Home : America At War : The Indian Wars :

The American Indian

The Indian wars of the United States were not a ruthless conquest of an inferior people. The wars were not inevitable because of the savagery of the Indians, who, indeed, chalked up a grisly record of slaughter, torture and rapine. The wars were not an epic and heroic struggle of the Indians for home and country. The Indian was neither the bloody villain of motion picture and television screenplays, nor the injured innocent of some social historians.

The Indian was not pushed relentlessly westward until he reached "The End of the Trail" as in James Earle Fraser's statue facing the Pacific Ocean. The Indian wars were none of these things - yet all of these ideas entered into some or all of them. The Indian wars were primarily a conflict between ways of life that were wholly incompatible.

A half million, three-quarters of a million or a million Indians - all population estimates are wild guesses - lived within the boundaries of what became forty-eight states of the United States of America. When? The date may be 1492 or 1789 or any other, for the Indians, in their natural state, increased very slowly, if at all. There may have been an actual decrease sometime during the nineteenth century, for white men's diseases killed more Indians than were slain in all the wars they ever fought, but it is generally conceded that their descendants today number as many as there ever were. Again an exact figure is impossible because there is no agreement on who is Indian, and few do not have some admixture of white blood.

The Indians inhabited this country, but they did not occupy it. They wandered over it. In 1841, most of the Indians in the West still lived precariously by hunting, supplemented by a primitive agriculture. Only a few supported themselves entirely by farming, and many of these - notably the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest-are still to be found, more than a hundred years later, where they have been for centuries. But the nomadic Indians, dependent on the chase, soon killed or frightened off all the game in a considerable area. They were forced to keep moving. Such Indians had no more idea of owning land than they did of owning the waters they traversed in their canoes or the air over their heads. It is said that the Indians who disposed of Manhattan for twenty-four dollars were somewhat in the same position as the man who sold the Brooklyn Bridge for ten dollars; they didn't own it, just chanced to be on the island for a week-end fishing trip.

From the beginning, the United States government's policy favored fair dealing with the Indians. But in making treaties white men always assumed that the red men had unenlightened imitations of their own institutions. The government wanted title to land which the Indians were hunting on, took it for granted that the Indians owned it, even convinced them that this was so and they could therefore transfer title. For white men to realize that Indians might have entirely different ideas, ideals, motives and ways of life was inconceivable.

Indian councils were assumed to be representative legislatures. Americans generally, and even officially, supposed that each tribe had an elected chief executive. Government agents sent to deal with Indian tribes frequently had difficulty in identifying the "chief," but that problem was not insoluble as no Indian would admit that he was not a chief.

No word has been more abused in writing about Indians than "chief." It is often pointed out, for example, that Roman Nose and Geronimo were not technically chiefs of their tribes. They were, however, leaders of war parties, and "chief" means that, if it means anything. Similarly it is often said that Sitting Bull was not a chief, but a "medicine man" - which means, in this sense, a spiritual leader in recognition of many years of successful leadership of war parties. For a time, certainly, he was the most influential man among several tribes of Sioux and their allies, but he was not their commander-in-chief, and he did not direct the strategy that resulted in the defeat of General Custer. There was no such strategy.

Despite the many army officers who set forth in their memoirs opinions that their slippery opponents were led by a strategic genius, a "Red Napoleon," Indians had no strategy and were strangers to tactics for the convincing reason that they had no discipline.

Chiefs never issued specific orders and were unable to exact unquestioning obedience. Their followers, each a rugged individualist, might, and likely would, take the advice of a trusted leader, but if he decided that his "medicine" dictated it was time to quit, he quit.

Among Plains Indians any ambitious young warrior could, at a proper time, proclaim his intention of leading a war party or a horse-stealing expedition, which amounted to much the same thing. To those who joined him, he became "chief" of that particular foray. If successful, he could reasonably expect a larger following next time, but if he had lost one man, killed or missing, the raid was counted a failure, no matter how many horses had been stolen. Continued success might encourage all warriors of the village or tribe to join him. Thus Indians developed leadership through a process of natural selection - they followed the most able. But the "chief" could not command his band to "charge," "right wheel" or "left by twos, march." All he could say was, "Follow me!"

The high honor of counting coup as a motive for valor was seldom understood by the white man. Among most of the Plains tribes a youth did not become a man, could not even take a wife, until he had counted coup. Coup - French for blow or stroke - was counted by striking an enemy with a coup stick, not a weapon but an ordinary stick, perhaps bearing "medicine" symbols. The highest coup was counted by touching an armed, active enemy in battle. A warrior who shot down an enemy with firearm or arrow could only count coup by physically striking the body of his victim. A coup could also be counted by the first warrior to reach the body of a dead enemy even though he was not the killer.

There were other degrees of coups, varying from tribe to tribe, and the system became quite technical. Once a coup was claimed by a brave who lowered a rock on a string over a bluff until it touched an enemy. The validity of this coup caused grave argument around the council fire. Such academic debate may seem both trivial and amusing, but not to a warrior whose feathered headdress was the record of his coups, with each eagle feather notched or tasseled to show the degree of coup it commemorated.

To count coup in battle young warriors would fight with daring disregard for their own lives, but normally the Indian was a firm believer in the adage: "He who fights and runs away may live to fight another day." Except when cornered, or in defense of family, he seldom fought unless the advantages were great and the risk slight, as many a weary trooper, pounding in pursuit under a blazing sun, could testify.

On the other hand, fighting, to the Indian, was as much a natural function as eating; conflict was ingrained in his nature. All strangers were enemies; the Indian had no concept of permanent peace. Even the term "peace pipe" is a misnomer, for the pipe ceremony signified alliance as well as friendship. The white man rarely understood this.

Fighting between tribes that were traditional enemies was often as cruel and vengeful as any recorded between red man and white, and quite as marked by slaughter of women and children and other atrocities. On the other hand, an intertribal fight with casual strangers might be carried on for an entire day of prudent and cautious skirmishing with no one seriously hurt.

Fighting was generally a leisure-time recreation, scheduled after the fall buffalo hunt and before holing up for winter's hardships. Many Indians took no pride in fighting white men because the white men would not play the game according to Indian rules. Soldiers frequently made the same complaint against the Indians.

Few Indians saw any real threat to their way of life from white invaders. Normally Indians saw so few, either soldiers or settlers, that many regarded the white men as a very minor tribe - to be chased off, of course, as they would any other strangers. Fighting against soldiers was usually only a temporary interruption of the customary intertribal warfare. There never was a time when all Indians were united against white invaders; indeed it was rare in Indian wars for an entire tribe to be hostile. Many tribes, such as the Pawnee and the Crows, did most of their fighting as allies of the whites.

Few Indians were good marksmen, either with bow and arrow or with firearms. In hunting, their objective was food, and to make a sure shot at close range they became experts at stalking game. When these talents were turned to man-hunting, the Indian became an elusive and deadly foe. He was master of the surprise attack and in the use of decoy and ambush. It was an old army saying that Plains Indians were the "best light cavalry in the world." That was true, but with limitations. Indians would have been quite incapable of the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. They never failed to "reason why," and if reason told them that the chance of dying was greater than that of doing, they promptly whirled their wiry cayuses and headed for the far horizon. As individual fighters, as hit-and-run guerrillas, as raiders and as scouts, they were superb.

Even in defense of their homes and families, however, their lack of discipline often brought disaster. The annals of the West are full of stories of villages surprised at dawn, or even in broad day, by soldiers or enemy tribes who slaughtered ill-prepared warriors, captured women and children, stampeded horses and burned tepees. Chiefs had no authority to post guards or send out scouts. Tribes of Plains Indians were highly organized for buffalo hunts, because failure meant starvation, but were unorganized for warfare, which was mainly an avocation. Yet few primitive peoples were as good at fighting as the American Indians, or won as many battles against highly trained professional soldiers. But the Indians won no wars.

Jay Monaghan. The Indians. The Book of the American West. Simon & Schuster New York, NY 1969.

A Guide to the Indian Wars of the West A rich and detailed look at the wars that the United States conducted against its native population from 1860 to 1890 explores the fundamental circumstances of events, investigates the different responses of tribes to the conflict, and much more.

---

top of page

back a page