indians were not fighting other Indians.
Many of these intertribal wars occurred before the settlers arrived in any significant numbers, and more than 450 occurred after the Powhatan Wars began in 1622—that is, after the Indians became aware that battles with the settlers might occur. Earlier, King Powhatan had expressed fear that the settlers were going to invade and possess land occupied by Indians.61
ONE OF the most telling illustrations of Indian love of warfare is that Indians very frequently served as mercenaries and scouts for pay for the English, French, and American armies against other Indians, even other Indians from the same tribe. Such events are included in Appendix A. Marshall saw this as “another sad chapter in the story of Indian betrayal of Indians.”62 Cyrus Townsend Brady in his Indian Fights and Fighters believed that this situation was instrumental in the success of American arms against the Indians:
It is a singular thing to note the looseness of the tie with which the members of the various tribes were bound. Frequently we find bands of the same tribe fighting for and against the United States on the same field. One of the most fruitful causes of the success of our arms has been this willingness on the part of the Indians to fight against their own people, of which the government has been willing to avail itself.63
The conflicting views about Indians in general also applies to the effectiveness of their warfare. On the one hand, Waldman believed that the Indians were “among history’s most effective warriors, and their guerrilla tactics—emphasizing concealment and individual initiative”—were adopted by many modern armies.64 William Brandon praised the Indians’ “remarkable courage.”65 Roy Harvey Pearce observed that the Indian “will defend himself against a host of enemies, always choosing to be killed rather than to surrender.”66 Harold E. Driver similarly noted that
few indigenous peoples in the world at the same level of culture have fought so valiantly against European intruders as did the Indians east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States. Man for man, bow for bow, and gun for gun, they were a match for the best troops sent against them and were overwhelmed only because of the greater numbers and superior armament of the English and French colonizers.67
On the other hand, Page Smith made a detailed critique of the Indian as a warrior. He said that the Indian had a basic weakness in warfare in that he was not prepared for protracted campaigning. The Indian preferred stealthy raids, was unwilling to sustain heavy casualties, and did not have the will to persist in the face of heavy odds. He fought for glory and spoils but not for victory, was capable of effective attack but not defense, and could not be restrained or controlled once aroused. The Indians would stand fast in the face of attack by a superior force only when confronted with death or surrender, in which event death was almost always chosen.68
Lack of Indian staying power in battle has also been noted by others.69 Indians had a tendency to run away from a battle. Old West writer Bret Harte put it like this:
The red men had different ideas of bravery than those to which whites had been schooled. Most Indians saw no glory in dying nobly for a doomed cause when it was possible to get away and resume the battle elsewhere under better conditions.70
General Philip Henry Sheridan discovered that “Indians seldom [make a] stand when the force is able to defeat them…. They will scatter.”71 “Indians rarely fought,” according to Axelrod, “unless they enjoyed substantially superior numbers.”72 Cyrus Townsend Brady put it another way: “The well-known disinclination of Indians to fight pitched battles is a factor which enters largely into every campaign.”73 And he noted another drawback:
One of the curious Indian superstitions, which has often served the white man against whom he had fought to good purpose, is that when a man is killed in the dark he must pass all eternity in darkness. Consequently, he rarely ever attacks at night.74
And there was another inhibiting factor noted by Ralph K. Andrist—cold. “Indian war parties very seldom operated in winter.”75 Very few combatants have the advantage of knowing that the enemy will probably not attack at night or in the winter. Andrist further said the Indians often did not have “the ability to improvise tactics.”76
Charles Robinson called attention to one more liability of the Indian as a fighter:
The average Indian thought almost entirely as an individual, and not as part of a larger organization. Strategy, communications, even numbers of people in a particular location—essential to any white history—were seldom noted because they did not affect most Indians as individuals.77
NOT SURPRISINGLY, ruthlessness in warfare was another Indian characteristic. When the Sioux were fighting the Ute, Sioux chief Red Cloud* saw that a Ute warrior trying to cross a stream was about to drown because of a wounded horse. Red Cloud went into the stream, saved the warrior from drowning, then scalped him. Later Red Cloud killed an Indian child who was tending a horse herd before running the horses away.79
CRUELTY IS an indispensable element of an atrocity—and was another characteristic shared by the Indians and the settlers. James Adair, an Irish trader who married many Indian women and fathered many Indian children, recalled that “once the contest began, the Indians had no sense of where to end it. Their thirst for blood of their reputed enemies is not to be quenched with a few drops—the more they drink, the more it inflames their thirst.”80 Catlin reported that “cruelty is one of the leading traits of the Indian’s character…. In the treatment of their prisoners also, in many tribes, they are in the habit of inflicting the most appalling tortures.”81
Missionary John Heckewelder, who was a friend of the Indians, acknowledged in 1818 “that the Indians are in general revengeful and cruel to their enemies. That even after the battle is over, they wreak their deliberate revenge on their defenseless prisoners.”82 Catlin also found that “the Indians are hard and cruel masters.”83
Captive Mary Jemison married a Delaware, then later married a Seneca warrior named Hiokatoo, who was second in command to* Joseph Brant, a Mohawk leader, at the Cherry Valley Massacre.84 Her account of her life looked on the Indians with sympathy, but she candidly described Hiokatoo’s early training:
In early life, Hiokatoo showed signs of thirst for blood by attending only to the art of war, in the use of the tomahawk and scalping knife; and in practicing cruelties upon every thing that chanced to fall into his hands, which was susceptible of pain. In that way he learned to use his implements of war effectually, and at the same time blunted all those fine feelings and tender sympathies that are naturally excited, by hearing or seeing, a fellow being in distress. He could effect the most excruciating tortures upon his enemies, and prided himself upon his fort
itude, in having performed the most barbarous ceremonies and tortures, without the least degree of pity or remorse. Thus qualified, when very young he was initiated into scenes of carnage, by being engaged in the wars that prevailed amongst the Indian tribes.85
Fanny Kelly, who wrote My Captivity Among the Sioux Indians, observed the same thing:
Cruelty is inherent in them, and is early manifested in the young, torturing birds, turtles, or any little animals that may fall in their hands. They seem to delight in it, while the pleasure of the adult in torturing his prisoners is most unquestionable.86
Fanny Kelly, only 19 years old but a wife and mother, was headed across the Plains for Idaho when she was captured by a group of more than 1,000 Indians in 1864. She had remarkable experiences, and a Sioux related to Kelly “many instances of outrageous cruelties of his band in their murderous attacks on travelling parties and frontier settlers.”87
Sometimes Indian cruelty was too much even for other Indians. The Iroquois were so cruel that their neighbors feared and hated them.88
USE OF torture was another Indian characteristic. It is closely related to cruelty, but of course there may be cruelty without torture. Frederick Drimmer compiled a book of narratives called Captured by the Indians. He said that “Indians often made a cult of torture, and young and old, male and female, took part in it. The squaws had a special reputation for ferocity.”89
Some general observations about torture can be made. Alan Axelrod, in his Chronicle of the Indian Wars, wrote:
It is a fact that Indians were often cruel to their captives. The weak, the old, the infants, and the wounded—prisoners who would impede flight from the scene of a raid—were often summarily dispatched. Children were killed before the eyes of their parents. Elderly parents were killed in front of their children…. Cutting, flaying alive, dismemberment, piercing, beating, and burning were common. One usual torture was to cut off an ear, a strip of flesh, or a finger and force the victim to eat it…. [Running the gauntlet was a] … combination of torture, ritual, and sport [which] placed the captive at the head of parallel rows of club-wielding warriors (and often women and children as well); the captive had to run from one end of the “gauntlet” to the other as blows rained down on him. If he stumbled and fell, he was placed at the starting point again—or he was beaten to death.90