Pre-1600: Warfare: Overview

North American Warfare. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, warfare in North America underwent a series of dramatic and far-reaching changes. In part, this transformation was the product of the ongoing political, economic, and social evolution of Native American culture. A more important cause, however, was the arrival of European explorers, missionaries, settlers, and conquerors in the years following Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of the New World. Their presence altered North American warfare in three ways. First, their efforts to plunder easily extractable wealth and found colonies created new conflicts between them and the Indians. Second, they brought with them to the New World Europe’s dynastic, economic, and religious conflicts. Finally, they transformed the objectives and style of warfare among the indigenous peoples by bringing the Native Americans into the nascent, early-modern system of international trade.

Mourning Wars. On the eve of first contact with Europeans, warfare in North America differed markedly from fighting in the Old World. Rather than engaging in large-scale, high-casualty, European-style wars aimed at achieving territorial or economic goals, Native Americans fought conflicts known as blood feuds or mourning wars, in which they retaliated for the deaths of their kinsmen by killing or capturing Indians from rival tribes. These conflicts satisfied important cultural, demographic, and religious functions in Indian society. They achieved vengeance, provided an outlet for grief, gave young men the opportunity to gain prestige, secured captives to replace deceased clan members, and assured a supply of victims for important ritual sacrifices. In keeping with these goals, mourning wars were small-scale, low-intensity affairs that involved ambushes rather than setpiece battles and that produced light casualties compared to contemporary European wars. The perception that each murder or captive taken was a fresh attack rather than a legitimate retaliation, however, meant that a single death could initiate a costly, self-perpetuating cycle of violence that was almost impossible to stop once begun.

Rise of Confederations. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the increasing cost of perpetual warfare spurred Native Americans to find ways to limit mourning wars. At first, culturally and linguistically related bands located nearby joined together to establish larger villages that provided better security against their rivals. Later, neighboring settlements formed defensive alliances that offered additional protection against distant enemies and, more important, outlawed local blood feuds. Finally, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, many tribes ended regional mourning wars altogether by joining together to form large, intertribal leagues such as the Iroquois Confederacy. These leagues proved highly effective in curtailing vengeance-motivated warfare between member tribes, but ended neither the individual warrior’s desire for military glory nor the tribe’s need for sacrificial victims. Rather than ending blood feuds, therefore, the confederations that developed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries transformed them from small, local conflicts into large, long-distance affairs between rival leagues.

Beaver Wars. A more dramatic and substantial change in Indian warfare occurred as a consequence of the European discovery of North America. Beginning in the early part of the sixteenth century, Portuguese, Basque, and French fishermen began exchanging European manufactured goods such as cloth, glass, kettles, and iron weapons for a valuable commodity the Indians possessed: beaver pelts. Once established, the fur trade rapidly transformed the Indians’ vengeance-motivated blood feuds into new conflicts known as beaver wars. These wars were fought for control of hunting grounds and access to direct trade with Europeans. The Micmac Indians of coastal Canada, for example, took advantage of the technologically superior iron weapons that they had purchased from the Europeans to seize the Etchemin tribe’s rich trapping grounds. The Wappinger Indians of the upper Hudson Valley, meanwhile, violently drove the Munsees out of the lower part of the valley in order to gain direct access to coastal trading. At the end of the sixteenth century, the effects of the fur trade were confined largely to tribes living along the coast of northeastern North America, in the St. Lawrence River valley, and in the eastern Great Lakes region. The growing desire for manufactured goods and the need for iron weapons to keep pace with similarly armed neighbors, however, assured that trade with the Europeans would transform the objectives and style of warfare among all the eastern woodland Indians during the seventeenth century.

Warfare in the Southwest. Native American conflict in the Southwest during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was similar to warfare among the eastern woodland Indians. Like their eastern counterparts, semisedentary tribes such as the Apache and Navajo waged low-intensity blood feuds to avenge the killing of their kinsmen by members of rival tribes. In several important ways, however, warfare in the Southwest differed from that practiced in the East. First, semisedentary Native Americans raided both other seminomadic tribes and the sedentary Pueblo Indians in an effort to acquire material goods through plunder. More important, the Pueblo Indians engaged in territorial and economic wars that were, in many ways, more similar to contemporary European conflicts than to the woodland Indians’ mourning wars.

Franco-Spanish Conflict. The Europeans also changed warfare in North America by bringing to the Americas the existing dynastic and religious conflicts of the Old World. Sixteenth-century European warfare in the Americas centered largely on Britain and France’s efforts to undermine Spain by interrupting the transatlantic flow of New World gold on which Spanish power rested. During the on-again, off-again series of struggles between France and Spain known as the Hapsburg-Valois Wars, for example, French privateers sought to weaken Spain indirectly by raiding its New World possessions and by preying upon its treasure fleets. The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis ended the Hapsburg-Valois Wars in Europe in 1559 but did not extend to the New World because King Philip II of Spain refused to sanction formally any violation of what he considered to be his nation’s exclusive sphere. Unable to come to a formal agreement regarding the Americas, the two states agreed informally that force would settle disputes in the New World and that fighting there would not lead to hostilities in Europe. As a result, the brief, bloody conflict fought between Spanish and French forces for control of Florida in the 1560s did not upset peaceful relations between those nations in the Old World.

Anglo-Spanish Conflict. During the last two decades of the sixteenth century, Britain replaced France as Spain’s chief competitor in the New World. Relations between England and Spain had been deteriorating steadily since the 1550s because of religious differences and Spain’s refusal to allow British ships to trade in the West Indies. The final break occurred in 1585 when Queen Elizabeth I sent troops to assist Dutch Protestant rebels in their uprising against Spain. Hoping to undermine Philip by attacking the most vulnerable part of his empire, she sent a fleet of ships under the command of Sir Francis Drake to raid Spanish settlements in the West Indies. She also commissioned Sir Walter Raleigh to build a fortified base in North America from which privateers could plunder Philip’s treasure fleets. Drake’s raid was spectacular. He sacked various settlements including St. Augustine and swept the Caribbean of Spanish shipping. Raleigh’s colony at Roanoke proved less impressive: it failed, as did a second settlement established in 1587. Nonetheless, the conflict between British and Spanish forces in the New World had proven critical to the outcome of the war in Europe.

European vs. Indian. The arrival of Europeans in the New World also changed warfare in North America by giving rise to conflict between Indians and invading Europeans. Fighting between Native Americans and Europeans stemmed from several sources. Often such conflict was the product of the Europeans’ heavy-handed actions. Spanish expeditions in the Southeast, for example, antagonized Indians by burning settlements and demanding food. French explorers likewise provoked Native Americans by kidnapping Indians and taking them back to Europe. At other times, conflict stemmed from cultural differences. Native Americans often angered Europeans, for instance, by “stealing” items in keeping with their belief that anything left unattended was free for the taking. The Europeans’ custom of establishing settlements on land that Indians claimed as their own likewise inspired hostility, as did the efforts of many tribes to establish exclusive trading monopolies by discouraging the Europeans from contacting rival tribes.

Conquistadors. Beginning in 1513, Spain sent a series of expeditions into the southern part of North America in hopes of discovering and plundering a wealthy Indian civilization similar to the Aztec empire. Early invasions by Juan Ponce de León in 1513 and Panfilo de Narváez in 1528 failed because of the opposition of powerful Indian tribes. In 1539 Hernando de Soto organized a larger and much stronger expeditionary force equipped with matchlock firearms and armored cavalry. De Soto’s force was so overwhelmingly powerful that it was able to roam about the South for four years searching for treasure. Constant Indian attacks nonetheless played an important part in persuading the Spanish to abandon their expedition in 1543. After several other failed incursions, Spanish forces established nominal control of the Southeast in the 1560s by building a series of small forts and blockhouses. Ongoing abuses and demands for food angered the Indians, however; they consequently attacked the garrisons and ejected the invaders from the interior. By the end of the sixteenth century, potent Indian opposition had reduced Spanish territory in the Southeast to the settlement of St. Augustine on Florida’s Atlantic coast.

St. Lawrence River Valley. The French crown, meanwhile, sponsored several attempts to found colonies along the St. Lawrence River during the mid 1500s. In 1541, the explorer and navigator Jacques Cartier established a settlement called Charlesbourg-Royal near the site of present-day Quebec City. Unlike de Soto, Cartier had not journeyed to North America with the intention of attacking and plundering the Indians. Cultural conflict, however, along with trade disputes and clashes over land soon sparked hostilities between the French and the nearby Stadacona Indians. By 1542 fighting with the local Indians had proven so costly that Cartier had to abandon Charlesbourg-Royal. Shortly after Cartier departed the St. Lawrence Valley, his superior, Viceroy Jean François de La Rocque, sieur de Roberval, established a new settlement called France-Roy not far from the site of Charlesbourg-Royal. For a variety of reasons the Stadaconas did not war with the new colonists as they had with Cartier’s men. Continued cold relations between the French and Native Americans nonetheless contributed to Roberval’s decision to abandon France-Roy.

Seventeenth Century. Conflict in North America had thus changed markedly between the mid fifteenth century and 1600. Blood-feud warfare among the Indians had begun to give way gradually to economically motivated fighting over hunting grounds and access to transatlantic trade. The Europeans, meanwhile, had extended their traditional dynastic and religious rivalries to the New World. Most important, Europeans and Native Americans had started warring with each other. Such conflicts had been costly for the indigenous peoples because of the Europeans’ vast technological and organizational superiority; nonetheless, the Native Americans had proven that they could stand up to the invaders. The Indians had, in fact, forced the Europeans to abandon all of the colonies they had established in North America during the sixteenth century save for the small, tenuous Spanish settlement at St. Augustine. In many ways, however, the end of the sixteenth century marked the high-water mark of Indian resistance to European intrusions. Thereafter, the invaders were able to take advantage of their better weapons and the devastation that disease had wrought among the Native Americans to establish a series of lasting colonies from which they eventually conquered the entire continent.