We aren't THAT peaceful.....

A reader wrote the other day and asked about more blogs on the Native American culture. They went on to say that the American Indians were such peace loving , wise people. Really? Don’t get me wrong, many tribes wanted to be peaceful and left alone, others, not so much.

They were human beings. They had hopes, fears, and needed things. There were good and bad, strong and weak, smart and not so smart. There were young warriors out to prove themselves, and old men who no longer wanted to fight. They weren’t a bunch of cookie cutter angels, not from person to person or tribe to tribe.

I know the history where my people came from on the east coast, and it was one that was very active, and at times very violent. Women held leading roles, tribes sometimes sided with outsiders like the English or the French. The Native American’s one constant enemy was the Puritans. They however, weren’t fighters. During all of this however,  the indigenous people also fought and killed the indigenous people. It is a fact. They didn’t all get along, not ever.

Most tribes feared the Mohawk , a powerful and fierce group if there ever was one. The Iroquois (and the Five Nations), were also great warriors and frequently fought with the Mohawk and other tribes. The Narragansett, Pequot and other southern New England tribes were friends or enemies depending on the time and situation. The natives of the area fought with each other before the Puritans ever touched our shores.

The Susquehanna were frequently the target of the larger and more fierce tribes of New England, and even had the English (Edmund Andros for example), negotiate with those tribes for them. The natives also had peacemakers, and in the New England area the most known was Daniel Garacontie, the Sagochiendagehte (a person chosen to speak for the Five Nations is their Sagochiendagehte) for the Iroquois, he was an Onondaga.  Garacontie was a very wise, complicated, and diplomatic man and well worth the research and study. During the latter part of his life he became a Christian , and that caused the others of his nation to think he had gone mad.

Traveling out west, we had similar circumstances. The Navajo and Hopi for example had many major issues with each other, and the Navajo were known as Headbreakers (they used rocks to hit their enemies over the head). They weren’t fighting with white men, but with other indigenous people. The tribes no longer get into mortal combat, but there are still issues between them at times. The Hopi land is surrounded by Navajo land making it a unique and strange situation.

The native peoples were people, and still are people. They fought, they got along, they traded, they stole from each other. They borrowed some tool ideas, clothing ideas, and shunned other ideas. They were PEOPLE. They were happy, sad, afraid, brave….everything people still are today. But to think they all held hands across Turtle Island singing Kumbaya is ridiculous. Don’t make Native Americans a archetype, let them be who they were. People.

I guess that turned out to be the Native American blog you asked for……

Peshaui Wequashimese

(C)2013 Dr. R M Wolf. May not be used, copied or reproduced without prior written permission.