Week 3: One Vast Winter Count by Collin G. Calloway
After fours years, and nine graduate history classes, you’d think that all of my Saturday matinee concepts of Native American history would have been shattered by now, but after reading through One Vast Winter Count, by Collin G. Calloway, I must conclude that I still have a ways to go. Calloway portrays a Native American society which differed from white colonial society only in its lack of industrial/scientific technological advancements; a society whose lifestyle was shaped by this lack; and a society caught amid the agendas of the several competing agendas of the imperial European powers and their colonial progeny. Calloway makes the case that these factors, working in tandem, brought about the demise of traditional Native American society.
One of the greatest eye-openers for me thus this term has been the degree to which Native American traded with each other. Calloway describes a network of tribes and regions that enabled the member entities to secure raw materials, foodstuffs, manufactured goods.
And there was war. As horses were introduced by the Europeans, and the mini ice age dragged on, Indians were far more able to move across the land and had far more reasons to do so. As this movement occurred, nations were brought into conflict over land and resources. Firearms, introduced by European traders, allowed nations who possessed them to dominate and ran up the body count.
These twin forces of trade and war necessitated a complex diplomatic regimen. Here the Native Americans employed their great verbal and negotiating skills to keep the peace. It was a peace of a different sort, for as Calloway says “For Indian people, peace meant more than a lack of conflict, or ending hostilities: it was a state of being that ‘required a positive assumption of moral duties.’” (Page 237)
Needless to say, this was not a vision white man shared. This lack of commonality between whites and Indians, doomed hopes of a lasting diplomatic solution to white/Indian conflict. The diplomatic situation was symptomatic of the larger conflict. Whites failed to grasp Native American society’s sovereignty and viability, as a result rarely hesitated to run roughshod over Indian concerns in pursuit of their ambitions.
Decimated by contagion, and the resulting social decay; divided by traditional rivalries and a lack of consensus over how to respond to grown white pressure; and weakened, morally and economically, by the undermining of their trade network, Native Americans had every reason to face the Nineteenth-Century with foreboding.
After fours years, and nine graduate history classes, you’d think that all of my Saturday matinee concepts of Native American history would have been shattered by now, but after reading through One Vast Winter Count, by Collin G. Calloway, I must conclude that I still have a ways to go. Calloway portrays a Native American society which differed from white colonial society only in its lack of industrial/scientific technological advancements; a society whose lifestyle was shaped by this lack; and a society caught amid the agendas of the several competing agendas of the imperial European powers and their colonial progeny. Calloway makes the case that these factors, working in tandem, brought about the demise of traditional Native American society.
One of the greatest eye-openers for me thus this term has been the degree to which Native American traded with each other. Calloway describes a network of tribes and regions that enabled the member entities to secure raw materials, foodstuffs, manufactured goods.
And there was war. As horses were introduced by the Europeans, and the mini ice age dragged on, Indians were far more able to move across the land and had far more reasons to do so. As this movement occurred, nations were brought into conflict over land and resources. Firearms, introduced by European traders, allowed nations who possessed them to dominate and ran up the body count.
These twin forces of trade and war necessitated a complex diplomatic regimen. Here the Native Americans employed their great verbal and negotiating skills to keep the peace. It was a peace of a different sort, for as Calloway says “For Indian people, peace meant more than a lack of conflict, or ending hostilities: it was a state of being that ‘required a positive assumption of moral duties.’” (Page 237)
Needless to say, this was not a vision white man shared. This lack of commonality between whites and Indians, doomed hopes of a lasting diplomatic solution to white/Indian conflict. The diplomatic situation was symptomatic of the larger conflict. Whites failed to grasp Native American society’s sovereignty and viability, as a result rarely hesitated to run roughshod over Indian concerns in pursuit of their ambitions.
Decimated by contagion, and the resulting social decay; divided by traditional rivalries and a lack of consensus over how to respond to grown white pressure; and weakened, morally and economically, by the undermining of their trade network, Native Americans had every reason to face the Nineteenth-Century with foreboding.
posted by ksturcken at 10:57 AM
2 Comments:
Kent,
Calloway’s book was indeed impressive. Trade and war were definitely two large themes of the book. Like you, I was struck by the extensive trading networks of the North American Indians. As Calloway tells it the trading networks were not only important for the Indians, they were also important for the French and Spanish, particularly the former. And as the journals of Lewis and Clark show, it was an objective of the US to tap into these trade networks.
As Calloway shows, war was a part of the West long before Europeans arrived but their coming intensified the competition between Indians for land and horses (and later guns). I would add, though, that the European movement into the American West brought not just war but new kinds of war that were part of the cultural clashes the European entry into the West provoked. For instance, war became more intense among the Great Lakes tribes as the desire to replace losses from disease and competition for control of trade drove a spiraling cycle of war. Likewise, competition for control of trade with the Spanish and French drove wars between the Comanche, Pueblos, and Apache and the Sioux and Mandans just to cite two cases. And guns and horses, both introduced into the trading networks by Europeans produced new types of war and moved new Indian nations into positions of dominance.
As Calloway makes clear, trade, culture, and war were all interrelated in the West long before white Americans arrived.
Ben
Kent,
I am intrigued by your comments on the Indian view of war. I did not take that away from the Calloway book, although now that you mention it, there is a lot here.
I'd like to follow up on this. I would like to focus my attention on military history and one of the things I have gathered from some prior study is the different perspective nations have about war. For example, European nations (including the US) are very Clausewitzian, believing that wars tend towards extremes in determing winners and losers and the consequences. Western wars have therefore tended to become short and sharp. Eastern societies tend to look at war in a more subtle fashion. This has led to some large strategic miscalculations. Our own experience in the Vietnam War is a classic example.
I'd be interested in examining the difference in the concept of war between Americans and American Indians, as you suggest. That examination would help to explain in detail why white settlers prevailed in the wars fought with the various Indian tribes.
Ray
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