Especially after the slaughter of WWI, many Westerners saw "peaceful  
natives" everywhere. Further study found that warfare is pretty much  
universal. There are some interesting variations like the "Flower  
Wars" of Mexico, where the deaths may not have been during battle,  
but during religious sacrifices that took place afterwards. The  
Plains Indian practice of counting coup is also interesting, but did  
not preclude combat deaths.

Another American Indian 'myth" is that they lived in harmony with  
their environment. To a certain degree there simply weren't enough of  
them to cause widespread ecological destruction. But they did engage  
in practices that had pretty serious local consequences. And in some  
cases there is evidence (especially in the Southwest) that practices  
may have at least contributed to habitat loss and ecological  
degradation.

Before the arrival of the horse, standard practice by the Plains  
Indians was to set fire to the prairie and drive the buffalo off  
cliffs. A bit rough on the grass and also making no attempt to cull  
the herd, just massacre the whole thing. Questions have been raised  
about some of the large kill sites whether there were Indian groups  
large enough to use all of the resultant meat.

The Powhatan and other groups here in Virginia practiced slash and  
burn agriculture. Village sites were shifted after the soil was  
farmed to exhaustion (the indicator often being when there was not  
enough food for the old and very young). It was also not unknown for  
the locals to set fire to the forest and drive animals into the  
river, where they were killed by people in boats. Burning the forest  
also made for better deer habitat. Big Meadow on Skyline Drive

There is also a widespread claim that slavery did not exist before  
the arrival of Europeans. many tribes maintain they did not enslave  
"people". But as only members of the tribe qualified as "people" this  
is a pretty empty statement. It is true, however that the form  
slavery took was often very different. While manumission of African  
slaves by Europeans was not a common practice, Indian slaves were  
sometimes/often (?) made full members of the tribe. And children of  
slaves were often not considered slaves, unlike the children of  
African slaves.

James Brothers, RPA
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On Mar 3, 2007, at 20:42, Sunshine49 wrote:

> off topic and far from Virginia, but an example of the risk of over- 
> simplifying historical villains. From the current issue of  
> Archaeology magazine, an excavation at Crow River in South Dakota,  
> where remains of 500 men, women and children were discovered...  
> massacred around AD1325. Nary a white man in sight...
>
> Nancy
>
> -------
> I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
>
> --Daniel Boone
>
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