Driver notes that violence, feuds, and raids were common in the Sub-
Arctic, Great Basin, Northwest Coast, Columbia Plateau, and California. The
principal motive for violence among the Eskimo was the attempt of one man to
appropriate another's wife permanently. This might result in a feud. Witchcraft
was generally a substitute for violence among the Ojibwa in northern California.
While Driver is generally correct that the primary motives for raids were the
acquisition of another group's material possessions and women and the enhance-
ment of one's status by defeating an enemy, he fails to note that the fur trade
in the seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries had the effect of
motivating Cree and Athapaskans to seize hunting and trapping territories from
each other and the Eskimo. This was made possible because the fur traders of
the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company exchanged muskets, powder,
and shot for the furs.
Raiding was a major activity of Navaho and Apache men. Apache boys were
formally trained for raiding from the age of nine to about twenty. The men
among the River Yumans of the Colorado and Gila Rivers in Arizona, and the
Walapai
had an obsession with raiding, which took on the character of war.
Conflicts on the Plains and in the Eastern United States have been
fairly accurately discussed by others on this list. I would point out, however,
that there is rather good evidence the Comanche drove the Plains Apaches out
of eastern Colorado between their arrival east of the Rocky Mountains about 1700
A.D. and eighteen years later. After 1742, they entered northeastern New Mexico
and drove the Lipan Apaches from from the Texas panhandle into western Texas.
This is certainly an example of conquest. Driver (pp. 235-237) gives the details
of a war between the Iroquois and the Huron in 1649, which resulted in the
latter losing their tribal identity.
I hope that, if this theme gains momentum among others on this list,
we may be spared further inaccuracies. I will be happy to provide references
where I can.
Grosvenor Pollard
via Elizabeth Pollard, Univ. of Ala. in Huntsville
Bitnet: uahebp01@uahvax1 Internet: uahebp01@asnuah.asn.net