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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
hybrid
trading empire
exploitation
exploitation
true empire
true empire
exploitation
hybrid
trading empire
Quebec: trading empire
New England: settler
New Amsterdam: trading empire
Chesapeake: hybrid
Carolinas: hybrid/exploitation
Caribbean: exploitation
Mexico:
True 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 honorbound” (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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