Warfare became more individualistic and less bloody: an opportunity for adolescent males to acquire prestige through demonstrations of courage. The horse facilitated quick, long‐distance raids to acquire goods. Before the arrival of the horse and gun, battles could last days, and casualties could number in the hundreds thereafter, both Plains Indian culture and the character and meaning of war changed dramatically. Indian forces marched on foot to attack rival tribes who sometimes resided in palisaded villages. On the Western Plains, pre‐Columbian warfare-before the introduction of horses and guns-pitted tribes against one another for control of territory and its resources, as well as for captives and honor. Casualties and losses from disease ignited more mourning wars in a vicious cycle that threatened the viability of many Eastern Woodland cultures. In the seventeenth century, Algonquian and Iroquoian groups fought a series of “beaver wars” to control access to pelts, which could be traded for iron tools and firearms from Europe. The arrival of Europeans also dramatically intensified mourning warfare as it ushered in an era of depopulation stemming from colonization, intertribal warfare, and epidemic disease. Trade contacts with Europeans changed this situation by creating economic motives to fight, as Indians sought European goods. Territory and commerce provided little impetus to fight. Conflicts among these groups thus stemmed as much from internal social reasons as from external relations with neighbors. Warfare in Eastern Woodland cultures also allowed young males to acquire prestige or status through the demonstration of martial skill and courage. Because the aim in warfare was to acquire captives, quick raids, as opposed to pitched battles, predominated. Captives might help maintain a stable population or appease the grief of bereaved relatives: if the women of the tribe so demanded, captives would be ritually tortured, sometimes to death if the captive was deemed unfit for adoption into the tribe. Such conflict, commonly known as a “mourning war,” usually began at the behest of women who had lost a son or husband and desired the group's male warriors to capture individuals from other groups who could replace those they had lost. Among the more densely populated Eastern Woodland cultures, warfare often served as a means of coping with grief and depopulation. ![]() The significance of warfare varied tremendously among the hundreds of pre‐Columbian Native American societies, and its meanings and implications changed dramatically for all of them after European contact.
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