The Cutting-Off Way

231205 The Cutting-Off Way: Indigenous Warfare in Eastern North America 1500-1800 by Wayne E. Lee

https://www.amazon.com/Cutting-Off-Way-Indigenous-Warfare-1500-1800-ebook/dp/B0C12J7PR8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3T7BSC2FDGQGB&keywords=The+cutting+off+way&qid=1701845595&s=digital-text&sprefix=the+cutting+off+way%2Cdigital-text%2C367&sr=1-1

Readers of this book may be surprised to learn that Native Americans, aka “Indians,” were amazingly like every other hunter-gatherer culture in the world. They were warlike. They fought their wars by ambush and surprise. They lived by the military maxim that “if you find yourself in a fair fight, you've screwed up.”

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has read “War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage” by Lawrence H. Keeley (1996) https://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Lawrence-Keeley-ebook/dp/B005JC0PTK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3VRH7Z6NDWTS4&keywords=The+War+before+Civilization+keeley&qid=1701846530&s=digital-text&sprefix=the+war+before+civilization+keeley%2Cdigital-text%2C188&sr=1-1 Keeley's book gets a fair number of favorable citations in “The Cutting-Off Way” by author Wayne Lee. I read Keeley's book nearly thirty-years ago. I remember being fascinated by the wealth of evidence that debunked the “peaceful savage” myth. I don't know how prevalent the myth is today, but I think I recall being surprised at the wealth of data in the archeological record pointing to the fact that Neolithic hunter-gatherers spent a lot of time killing each other. This archeological record included an abundance of arrows at what were probably “battle sites” and human skeletons exhibiting battle wounds. Keely noted that many archeologists insisted on describing the people they were studying as peaceful, but the “trout in the milk” were all the bodies obviously killed by violence. I remember as a child in the 1960s reading a children's book on ancient cultures, specifically the ancient Mayans, that insisted that the Mayans did not practice warfare. In the 1970s and 1980s, archeologists began to notice that an awful lot of Mayan artworks involved blood and torture. Eventually, the archeologists acknowledged that the “peaceful” Mayans were every bit as warlike as the Aztecs.

Keely offers this nice summary:

“Primitive war was not a puerile or deficient form of warfare, but war reduced to its essentials: killing enemies with a minimum of risk, denying them the means of life via vandalism and theft (even the means of reproduction by the kidnapping of their women and children), terrorizing them into either yielding territory or desisting for their encroachments and aggressions. At the tactical level primitive warfare and its cousin, guerilla warfare, have also been superior to the civilized variety. It is civilized warfare that is stylized, ritualized, and relatively less dangerous. When soldiers clash with warriors (or guerillas), it is precisely these “decorative” civilized tactics and paraphernalia that must be abandoned by the former if they are to defeat the latter. Even such a change may be insufficient, and co-opted native warrior must be substituted for the inadequate soldiers before victory belongs to the latter. “ (p. 175)

These themes are paid off in Lee's book. Lee is interested in rebutting the charge that Indians engaged in a “skulking way of war.” In Lee's view the term “skulking” is derogatory to “Indian courage” and dismisses the “rational calculation behind their mode of combat.” Lee describes the “cutting-off” mode of conduct as follows:
The term comes from a common English expression from the period, “to cut off,” because it so accurately describes the tactical and operational goals of an Indian attack, at both small and large scales—indeed its scalability is one of its primary strengths. Lacking deep reserves of population and also lacking systems of coercive recruitment, Native American Nations were wary of heavy casualties. Their tactics demanded caution, and so they generally sought to surprise their targets. The size of the target varied with the size of the attacking force. A small war party might only seek to “cut off” individuals found getting water or wood, or out hunting. A larger party might aim at attacking a whole town, again hoping for surprise. At small or large scales, most often the attackers sought prisoners to take back to the home village. Once revealed by its attack, the invading war party generally fled before the defenders' reinforcements from nearby related towns could organize.

Lee, Wayne E.. The Cutting-Off Way: Indigenous Warfare in Eastern North America, 1500–1800 (p. 3). The University of North Carolina Press. Kindle Edition.

This strategy could be scaled up or down depending on objective.

It was also a completely rational strategy for a hunter-gatherer population. The Achilles Heal of hunter-gatherer communities is their small size and precarious grip on survival. If such a community loses too much manpower (or womanpower) it loses the ability to maintain itself economically, demographically, or militarily. So, hunter-gatherers have to husband their human resources. They can't go in for massive set-piece win-all battles which might leave the winner debilitated.

Of course, this consideration works the other way also. The other side cannot afford to lose population either. Lose too many people and the losers face a death sentence. Such losers find it prudent to pack up and leave for more open territories where they might have better luck or they blend into other stronger populations (“Nations”).

As Keely established with respect to pre-historic and primitive populations and Lee confirmed for North America, hunter-gatherer populations were in a constant state of low-level warfare. The warfare played out fights over resources, slight, or revenge. In some ways, it resembles the feuding of the Hatfield and McCoys and could last just as long. Such wars would be launched by a surprise attack. A successful first strike could be devastating. If the element of surprise was missing, the attacked community could call on assistance and attempt to counter-ambush the attackers or chase them out of the territory while inflicting casualties. The total number of dead might number in the handful, but over time such small numbers could add up to a demographic tipping point.

Primitive warfare had a high lethality – higher than civilized warfare:

Finally, the skulking paradigm likely underplays the level of lethality in precontact warfare in North America. There is archaeological evidence for the long continuity of a style of war that could be highly destructive and lethal. Three examples are the large-scale massacre at Crow Creek in South Dakota in the fourteenth century; a cemetery site in Illinois from the same era indicating a persistent series of violent attacks; and a recent reexamination of 119 precontact burials in southern New England showing that a remarkable 15 percent of them had died from violent trauma, 20 percent of whom were women or children.12

Lee, Wayne E.. The Cutting-Off Way: Indigenous Warfare in Eastern North America, 1500–1800 (pp. 17-18). The University of North Carolina Press. Kindle Edition.

If modern America had a death by violence rate of 15% the number would be in the tens of millions.

What this means is that Indian populations were in a constant state of movement and change. The current fad for “land acknowledgments” is based on a false ideology of the “peaceful savage” who has been on the land since time immemorial. In fact, whatever nation is being “acknowledged” is simply the last population that drove the prior population off the land and usually shortly before Americans arrived to bring peace to the land, and, ironically, to save the losers from extinction.

Indian warfare – the “cutting-off way” – made rational sense. It did keep Europeans mostly penned to the Eastern Seaboard for two-hundred years. It had its successes against the Western Way of War when the Indians could attack the logistics of the Westerners or abandon territory rather than stand and defend villages.

Misunderstanding of each sides approach to warfare went both ways. Lee tells the reader about the Powhattan surprise attack that initiated the Second Powhattan War:

“The attack came on March 22, 1622. The Powhatans went about their business normally at the beginning of the day. By this time many of them had regular personal or economic contacts within the English settlements, and at the prescribed moment, all around the English colony, the Indians, already intermingled with the populace, picked up various agricultural tools (having come in unarmed) or appeared from the surrounding woods and set upon the English. They killed all those who came within reach that day, probably more than 350 people, completely wiping out some settlements. Tellingly, however, there was no follow-up. Having administered their lesson, the Powhatans went home. They surely expected retaliation, even as they would from another Native society, but they would not be caught unawares, and probably expected to be able to prevent any kind of equivalent damage to themselves. They prepared for the cutting-off war of raid and counterraid but presumed that their initial successful attack would give them the advantage in the long run.

Lee, Wayne E.. The Cutting-Off Way: Indigenous Warfare in Eastern North America, 1500–1800 (p. 74). The University of North Carolina Press. Kindle Edition.

What the Powhattan did not expect was that the Europeans would prosecute the war in the Western way, i.e. staying in the field, shock tactics, willingness to absorb casualties, and fighting to the end.

“Despite these limits to the attack, the English did not respond to the lesson in the expected manner. They prepared to fight a war according to their own model of continuous campaigning: not raiding, but taking, destroying, and hopefully exterminating—largely in the hope of establishing their control over more land. In this the colonists succeeded to a horrifying degree, usually failing to catch very many Indians, but deliberately and thoroughly destroying their towns and crops. Indian efforts to negotiate a peace were repeatedly rebuffed until the war crept to a close in 1632.

Lee, Wayne E.. The Cutting-Off Way: Indigenous Warfare in Eastern North America, 1500–1800 (p. 74). The University of North Carolina Press. Kindle Edition.

Lee also describes the Tuscarora war of 1712-1713. In the first year of the war, the Tuscarora successfully used forts to fend off an English assault. This gave them the confidence to double-down on the strategy of fortification. This time the English brought artillery and Indian auxiliaries. When they seized the fort, they killed or captured 1,000 out of the 5,000 person Tuscarora Nation. This ended the Tuscarora as an independent nation. They emigrated from western South Carolina and became the sixth nation of the Iroquois Confederacy.

The lesson here is that civilized nations can go into the field when they choose with more firepower and better logistics and stay in the field longer. With the assistance of native auxiliaries providing the irregular warfare skills the Western forces lack, the Western approach can be essentially unbeatable.

Lee provides a chapter comparing the situation of the Irish and the Indians. At the same time that the English were dealing with pacifying Native Americans, they were also dealing with pacifying Native Irishmen. The Irish were unassimilable because of their Catholic religion. Irish forces – the Kerns – were used as native auxiliaries in the same way that the English in North America used Indian forces. Eventually, the Kerns became supernumerary because of technology. Indian auxilliaries, however, remained relevant to the closing of the west.

Lee provides insight into the relationship of Indians with European communities. A careful reader of this review might remember how the Powhattans were integrated into the English settlements where they were able to launch their surprise attacks. Native Americans often flocked to English and American forts for protection when they were on the losing side. Indian Nations were often insistent to have forts situated in their territory because of such concerns and because it invited the traders who provided a life-blood of Western goods. The Indians were dependent on western technology, such as gun powder and guns. Guns often broke. Indians lacked the ability to repair the guns on their own and so needed the English and Americans to fix their guns and sell them the gunpowder that had become integral to their way of life.

Lee gives an explanation for something that always puzzled me, namely, why did Indians give up the bow and arrow. It seems like gun technology is slower and less reliable than a bow and arrow. The answer is in the ‘stopping power.” A lead bullet would put an animal or human down immediately. Arrows could be dodged by humans or leave lethal but not immediately lethal wounds in animals that would then require lengthy pursuit.

History's relevance is never far removed from modern events. I was reading this book shortly after Hamas' brutally uncivilized surprise attack on peaceful Israelis where Israeli women were raped, children were killed, and hostages were taken. It does not take much imagination to recognize this as the classic “cutting-off way” of war. Hamas has recreated the surprise raid and run-away style for the same reasons that Hunter-Gatherer populations did, namely, they can't afford to waste their manpower in a set piece battle that they are going to lose.

The Israeli response is classically “western.” Israel has gone into Gaza with sufficient manpower, firepower, and resolve to exterminate the threat of another surprise attack. It may lack the element of “native auxiliaries,” but if Keeley is right, it may have to jettison some or all of the “decorative” tactics of civilized warfare, e.g., giving warning before bombing, not destroying power and water supplies used by the civilian population, etc. If that happens, it shouldn't be surprising.

The Israel-Hamas analogy also allows us to reflect back on the history of Indian-Western interaction. These were two vastly different civilizations. One of them believed that surprise attacks on civilian populations across the border fell comfortably within the “laws of war.” They couldn't change. For them to adopt a civilized/western perspective would have been idiotic. They could never win that way.

On the other hand, the European society could hardly live next to a population that could come boiling across the border at a time of their own choosing and which would then, as a matter of their laws of war, rape civilian women, kidnap civilian children, and murder civilian men. The Western Way of War required a complete and total response to such depredations.

These civilizations were in conflict. Some one was going to lose.

Someone did lose.