Ecology ofPlains Indian Warfare

William S. Abruzzi

When most Americans think of Indians, they think of Plains

Indians.

It has almost exclusively been

Plains Indians who have been used to portray

the Native American

lifestyle in movies and in

the media generally.

It is also primarily the

Plains Indians who have been

portrayed in environmentalist

writings and promotions.

It is especially books by and about Plains Indians that sell the

most widely and that have captured the imagination of people interested in Native

American Life.

Susan Jeffers chose a Plains Indian

people (Lakota) to illustrate her book,

Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, which

contains the text of a speech attributed

to Chief Seattle.

The cover of Jeffers’ book portrayed Chief Seattle

wearing a Plain’s Indian headdress, even though

Chief Seattle was not Lakota but rather a

Suguamish Indian from the Northwest Coast.

“To all of the Native American people, every creature and part of the earth was sacred; it was their belief that to waste or destroy nature and its wonders is to destroy life itself.”

--Susan Jeffers (1991)

In her book, Jeffers perpetuates popular notions about Plains Indian ecology:

"My people, the Blackfeet Indians, have always had a sense of reverence for nature that made them want to move through the world carefully, leaving as little mark behind them as possible."  

--Jamake Highwater (1983)

Many Native Americans have promoted the romantic Indian myth as well:

"Hunting was not a war upon animals, not a slaughter for food or profit, but a holy occupation.“

--Frank G. Speck (1939)

Some Scholars have even romanticized Native American Ecology:

"Indians … lived here for twenty, thirty, forty thousand years. Everywhere they went, they learned to live with nature. … And they did this without destroying, without polluting, without using up the living resources of the natural world.”

--Donald Hughes (1983)

Similarly, Plains Indian warfare has frequently been portrayed as a contest among men to gain prestige rather than as a system of deadly combat in which men were brutally killed and through which groups of people competed over resources. . . .

"Plains Indians fought not for territorial aggrandizement, nor for the victor's spoils, but above all because fighting was a game worth while because of the social recognition it brought when played according to the rules.“

  --Robert Lowie (1920)

"Though desire for loot and revenge played their part, the outstanding goal of these tribes was glory. ... Plains Indian warfare ... loomed as an exciting pastime played according to established rules, the danger lending zest to the game. The primary goal was to score. ... Wherever men fight for glory, practical ends are bound to recede.“

--Robert Lowie (1940)

"Plains warfare was almost as stylized as a medieval tournament, and was seen by its participants not so much as a way to kill enemies as a means of demonstrating personal skill and bravery…."  

--J. Donald Hughes (1983)

"With the horse, a hunter could acquire enough food in one day to last him months. So, he was suddenly given a margin of freedom that he could never have imagined. And, so what he did with it was to celebrate it in terms of the warrior ideal. … (He would say), … 'Now I have leisure. I can go and hunt. I can visit my enemies and count coup. I can be brave, and I can attain glory'.“

-- M. Scott Momaday (1996)

Evidence to the Contrary

However, ample evidence exists which demonstrates that American Indians, including the Plains Indians, exploited their environments to suit their needs and at times treated those environments badly.

1. Indians used fire to create clearings for their villages and fields.

2. They used fire to drive or enclose game.

3. They used fire to reduce forests in order to expand grazing lands for bison.

4. They set fire to forests in order to improve traveling and visibility, and to destroy unwanted pests. 

Plains Indian Use of Fire:

"The prairies burning form some of the most beautiful scenes that are witnessed in this country, and also the most sublime.“

--George Catlin (1830s)

“I have been followed for several days in succession by a party of Indians, who fired the grass to winward of my camp every night, forcing me to burn all around the camp every evening before posting sentinals.” 

--(Colonel Dodge ( 1860s)

"Cree set the prairie on fire … to drive Assiniboine from Cree hunting grounds and force them back into their own former territory.“

--Rudolph Kurtz (1851)

Early Observations of Fire on the Plains:

"… we saw … indications of war parties having been recently in the neighborhood, and observed in the night the reflection of immense fires, occasioned by burning the prairies … the fires are not made by the hunters … but by war parties, and more particularly when returning unsuccessful, or after a defeat, to prevent their enemies from tracing their steps.“

--(Bradbury 1809)

Principal reasons why Indians set fire to the plains:

1. Improve vegetation

2. Clear an area

3. Facilitate hunting

4. Ceremonial activities

5. Interpersonal relations

6. Interethnic and intra-ethnic relations --60%

a. Communication

b. Warfare

c. Increase exchange rates in fur trade

Reports of waste by Indians:

"The Osage leave one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds of excellent meat on every carcass."

--Victor Tixier (1839-40)

A large band of Sioux killed 1,400 buffalo and traded the tongues for whiskey, leaving the meat and hides to rot.

--George Catlin (1832)

Reported Buffalo Kills by Indians:

1821: 700 Cheyenne lodges were reported to be consuming

100 bison per day or 36,500 per year.

1830: 25-30,000 buffalo robes exported per year from the

Missouri River region by the American Fur Company

1846: 100,000 buffalo robes traded annually at Bent’s Fort

in Colorado.

1847: 75,000 buffalo robes sold at Upper Missouri Agency.

1855: 3,150 Cheyenne were killing 40,000 bison per year

(44 per man) at Bent’s second Arkansas River Fort.

Plains Indians generally believed that buffalo were supernatural in origin and existed in limitless numbers underground. A Bison Calling Ceremony was performed each year to coax them from their underground shelters.

"While the herds were falling in the thousands before White men's guns, it is not surprising that some Indians abandoned older practices of conservation and killed as many buffalo as they wanted, disregarding their elders' pleas and admonitions, since they could see that if they did not do so, the White men would shoot them anyway.“

--Donald Hughes, 1983

Rationalizations:

Such Rationalizations:

1. Give different explanations for thesame behavior

2. Treat Native Americans Paternalistically

3. Assign “blame” to adaptive and evolutionary processes

4. Violate the Uniformitarian Principle

X

Native Americans cannot be an exception to the Uniformitarian

Principle.

Thesis:

1. Plains Indian subsistence behavior, social

organization and warfare evolved as predictable

outcomes of changes in demography, population-

resource relations and labor requirements, as

well as increasing resource competition.

2. The evolution of Plains Indian ecology and

warfare constituted a positive-feedback

system resulting from the infusion of new

subsistence technologies and a new productive

relationship between Indians and resources.

Ecological Considerations:

1. Impact of the horse and the gun on bison hunting

--see next slide

2. Impact of the hide trade on bison hunting

--see following slide

Impact of the Horse and Gun on Bison Hunting:

1. Changed the spatial relationship between Indians and bison

2. Increased size of hunting territory

3. Increased the speed and effectiveness of the buffalo hunt

4. Increased reliability of hunting

5. Reduced per capita labor costs (cost/benefit)

6. Individualized bison hunting

7. Industrialized the hunt

Impact of the Hide Trade on Bison Hunting:

1. Changed Population/Resource (P/R) relationship

between Indians and bison

2. Shift from subsistence to commercial economy

3. Individual male Indians became self-employed

entrepreneurs

4. Producers on the margins of an expanding global

economy

Infrastructural Changes:

  1. Dramatic immigration onto the Plains

2. Sharp increase in the size of the Plains Indian Population

3. Precipitous decline in the size of the bison

population.

Population/Resources

Immigration onto

the Plains

Decline in Bison Population

BisonYear Population

1800 40,000,0001850 20,000,0001865 15,000,000 -- -----1870 14,000,0001880 395,0001889 1,091

1850: Comanche reported eating their horses and

raiding New Mexico settlements for food.

1853: Cheyenne and Arapaho reported spending

half the year in a state of starvation.

Early Reports of Indian Food Shortages:

Size of Herd Sightings Increased with Time

Increasing hunting pressure on bison

led to a greater “massing” of bison

herds and to increased local

variation in bison availability.

This resulted in reduced access to

bison for some Plains Indian

groups.

Causes of Decline in Bison Numbers:

1. Overhunting

2. Grazing competition

3. Diseases

4. Predation

5. Climate

Structural Changes:

1. Evolution of independent family

2. Increase in polygyny

3. Brideprice inflation

4. Emerging class differentiation

5. Increasing warfare

6. Evolution of political-military alliances

7. Increasing importance of military societies

"There were many brave and successful warriors of the Cheyenne who never went on …(scalping expeditions)…, who on their war journeys tried to a void coming in close contact with enemies. Such men went to war for the sole purpose of increasing their possessions by capturing horses: that is, they carried on war as a business--for profit. Some of these men who possessed high reputation for courage, success, and general well-doing-- made it their boast that they never killed a man, and perhaps never counted coup.” 

--George Grinnell

"A Plains Indian with only one wife would always be poor, but it is a fine sight to see one of those big men among the Blackfeet, who has two or three lodges, five or six wives, twenty or thirty children, and fifty to a hundred head of horses; for his trade amounts to upward of $2,000 a year, and I assure you such a man has a great deal of dignity about him."

--Charles Larpenteur

Increase in Polygyny:

"In contrast to an ondei son, …(a lower rank son)… has had to think first of economic returns and secondarily of brave deeds, of coup counts. ... Given a situation in which an enemy has fallen from (his) horse, the young …(lower rank)… warrior is torn between counting coup and riding after the enemy's horse. The rich man's decision is much simpler; he counts coup."

--Mishkin (1940)

Emerging Class Differentiation:

Sioux

Plains IndianAlliances:

Blackfoot

Assiniboine- Cree

Mandan-Hidatsa

Sioux

"A man could not even court a girl unless he had proved his courage. That is one reason why so many were so anxious to win good war records. They were all afraid of what people, and especially the women, would say if they were cowardly. The women even had a song they would sing about a man whose courage had failed him. 'If you are afraid when you charge, turn back. The desert women will eat you.' It was hard to go into a fight, and they were often afraid, but it was worse to turn back and face the women."

--John Stands-in-Timber

Enculturation of Martial Values:

Superstructural Factors:

“Every Plains Indian firmly believed that the buffalo were produced in countless numbers in a country under the ground, that every spring the surplus swarmed like bees from a hive, out of the great cave-like openings to this country, which were situated somewhere in the Great ‘Llano Estacado’ or Staked Plains of Texas.”

--Flores (1991)

“In 1881, representatives of many tribes assembled on the North Fork of the Red River for the Kiowa Sun Dance where a Kiowa shaman named Buffalo Coming out vowed to call on the herds to re-emerge from the ground. The Kiowa believed the bison had gone into hiding in the earth, and they still call a peak in the Wichita Mountains "Hiding Mountain."

Finis!