Who Is the Savage? European Vs. Indian Warfare
The myth of the ruthless Indian savage lusting after the blood of innocent Europeans must be vigorously dispelled. This concocted imagery—that has painted the indigenous people as a diabolical tomahawk-swinging barbarian endlessly on the warpath—is the result of a combination of the Pilgrims’ demonization of the Indians, the racist scholarship of biased historians, and the standard propaganda pushed by an agenda-driven Hollywood.
In actuality, the historical record shows the very opposite was true. Once the European settlements stabilized, the whites turned on their generous and welcoming hosts in a cruel and brutal way. The once amicable relationship was breached again and again by the whites, who greedily coveted the riches of Indian land and trade. An 11-foot-high wall was erected around the entire Plymouth settlement for the purpose of keeping the Indians out. They also mounted five cannons on a hill around their settlement and let it be known that any Indian who came within the vicinity was subject to robbery, enslavement, or even murder.[1]
These acts were not simply defensive. The Pilgrims were engaged in a ruthless war of extermination against their hosts. Just days before the alleged Thanksgiving love fest, they deviously and deliberately caused a rivalry between two friendly Indians, pitting one against the other in an attempt to obtain “better intelligence and make them both more diligent.”[2] Miles Standish went to the Indians, pretended to be a trader, then beheaded an Indian man named Wituwamat. He brought the head to Plymouth, where it was displayed on a wooden spike for many years, according to one historian, “as a symbol of white power.”[3] He had the victim’s younger brother hanged from the rafters for good measure.[4] From that time on, the whites were known to the Indians of Massachusetts by the name “Wotowquenange,” which in their tongue meant cutthroats and stabbers.[5]
This aggressive Pilgrim savagery is far more characteristic of the European than it is of the Native American. Indeed, the Pilgrims’ own testimony obliterates the fallacy of the warmongering Indian. From time to time Indians engaged each other in military contests, but the causes of “war,” the methods, and the resulting damage differed profoundly from the European variety:
- Indian “wars” were largely symbolic and were about honor, not about territory or extermination.
- “Wars” were fought in retaliation for a specific act and were ended when retribution was achieved. Such action might better be described as internal policing. The conquest or destruction of whole territories was a European concept.
- Indian “wars” were often engaged in by family groups, not by whole tribal groups, and would involve only the family members.
- A lengthy negotiation was engaged in between the aggrieved parties before escalation to physical confrontation would be sanctioned. Surprise attacks were unknown to the Indians.
- It was regarded as evidence of bravery for a man to go into battle carrying no weapon that would do any harm at a distance—not even bows and arrows. The bravest act in war in some Indian cultures was to touch their adversary and escape before he could do physical harm.
- The targeting of non-combatants like women, children, and the elderly was never contemplated. Indians expressed shock and repugnance when the Europeans told, and then showed, them that they considered women and children fair game in their style of warfare.
- A major Indian “war” might end with less than a dozen casualties on both sides. Often, when the arrows had been expended, the “war” would be halted. The European practice of collective punishment or wiping out whole nations in bloody massacres was incomprehensible to the Indian.
According to one scholar, “The most notable feature of Indian warfare was its relative innocuity.” European observers of Indian wars often expressed surprise at how little harm they actually inflicted. “Their wars are far less bloody and devouring than the cruel wars of Europe,” commented settler Roger Williams in 1643.[6] Even Puritan warmonger and professional soldier Capt. John Mason scoffed at Indian warfare: “[Their] feeble manner…did hardly deserve the name of fighting.” Fellow holocaust instigator John Underhill spoke of the Narragansetts, after he had spent a day “burning and spoiling” their country: “no Indians would come near us, but run from us, as the deer from the dogs.” He concluded that the Indians might fight seven years and not kill seven men. Their fighting style, he wrote, “is more for pastime, than to conquer and subdue enemies.”[7]
All this describes a people for whom war is a deeply regrettable last resort. An agrarian people, the American Indians have in 10,000 years devised a civilization that provided dozens of options all designed to avoid conflict—the very opposite of European “civilization” and doctrine. Thomas Jefferson—who himself advocated the physical extermination of the American Indian—said of Europe: “They [Europeans] are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of labor, property and lives of their people.”[8]
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NOTES:
[1] John S. Erwin, “Captain Myles Standish’s Military Role at Plymouth,” Historical Journal of Massachusetts 13, no. 1 (January 1985): 4-7.
[2] Herbert M. Sylvester, Indian Wars of New England, vol. 1 (Boston, 1910), 323-24n.
[3] Gary B. Nash, Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 78.
[4] George F. Willison, Saints and Strangers (New York, 1945), 185, 199, 226-28; Robert M. Bartlett, The Faith of the Pilgrims (New York: United Church Press, 1978), 194-96; Francis Dillon, The Pilgrims (New York: Doubleday, 1973), 158-75; Erwin, “Captain Myles Standish’s Military Role,” 9; Chandler Whipple, The Indian and the White Man in New England (Stockbridge, MA: Berkshire Traveller Press, 1976), 140.
[5] Nash, Red, White, and Black, 78-79.
[6] Adam J. Hirsch, “The Collision of Military Cultures in Seventeenth-Century New England,” Journal of American History 74, no. 4 (March 1988); Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 229-34.
[7] Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 37, 43; David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 109-11.
[8] Drinnon, Facing West, 114; Stannard, American Holocaust, 109ff.