16 - Pre-Columbian and Early Historic Native American Warfare

Summary

As in other world regions, warfare played an important role in shaping the sociopolitical landscape of pre-Columbian North America. In contrast with many of these, however, written records are lacking for all but the last few centuries following European contact. The history of indigenous North American warfare and war strategy must therefore be reconstructed largely from archaeological remains. One of the most accessible types of information available on war strategy from this source pertains to defence, as archaeological features such as rock walls, palisades and lookout towers tend to preserve in the archaeological record. The type of defensive measures used reveals people’s degree of concern with attack and shows how they employed attributes of their environment to protect themselves. The location of features may also provide insight into the direction and identity of the threat. Burned houses and unburied bodies, on the other hand, document strategies used by enemies when defences were breached. Stone weapons also preserve in the archaeological record and can reveal the arsenal available to combatants at different times and places, as well as forms of engagement: shock weapons imply hand-to-hand combat, for example, whereas projectile weapons can be deployed from a greater distance, suggesting ambush or open battle. The skeletal remains of the victims provide some of the most definitive evidence for the existence and nature of active conflict, including the demographic characteristics of victims, the spatial relationship between victim and attacker(s), and the scale and lethality of conflict (e.g. a few victims versus 500 in a mass grave). In combination with early European written accounts, which inform on aspects of Native American warfare not readily apparent in the archaeological record, the collective evidence yields a picture of war in pre-Columbian North America that is both unique and reminiscent of war in other world regions, and argues for the importance of including North America in global histories of human warfare.