NOTES

Starkey, Armstrong, 1998, European and Native American Warfare, 1675-1815, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

INTRODUCTION

Military historian Armstrong Starkey offers to first book-length survey on European and Native American Warfare during the 17th and 18th century (1675-1815), although the study is regionally focused on New England with one chapter on the Northwest as well. Starkey applies to this subject not only the usual methods of the historian, but also those of ethnohistory, the interface between anthropology and the study of history (vii).

Also revisionism has led to a different agenda and interpretation of Indian-White relationships (see pp. 6-7 for quote).

The first chapter provides a general overview and defines some of the basic concepts. The second and third chapters, respectively, characterize the differences between Indian and European warfare in North America. Chapters 4-6 describe particular wars, and Chapter 7 the Northwest. The brief concluding chapter summarizes the main points.

ARGUMENT

The basic thesis or argument is that the various wars between the Indians and Europeans precipitated by the invasion and colonization of the latter were a complex mixture involving different European groups against one another and each with their distinctive Indian allies and accordingly others as enemies (viii). While the European warriors was superior in numbers, artillery (canons), and fortifications, the Indian warriors were superior in marksmanship (including with European muskets) and in knowledge and use of the environment (forests)(3). Furthermore, the Indians modified their previous warfare patterns of ambush and raiding with the new European weapons to offer substantial resistance in the form of what amounts to what are now called guerrilla warfare, commandos, and special forces (19, 26). Largely because of the tactical advantage of the Indians, in spite of the greater numbers and wealth of the Europeans, it took the latter more than 140 years to achieve victory and peace over the lands of the numerous indigenous societies east of the Mississippi River (168). Thus this was not only a clash of very different cultures, but also of very different cultural patterns of military values, customs, laws, organization, tactics, and warfare, and in a new environment for the European warriors, forests. Indeed, those Europeans who were most successful in warfare against the Indians, modified European tactics and adopted many of those of the Indians (6). Thus, both Indian and European warfare were variously transformed in the arena of North America during the colonial period (11).

LACK OF UNITY

The conquest might have been more rapid and efficient had the Europeans not fought among themselves (Britons, French, Spaniards, Canadians, and Americans)(6, 33). On the other hand, the indigenous resistance might have been even stronger and longer had the Indians been united against the European invaders, rather than divided by previous political differences and by the political manipulation of the different Europeans (e.g., French and English) and the varied opportunism of the different Indian groups (e.g., Iroquois and Huron). Indeed, in eastern North America the Indians almost fought their European adversaries to a standstill nearly to the end of the 18th century (10).

DISEASE (GERM OR BIOLOGICAL WARFARE?)

Another extremely important factor in the European conquest, however, was the inadvertent introduction of Old World diseases which caused repeated waves of widespread epidemics that decimated indigenous populations, economies, societies, and polities, and consequently greatly lowered their resistance to invasion and conquest. Disease in turn facilitated missionization, another form of conquest, which also proved a divisive factor among indigenous groups and communities (7-8).

INDIAN WARFARE

Warfare tactics of Indians included moving in scattered order, taking advantage of terrain, and surrounding the enemy at least partially (like a horse shoe shape to allow escape), and
avoiding being surrounded. Indians emphasized the warfare principles of small units, mobility, security, and surprise (53). Indians also had tremendous physical endurance, marching 30-50 miles in a day, frequently without food (18). They were skillful in hunting and woodcraft, readily able to survive, retreat, and hide in the natural environment. [Incidentally, Starkey links hunting and warfare, like Ardrey (21, 27)]. They were skillful in staging ambushes, raids, and orderly advances and retreats (22). Also they had some technological advantages like light birchbark canoes, snowshoes, and corn rations, these later adopted by some European fighters (19). On the other hand, Indians adopted European firearms as their principal weapon by the end of the 17th century, and Indian blacksmiths learned to maintain and repair them including casting bullets, although they remained dependent on European allies for gunpowder (20-23). Indians also became most formidable marksmen in the use of guns (22). They also attacked forts with flaming arrows, in some cases also with carts loaded with combustibles. But direct assault or prolonged siege simply wasn't the Indian style (24). Generally, Indians preferred to take enemies as captives rather than kill them (26).

EUROPEAN WARFARE

Initially European settlers defended themselves against hostile Indians by organizing militias and had little if any military expertise from formal training in Europe although this changed somewhat later (39). Also, European military style was very different from that of the Indians. It was based on rigid and inflexible discipline, volley fire against massed groups of men on open ground [Zulu](25). European idea of true and noble war was hand to hand combat (27). Initially Europeans simply weren't well prepared or very skillful in fighting wars with Indians in the forests of New England (37-38). Those Europeans who were most successful in fighting Indians learned to do it the Indian way. Some Europeans had experience with irregular or unconventional warfare, but nothing really similar to Indian warfare (49-52). "The only school of frontier war was the frontier itself" (54).

PEACE IN WAR

At the same time, in between and in the midst of wars, there was peaceful cooperation and economic exchange (e.g., fur trade) between various groups of Indians and of Europeans (10). Also many Indian societies had not only war chiefs, but also peace chiefs (30, 34). Some like the Iroquois had resolved previous conflicts among themselves by the development of a political league and then later resisted European invasion by the development of a political confederacy (33-34). Also, in spite of conflict over land, had Indians and Europeans better understood one another's cultures, then there would have been less conflict according to Starkey (14).

Starkey also points out that labeling Indians as "stateless" people can be problematic (see p. 33 for quote).

JUST WAR AND WAR CRIMES

Curiously, at several points Starkey raises issues of morality and justice in war, but cautions that behavior should be judged in historical context rather than in retrospect, that is to see the world through the eyes of the historical personages and the moral standards of their era and societies (12-13). For example, he asserts that Indians did not distinguish killing in the context of war from murder. Killing within and between communities at peace was usually dealt with through compensation, whereas killing in the context of war might demand blood revenge and other violent retribution including scalping, torture, and cannibalism. In contrast, there were situations in which the Indians were shocked by European violence (25), and sometimes when fighting as allies they were repelled by excessive violence of Europeans and refused to participate is wholesale slaughter (26, 34). On the other hand, Europeans thought that some Indian practices in warfare were unfair and inhumane, such as ambushes, surprises, attacks on civilians, and cruel treatment of prisoners (27). But Indians didn't always distinguish formally between soldier and civilian (27), nor between murder and killing in war (28, 34). Also, Indians rarely sexually molested or raped European women, whereas this was more common for a European soldier (28-29). Scalping was practiced bi Indians prior to Europeans, but some Europeans adopted it in warfare and some bounties were even paid for scalps (30-31). In the final analysis, Indians and Europeans were each bound by their own code of morality, and there were brutalities on both sides (27).

SUMMARY OF MAIN POINTS

1. Neither the Indians nor the Europeans presented a unified front in the colonial invasion of North America, but groups were diverse and conflictive.

2. The clash of Indian and European cultures was also a clash of styles of military and warfare, and both sides had to make adjustments.

3. European military tactics were ineffective against Indian tactics until the Europeans adopted those of the Indians, and Indian resistance was strong, some 140 years before pacification of Indians east of the Mississippi River and nearly a stalemate still as late as the end of the 18th century.

4. However, Indians were also changed, mainly by guns, and political and economic alliances, including the fur trade, and also by disease which greatly reduced their resistance.

5. The morality and justice of the wars and the behavior of both sides in them should not be judged in retrospect based on current standards, etc., but in the historical and cultural context of the times.

MISCELLANEOUS

Starkey refers to quote regarding "modern" European warfare as really developing around 1660! (37)

Note that war erupted in New England at least as early as 1609-1614 in the Jamestown colony with the Powhatan Indians (41-42) [see book from Williamsburg]. This also exposed the vulnerability of the Indians who were farmers and depended on their fields for food, fields which could be shot at from boats on the rivers (41-42).

Note that at the battle of Fontenoy in 1745, 6,000 British and Hanoverian troops were killed and wounded in a single day (27).

Regarding Ferguson's thesis, see pp. 20, 25,

Problem with Starkey's historicism instead of presentism, what he calls anachronism--- don't judge the past by the present, BUT, aren't some things like genocide just plain wrong, any time and any place?