Trade & the American Indians

bautiste at uswest.net bautiste at uswest.net
Fri Aug 28 14:41:50 PDT 1998


Brad De Long wrote:


> Still a relatively high rate of death among those engaged in combat (or
> taken from captured villages), no?

Probably not. These were low intensity battles. In some instances, in other tribes, simply counting _coup_ (sp?) was adequate in declaring victory. In some cases, fighting occurred in the course of yearly hunting expeditions. Since the Huron and Iroquois inhabited roughly the same area, they'd cross paths--the fighting was close to skirmish than "battle." There are probably some more familiar with the military history between the tribes and the other Iroquois nations.


> Consider the difference between the European colonization of the
> Americas--where relatively small groups settled and then began to expand
> into the interior--and European colonialism in Asia or Africa in the same
> period--where the typical pattern of activity was to huddle on the coast in
> your fort, trade, and leave...

What accounts for this difference? Larger tribes? More unity at the time? Or perhaps the scarcity of actual "colonization" by outcast Europeans was low in Africa?

-- http://www.users.uswest.net/~bautiste/index.htm



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