Pre-Columbian Warfare
Historical theme
Battles and wars between peoples of the Americas before European influences marked by the arrival of Christopher Columbus.
1
game
1platform
[wip]
Domestic Horses, guns, and disease were introduced to warfare in the Americas by Europeans and were not tools of Pre-Columbian war.
Experts are divided about how common warfare in the Americas was before the arrival of Europeans. But it is generally known to have been overall much less deadly. Unlike Europeans, few tribes had the resources to sustain a conflict more than a few months and fighting all but ceased during winter. Certainly there were tribes that were very capable of technological and tactical advantage to achieve decisive victory or genocide in killing as many of their enemy as efficiently as possible; but these goals rarely seem to have been a priority. Conflict consisted of a great deal of ritual. It seems as though spiritual and/or moral victory was an important goal.
Often for many tribes, the goal of war was to capture adopt members of other tribes as their own. These were most common and called 'mourning wars' as they were initiated by women mourning for deceased children and husbands. While the point of these raids was capture, there was still much brutality. Prisoners that did not submit or were otherwise found to be unsuitable might be ritually tortured perhaps to death, again, to be determined by females that initiated the war. Sometimes tribes just wanted to increase their numbers. Land and material resources were usually not fought over with the exception of the tribes of the great plains (who's inter-tribal warfare actually became more ritualistic and less deadly after the introduction of the horse). Before the horse, battles (that were not empire-building) took place between close neighbors only and lasted a day or two. Among the western tribes, violence was more of a personal affair in which the tribes tended not to participate as groups. When disputes arose, the whole tribal involvement, if any, would usually consist of identifying the individuals involved and via tribal law making sure the conflict remained between them only rather than involving whole tribes. Conflicts involving tribalism (nationalism) was limited to relatively non-deadly inter-tribal games and rituals where honor, prestige, spiritual power, and possession of resources were decided.
Different types of warfare of course were waged by the empire and coalition tribes who did set out to achieve conquest and make total war against each other on occasion. Again, the most valued spoil of these tribes were not land or material resources but the people themselves and not necessarily as slaves but also as new members of the state. In the empire tribes, land and resources were acquired because the people associated with them were aquired. Also, these empires did not function as well when they were at war. Thus going to war had to be a carefully calculated sacrifice and other methods of mutually beneficial empire building were a priority. Peace and trade were very effective tactics in the Americas. For instance, archaeological evidence shows that cultivation of corn spread from a few tribes in South America to even North America in just a few years and nearly every tribe in North America spent the same year cultivating corn rather than their usual lifestyles before most of them returned to business as usual. This simultaneous year long action of so many tribes suggests they agreed to a politically (and/or religiously) facilitated cross-culture plan that accompanied the trade of seed corn and cultivation knowledge. It also suggests a great deal of mutual trust was achieved since such a plan could have been perceived at the time to have been designed by one of the South American empires to weaken the tribes by having them spend a year devoting resources to corn cultivation with accompanying bad seed/crop and/or false cultivation knowledge. Then again, such tactics may have been considered too dishonorable to use. There's also evidence that the Great Plains of the North American continent were not a natural phenomenon but rather the result of a planned and purposeful defoliation effort of many cooperating tribes that hunted buffalo, to increase the buffalo population by vastly increasing the amount buffalo optimized habitat. Ironically after this effort, the plains Indians uniquely battled primarily over control of territory and the material resources of buffalo.
Domestic Horses, guns, and disease were introduced to warfare in the Americas by Europeans and were not tools of Pre-Columbian war.
Experts are divided about how common warfare in the Americas was before the arrival of Europeans. But it is generally known to have been overall much less deadly. Unlike Europeans, few tribes had the resources to sustain a conflict more than a few months and fighting all but ceased during winter. Certainly there were tribes that were very capable of technological and tactical advantage to achieve decisive victory or genocide in killing as many of their enemy as efficiently as possible; but these goals rarely seem to have been a priority. Conflict consisted of a great deal of ritual. It seems as though spiritual and/or moral victory was an important goal.
Often for many tribes, the goal of war was to capture adopt members of other tribes as their own. These were most common and called 'mourning wars' as they were initiated by women mourning for deceased children and husbands. While the point of these raids was capture, there was still much brutality. Prisoners that did not submit or were otherwise found to be unsuitable might be ritually tortured perhaps to death, again, to be determined by females that initiated the war. Sometimes tribes just wanted to increase their numbers. Land and material resources were usually not fought over with the exception of the tribes of the great plains (who's inter-tribal warfare actually became more ritualistic and less deadly after the introduction of the horse). Before the horse, battles (that were not empire-building) took place between close neighbors only and lasted a day or two. Among the western tribes, violence was more of a personal affair in which the tribes tended not to participate as groups. When disputes arose, the whole tribal involvement, if any, would usually consist of identifying the individuals involved and via tribal law making sure the conflict remained between them only rather than involving whole tribes. Conflicts involving tribalism (nationalism) was limited to relatively non-deadly inter-tribal games and rituals where honor, prestige, spiritual power, and possession of resources were decided.
Different types of warfare of course were waged by the empire and coalition tribes who did set out to achieve conquest and make total war against each other on occasion. Again, the most valued spoil of these tribes were not land or material resources but the people themselves and not necessarily as slaves but also as new members of the state. In the empire tribes, land and resources were acquired because the people associated with them were aquired. Also, these empires did not function as well when they were at war. Thus going to war had to be a carefully calculated sacrifice and other methods of mutually beneficial empire building were a priority. Peace and trade were very effective tactics in the Americas. For instance, archaeological evidence shows that cultivation of corn spread from a few tribes in South America to even North America in just a few years and nearly every tribe in North America spent the same year cultivating corn rather than their usual lifestyles before most of them returned to business as usual. This simultaneous year long action of so many tribes suggests they agreed to a politically (and/or religiously) facilitated cross-culture plan that accompanied the trade of seed corn and cultivation knowledge. It also suggests a great deal of mutual trust was achieved since such a plan could have been perceived at the time to have been designed by one of the South American empires to weaken the tribes by having them spend a year devoting resources to corn cultivation with accompanying bad seed/crop and/or false cultivation knowledge. Then again, such tactics may have been considered too dishonorable to use. There's also evidence that the Great Plains of the North American continent were not a natural phenomenon but rather the result of a planned and purposeful defoliation effort of many cooperating tribes that hunted buffalo, to increase the buffalo population by vastly increasing the amount buffalo optimized habitat. Ironically after this effort, the plains Indians uniquely battled primarily over control of territory and the material resources of buffalo.
This is a container group; its children are: