american-holocaust

PESTILENCE AND GENOCIDE 111to carry a lance than a bow and arrows; more creditable to carry a hatchetor war club than a lance; and the bravest thing of all was to go into a fightwith nothing more than a whip, or a long twig-sometimes called a coupstick. I have never heard a stone-headed war club called coup stick. 49Commenting on this passage, and on the generality of its applicationto indigenous warfare, anthropologist Stanley Diamond has noted that topeople such as the American Indians "taking a life was an occasion," whereaswarfare of the type described "is a kind of play. No matter what the occasionfor hostility, it is particularized, personalized, ritualized." In contrast,by the time of the invasion of the Americas, European warfare hadlong since been made over into what Diamond describes as "an abstract,ideological compulsion" resulting in "indiscriminate, casual, unceremoniouskilling." 50Not surprisingly, then, the highly disciplined and ideologically motivatedBritish expressed contempt for what Captain John Mason called theIndians' "feeble manner ... [that] did hardly deserve the name of fighting."Warfare among the native peoples had no "dissipline" about it, complainedCaptain Henry Spelman, so that when Indians fought there wasno great "slawter of nether side"; instead, once "having shott away mostof their arrows," both sides commonly "weare glad to retier." Indeed, socomparatively harmless was inter-tribal fighting, noted John Underhill, that"they might fight seven yeares and not kill seven men." 51 Added RogerWilliams: "Their Warres are farre lesse bloudy, and devouring than thecruell Warres of Europe; and seldome twenty slain in a pitcht field ....When they fight in a plaine, they fight with leaping and dancing, that seldomean Arrow hits, and when a man is wounded, unlesse he that shotfollowes upon the wounded, they soone retire and save the wounded." Inaddition, the Indians' code of honor "ordinarily spared the women andchildren of their adversaries." 52In contrast, needless to say, the British did very little in the way of"leaping and dancing" on the field of battle, and more often than notIndian women and children were consumed along with everyone andeverything else in the conflagrations that routinely accompanied the colonists'assaults. Their purpose, after all, was rarely to avenge an insult tohonor-although that might be the stipulated rationale for a battle-butrather, when the war was over, to be able to say what John Mason declaredat the conclusion of one especially bloody combat: that "the Lordwas pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to give us theirLand for an Inheritance." 5 3 Because of his readers' assumed knowledge ofthe Old Testament, it was unnecessary for Mason to remind them that thislast phrase is derived from Deuteronomy, nor did he need to quote thewords that immediately follow in that biblical passage: "Thou shalt savealive nothing that breatheth. . . . But thou shalt utterly destroy them."