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To: Hawkmoon who wrote (9569)	5/22/1999 7:09:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

It is of course true that many Native American tribes were constantly at war with one another, but I have to wonder about the notion that they would have killed as many of one another as the whites killed of them. My base for comparison is the hill tribes of Northern Luzon, among whom I lived for a number of years. These maintained peripheral contact with outsiders for a century or so, but most were not "pacified" until well into this century (they remain not entirely pacified), so quite good records of observations of their cultures exist. These tribes were in a constant state of war with their neighbors, but it was not "war" as we know it. A group of men from one village would sneak out, do a quick raid on the neighbor, grab a head (if they could, many raids were unsuccessful), and run like hell before the other tribe got their men together to pursue. Organized campaigns, where villages would gather all of their resources and embark on a systematic effort to "conquer" or drive out their rivals, were unknown. The resources didn't exist, and a tribe that removed that much manpower from the hard economics of subsistence living simply wouldn't survive. The "wars" went on for generations, but actual casualty counts were quite small. Larger population movements, where migrations would replace entire cultures, did of course occur. They generally took generations, and while it is easy to say that one group "drove out" another (which conjures up the vision of an organized "ethnic cleansing"), it would be more accurate to say that one group gradually moved out - often displacing someone else - as more aggressive and skilled groups slowly increased their population in an area. I am not that well informed about Native Americans, but it seems to me that the economic constraints against waging full scale war must have been quite similar. I would be interested to hear your comments.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (9569)	5/22/1999 7:30:00 PM
From: truedog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

to:Ron Reece from:truedog Indian wars Ron...Again I must point out that these major bloody wars between tribes was after the intervention of the white man. Conflicts were often settled by counting coup. It is much like what happened after Shaka came to control the Zulus. Prior to his inventing and producing the assagai,the tribes in that part of Afrika shook limber, blunt branches at each other shouted insults and, the ones that could throw such puny spears closest to the other warriors, won the battle. The assagai was a rigid wooden shaft with an extremely sharp point and a cutting edge which,could be acurately thrown and thrusted with bloody results. Therefore their method of warfare was forever changed by a single event. This is a much similar scenario as the Native Americans. BTW, I don't use the word Indian because bone-headed thought he had landed in India. truedog