There were indigenous cultures that were peaceful. But the bolded part here is objectively wrong. There were tribes that captured, enslaved and killed men, women and children, the slavery part being particularly common among the Pacific Northwest coast. There were First Nations societies heavily based around slavery and warrior culture, similar to Sparta. The claim that conflicts between Indigenous Americans were somehow more nuanced then those involving colonial practices is again, wrong. Based on oral histories and historical evidence it tends to be apparent that most wars were fought over the exact same things that europeans fought wars over. People aren't that different. Again this is the "noble savage" stereotype shining through here
I never denied this, but the point regarding elders, women and children was that they usually held no responsibility nor engagements at all in war besides being vulnerable. I still believe it would help if more oral history and systems of writing were prevalent to further deepen our understanding of these conflicts, such as who was justified, who was responsible, when did they occur, for how long, what were the impacts, etc. in a similar manner that ancient wars were documented by ancient civilizations with writing systems.
I just prefer more specifications than having to rely entirely on broad statements, such as "Native Americans were already killing each other long before Europeans came," which I find oversimplifies/overgeneralizes the relationship between Native Americans and rude whenever they express anti-colonialism sentiments. It's so derailing and inconsiderate. It would be like this:
See, I would argue that that isn't technically true though. Without inter tribal conflict and funny enough, colonialism of their own (albeit on a much smaller scale), its thought that many tribes of Native peoples wouldn't exist. For example, the Mi'kmaq who live in Prince Edwards Island were thought to have migrated to PEI and either merged with or warred with (likely some of both) the people who were there currently until that culture was wiped out to the point where our best archeologists know next to nothing about them
If that weren't true, then why else would they primarily focus on anti-colonial sentiments today? I'm sure certain cultures vanished due to warfare between other ones. I don't recall this being a common phenomenon though. That would make sense too when you consider many of the cultures were on more fair terms of warfare and were used to dealing with each other; experience. However, colonialism did a drastically greater impact than inter-cultural warfare did. Notice how many endangered and extinct Native American cultures there are today. Notice how depopulated they are as well. There are far less Native Americans today, especially pure blood Native American even up to this day than there were in 1491: just a year before the arrival of Columbus.
Inter-cultural warfare usually presented short-term affects on Native Americans, whereas colonialism presented a long-term affect on Native Americans. Hell, colonialism still exists in many ways to Native Americans, which should be obvious when you consider they are still forced under a completely distinct nationality, race(s) and culture from theirs which descends from and remains very similar to the setters/colonizers. It should be obvious that they hardly recovered from colonialism.
Notice not a single pre-colonial Native American culture possesses their own independent nation with the exception of Greenland but even Greenland was and is still under the colonial influence of Denmark. Times haven't really changed much for many Native American cultures either. Mayans endured genocide like about only three decades ago, Native Americans in the Amazon are enduring a "slow" genocide while still toiling over their land rights, and so much more.
There are no known cases of inter-cultural Native American warfare in the modern era. Not to say there isn't any conflict between Native American cultures at all, but it's not a common issue among them today. In fact, there's definitely rising Pan-Amerindianism among them; the Dakota Access Pipeline protest is a perfect example.
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