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Richter, “War and Culture”

• I: Mourning war (pre-contact)

• II: European contact changes mourning war (c.1620-c.1675)

• III: Iroquois and European national rivalries (c.1675-c.1700)– Mourning war becomes disastrous

• IV: Readjustment (c.1700-c.1720)

• V. Conclusion

Raiding

Restore population

through captives

Lose population

More raiding

Traditionally, mourning war kept populations stable. How did contact with Europeans change the mourning war?

• Would Clausewitz have understood Iroquois violence to constitute “warfare”? In what ways was or was not the mourning war trinitarian?– Trinitarian: warfare conducted by the state,

for interests of state, and carried out by an army distinct from “the people”

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Settlement types

• True empire

• Trade empire

• Exploitation colony

• Settlement colony

• Hybrid colony

settler

exploitation

exploitation

trading empire

true empire

true empire

exploitation

hybrid

hybrid

trading empire

New England: settler

Chesapeake: hybrid

New Amsterdam: trading empire

Carolinas: hybrid/exploitation

Caribbean: exploitationMexico:True empire

Quebec: trading empire

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Account of Jean de Brébeuf , Jesuit missionary to the Huron (1637)

Two things occurred this year, which somewhat checked the progress of the gospel. The first was a pestilence, of unknown origin, which eight months ago spread through several villages, and caused the death of many. The divine providence even so dealt with us that we should not be exempt from the calamity. In fact, it almost began with us, or at least attacked both us and the savages at the same time. Of us who labor here,—six priests, and the four lay brothers then with us,—we saw seven confined to their beds at the same time, and near unto death. The same divine goodness has restored us all to our former health and strength, in which we still continue. But our Hurons—either, still ignorant of life eternal, or still unbelievers—sought remedies for their diseases, sufficient for this present life, with so distressful anxiety that they scarcely lent ear to us who admonished them concerning the life eternal. No one would have refused, if we had promised health. But very many, on account of their ardent desire for this life, wretchedly lost both, to our great sorrow. . . .

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Black Robe

• 1634 (14 years before Peace of Westphalia ends 30 Years War)

• Father Laforgue (French Jesuit missionary) to convert Huron Indians (Canada) to Catholicism

• Accompanied by Daniel (creole-born), and Algonquin allies (Chomina, daughter Annuka) as protection against enemy Iroquois

• They are captured

• Contemporary comparison: “Dances with Wolves”

New England settlement

• Mixed religious and commercial motives• Joint-stock investment company: the Virginia

Company of Plymouth (est. 1606)– 1607: est. Popham colony in ME (fails)

• Puritans: English Protestants dissent from Anglican Church (official church)– From time of Eliz. I (1533-1603)– Reject display and church hierarchy

• Max Weber: link between religion and commercial success (“protestant work ethic”)

John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity (1630)

• “for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword through the world, wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of god and all professours for Gods sake; wee shall shame the faces of many of gods worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into Cursses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whether wee are going”

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Puritan/Indian relations

• Early 1600s-1630s: English settlement begins

• 1616, 1634: smallpox epidemics

• 1637: Pequot war

• King Phillip/Metacom’s War: 1675-76

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Sassacus, the last great sachem of the Pequots

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Captain John Mason of the Connecticut Colony.

The first large-scale conflict, the Pequot War, commenced in the mid-1630s. Here, from a contemporary print, is the most discussed event of the war: colonists under Captains Underhill and Mason attack and massacre Indians at Mystic Village in 1637. {"The Figure of the Indian Fort or Palizado in New England,"from News from America... (London, 1638)}.

Hirsch, “Collision of Military Cultures in Seventeenth-Century New England”

• Where and when are we?– New England region

– Seventeenth-century (1600s)

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Key concepts

• “acculturation”: – “process of interaction, exchange, and

adjustment” (1187)

• “military culture”: – “attitudes, institutions, procedures, and

implements of organized violence against external enemies” (1187); “conceptions of the overall nature and purpose of war” (1188)

Section I

• What is the section about?– Description and comparison of English and

Indian military cultures on the eve of contact.

English military culture in New England

• What were the elements of English military culture?– Use of “experts” – professional soldiers

(1188)– “waged to settle economic and religious

disputes of national significance” (1188)– Local militias– “Ritual discipline reigned supreme” (1189)

• Does this ring any bells?

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Indian military culture

• Where does the transition happen?– “The Indians of New England, meanwhile, had

different notions about the theory and practice of war” (1190).

Indian military culture

• Differences with English– “retaliation for isolated acts of violence”

(1190)

– “relative innocuity” (1191). (What does this mean?)

– “guerilla raids and ambushments conducted in forested regions by small companies” (1191).

– “prisoners of war frequently suffered ritual torture at the hands of their captors” (1192).

Indian military culture

• Similarities with English– Where does the transition occur?

– “In other respects, the Indians’ martial temperance drew their military culture into line with that of the colonists” (1191).

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Indian military culture

• Similarities with English– “code of honor” (1191)

– Special clothing, missile and hand weapons, sentries, navies, signals, etc.

– “Like the colonists, northeastern Indians frequently relied on expert military commanders” (1193).

Indian military culture

• In what ways does Hirsch’s description speak to Richter’s?– “the natives of New England took their

warfare every bit as seriously as the newcomers, however symbolic their objectives or bloodless the results” (1193).

– “Still, the overall patterns of native and European military cultures differed widely” (1194).

Section II

• What is the section about?– “the process whereby European and Indian

military cultures adapted to one another” (1194).

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Military acculturation

• Indians: initial fear of English firearms– “initial trembling and eventual reception” (1195)

– But “most settlers continued to view native bows and arrows with tenacious disdain” (1195).

• “the deeper behavioral characteristics of the two military cultures appear to have changed little during that initial phase of acculturation” (1196).

• “each of the two contending peoples had made strides in adjusting to the material, but not to the conceptual, aspects of the other’s military culture” (1196)

Section III

• What is the section about? – The Pequot War of 1636

– “falling back, the troopers encircled the village, and as the flames spread, they slew every Indian who sought to escape, with no allowance for age or sex” (1197).

Section III

• “not only did discrepancies in military culture help ignite hostilities, they also influenced the outcome of the ensuing struggle” (1198).

• Thesis, central argument, major interpretation, what the essay is about

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Section III

• Differences in military cultures: the English perspective– “the settlers . . . anticipated no difficulty in engaging

their adversaries in open combat” (1199).

– When the Pequot did not offer battle….

– “God . . . deprived them of common reason” (1200).

Section III

• Differences in military cultures: the Indian perspective– “custom compelled retribution for all offenses against

a kin group or tribe”

– “they expected the struggle to resemble their previous conflicts with native enemies” (1200)

Section III

• Differences in military cultures – “on the one hand the colonists, grimly drilling and

toting their muskets about; on the other hand the Pequots, calmly tending to their everyday fishing and planting” (1202)

– “Puritans and Pequots labored under the reciprocal misconception that each would behave in familiar ways” (1203)

– “although traditional explanations of the settlers’ victory stress the superiority of colonial weaponry, . . . more basic incongruities of strategy and decorum also helped decide the struggle” (1203).

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Section III

• Any bells ringing? Does this argument look like anything we’ve encountered? – Did the colonists pursue a “western” way of

war, bent on total annihilation? Who have we read who might like such an argument?

Section IV

• English adaptations – “adapt to native tactics, borrowing and honing

the Indians’ own guerilla methods” (1204).

• The irony: “it was largely the Indians’ disapproval and avoidance of the debilitating modes of Old World warfare that led the settlers to employ new strategies and tactics even more murderous than the original ones” (1209).

Section V

• “how initial contact in the Pequot War left its imprint on the region’s subsequence military affairs” (1209).

• “cultural contact reduced the danger of accidental war, but it also created the potential for intentional wars of unusually devastating character” (1210).

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Critiques and analysis

• Hirsch portrays an English “military culture” at a specific point in time. One may read it as a rather static picture. We know, though, that his picture is actually just a frame in a movie. Whence developed the English military culture Hirsch describes?

Critiques and analysis

• “The battlefields of the Old World had been sanguinary [bloody], but honor-bound” (1204).– Was this so? Was temperance in European

wars really a function of “honor”?

Critiques and analysis

• Inter-cultural warfare and the prisoner’s dilemma:– If they don’t fight “fair,” then we cannot afford

to

– Are there any resonances of this in our present military discourse?

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Tricks of the (reading) trade

• Identify structure and hierarchies (why is a section a section?)

• Highlight key sentences (what makes them key?)

• Make notes in margins

• Outline structure in your notes

• “Translate” key points into your own words

• Summarize key question and key answer (problem and thesis) in 2-4 sentences

Tricks of the (reading) trade

• What is the essay about (it’s central setting and subject)?– Iroquois military contact with Europeans in the C17

• What is the historical phenomenon (problem) that concerns the essay?– How did Iroquois military culture respond to the

pressures exerted on it by contact? In particular, how did it cope with the consequences on mourning war?

• What explanation does the author offer?– There was a period of catastrophic dysfunction, and

eventual adjustment

Things to remember

• Anglo-American warfare adapts to styles of warfare of non-state natives ?– Important when we get to the Revolution

– Important for our national mythology

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1:07

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