The high war death rates among most nonstate societies are obviously the result of several features of primitive warfare: the prevalence of wars, the high proportion of tribesmen who face combat, the cumulative effects of frequent but low-casualty battles, the unmitigated deadliness and very high frequency of raids, the catastrophic mortalities inflicted in general massacres, the customary killing of all adult males, and the often atrocious treatment of women and children. For these reasons, a member of a typical tribal society, especially a male, had a far higher probability of dying “by the sword” than a citizen of an average modern state.
One author has very liberally estimated that more than 100 million people have died from all war-related causes (including famine and disease) on our planet during this century.33 These deaths could be regarded as the price modern humanity has paid for being divided into nation-states. Yet this appalling figure is twenty times smaller than the losses that might have resulted if the world’s population were still organized into bands, tribes, and chiefdoms.34 A typical tribal society lost about about .5 percent of its population in combat each year (Figure 6.1). Applying this casualty rate to the earth’s twentieth-century populations predicts more than 2 billion war deaths since 1900. Unlike a nuclear holocaust, such “back-to-nature” scenarios are certainly imaginary, but so is the idea that primitive war is not lethal.
WOUNDS AND THEIR TREATMENT
At what rate have nonfatal wounds been inflicted in primitive combat? Are these rates higher or lower than those suffered in civilized warfare? Unfortunately, such figures for primitive groups are very scarce.35 In one inconclusive New Guinea battle, by actual count, one Mae Enga clan suffered 40 percent of its warriors killed and wounded—which the clan regarded as a normal casualty rate. The large number of wound scars generally borne by Mae Enga men demonstrate that they were often wounded. Over half of the wounds suffered were on the limbs, however, and were not considered very serious. Similarly, a Mohave Indian war party was expected to suffer about 30 percent casualties in an average battle. Of course, victims caught by small raiding parties were very unlikely to survive the encounter, since they were usually outnumbered and often unarmed. In contrast, in an average Civil War battle, only 12 to 15 percent of the combatants were killed and wounded; even at Gettysburg, the Union forces engaged lost only 21 percent and the Confederates 30 percent to death or wounds.36 On the terrible first day of the Somme battle in 1916, about 40 percent of the thirteen attacking British divisions became casualties.37 The scant available evidence, then, indicates that, at least in formal battles, tribal warriors were wounded about as often as soldiers in the bloodiest modern battles.
Although just as high a proportion of those engaged in primitive battles may be wounded, fewer in proportion are killed outright than is usually the case in modern battles (Figure 4.1). For instance, in Mae Enga formal battles, which were primarily firefights, only one man was killed for every ten to thirty wounded. Approximate ratios of killed to wounded for some modern battles are 1:5 at Gettysburg and in the battles for Atlanta, 1:3 for one particular British battalion at Waterloo, and 1:2 for the British at the Somme.38 The casualness with which Mae Enga warriors viewed most of their wounds suggests that those inflicted by unpoisoned missiles (which many tribes used exclusively) were seldom immediately serious. Only wounds to the neck, chest, belly, and groin were greatly feared.39
Of course, some primitive and ancient battles were exceptionally deadly. The Mohave, who closed with the enemy and fought with deadlier shock weapons (lances and clubs), suffered an estimated two wounded for every battlefield death. Casualty estimates for the losing side in several Macedonian and Roman battles identify the number of killed as equaling or exceeding the number of wounded.40 As statistics for the Mohave case and for ancient European battles indicate, wounds from shock weapons tend to be much more deadly than wounds from untainted missiles. In the same way, a single hit from a bullet, bomb blast, or shell fragment is much more likely to mortally wound or kill outright than is a single strike from an unpoisoned javelin or arrow. Thus the higher ratios of dead to wounded noted for modern and ancient civilized battle reflect of the greater lethality of modern gunpowder and ancient shock weapons.
But if modern gunpowder weapons are more deadly, how is it that even in hardest-fought modern battles the casualty rates (about 30 to 40 percent) are generally no higher and sometimes even lower than those inflicted with primitive fire weapons? The main difficulty is that the enemy in modern warfare usually refuses to cooperate by exposing himself in large concentrations where he can be found, aimed at, and killed en masse by the deadly but ponderous weapons of modern war. To put it bluntly, soldiers have a natural tendency to “duck.” Only when modern soldiers cooperate through gross stupidity (as they did during the first few months of World War I, by charging in mass formations into machine guns and rapid-firing artillery), does the latent lethality of modern weapons become manifest.41 Whatever the potential destructiveness of such weapons, against even a moderately uncooperative enemy, thousands of shells and bullets must be fired just to wound a single person. Against thoroughly unobliging enemies who fight in the primitive fashion, including modern guerrillas, the stupendous paraphernalia of modern war is often useless.
One possible explanation of the high war death rates of primitive societies is that because of their poor medical practices, a greater proportion of primitive warriors subsequently died of wounds. But first consider that nineteenth-century France, which suffered most of its war casualties during the Napoleonic Wars, was used in comparison with primitive groups in Figures 6.1 and 6.2. This was a period when medicine practiced neither antisepsis nor anaesthesia. Military surgeons actually contributed to the fatality of wounds by “bleeding” wounded men, routinely amputating wounded limbs, probing uncleaned wounds with unsterile instruments, and immediately binding them tight with unsterilized bandages. All these standard early-nineteenth-century practices induced shock or increased the chances of infection. The wholesale prescription of powerful laxatives at the slightest provocation, often for soldiers already suffering from dysentery, can hardly have aided convalescence. With modern medical hindsight, it is clear that military medicine during the nineteenth century was worse than ineffective: it was positively harmful.
In contrast, most primitive healers merely extracted the projectile, sometimes bathed the wounds, and commonly covered them with poultices of plants known to have healing properties. A recent pharmocological study of over 2,000 plant extracts found that 61 percent had some antibiotic effect, lending support to the idea that these poultices would have been more helpful than the tight, unsanitary bandages of pre-twentieth-century military medicine.42 Another shamanistic treatment, common at least in North America, involved sucking blood from the wound; where arrows were poisoned, this would have been a necessary precaution, but it would have helped to clean the wound in any case. The only surgical advantage that Western military doctors of the nineteenth century possessed over their primitive counterparts was their ability to stop massive bleeding from major arteries and veins. On the other hand, a number of prehistoric and recent chiefdoms practiced trepanation—removal of small pieces of the skull to treat cranial fractures—an operation that Western surgeons did not master until the late nineteenth century. Archaeological finds of skulls with multiple healed trepanation scars indicate that this operation often had a high rate of success.43 Thus shamanistic treatments were, in many cases, harmless at worst and very efficacious at best.
Evidence also shows that the patients of nineteenth-century military doctors feared their incompetence. Civil War soldiers, for example, often concealed their wounds, preferring their own home remedies to the army surgeons’ excruciating, fearsome, and often fatal treatments.44 Seriously wounded soldiers seldom had any choice in the matter, but others were somewhat luckier. In 1876, a Cheyenne brave, whose leg bones had been shattered by a bullet, was told by a U.S. Army doctor that his leg would have to be amputated to save
his life. He refused and was instead treated by a Cheyenne medicine man. Bodi he and his leg survived, with the only lingering effect being a certain stiffness in his walk.45 One may dismiss this case as a fluke; but overall, the limited surgery and salutary herbalism of shamans may well have saved more wounded men than the septic interventions and the shock-inducing amputations of nineteenth-century civilized surgeons.
In addition, civilized soldiers often had to wait a long time for first aid. For example, after Waterloo, many of the British wounded were not collected until the following morning, and some live French wounded remained on the field two days later. By contrast, many (if not most) primitive warriors could obtain treatment minutes after suffering their wounds. As we have seen, tribal warriors made special efforts to protect wounded men and to move them out of danger in order to save them from certain death and mutilation. In New Guinea, older men and women, located immediately behind the battlefield, were available to dress wounds. In North America, shamans often accompanied war parties to work favorable magic and to treat wounds.46 Furthermore, convalescing wounded warriors enjoyed the interested care of family and friends, whereas civilized soldiers were subjected to the impersonal, often overburdened, and indifferent ministrations of personnel at military hospitals. Surely the former offered superior intensive care and psychological support.47
The medical care given to wounded tribal warriors was thus no worse, and in some cases better, than that given to civilized soldiers until this century. It is unlikely, then, that the high warfare death rates of primitives can be explained by their supposedly inferior medical practices.
SEVEN
To the Victor
The Profits and Losses of Primitive War
In war, various possessions, representing wealth and the means of production, can be seized or destroyed to benefit attackers and harm defenders. Even from the corpses of the vanquished, the victors can extract gains and inflict losses on their foes. Both civilized and uncivilized adversaries experience the spoils and horrors of war in ways that extend far beyond the numbers of dead, wounded, and missing.
MUTILATION AND TROPHY TAKING
In Tahiti, a victorious warrior, given the opportunity, would pound his vanquished foe’s corpse flat with his heavy war club, cut a slit through the well-crushed victim, and don him as a trophy poncho.1 This custom was extreme only to the extent that most tribal warriors were seldom so surreal in their mutilations or so unselective in their choice of trophies from the bodies of their dead enemies. There are both anthropological and archaeological reasons for discussing this type of behavior in the context of costs and gains.
People in many cultures believe that improper treatment of a corpse can adversely affect the fate of the soul or spirit it once housed. For such people, deeply felt injuries could be inflicted on them by mutilation of their dead. Trophies such as scalps and heads were often included among the spoils of war because they were important tokens for reckoning male status or were thought to enhance a warrior’s spiritual power. The gains from such trophies could include elevation to manhood and the right to marry, higher status, greater favor from gods and spirits, increased spiritual power, and general well-being. In certain systems of belief, then, these gruesome practices inflicted real costs and exacted real benefits. From an archaeological perspective, mutilated skeletons provide compelling evidence of prehistoric war, since few societies would mutilate their own dead. These pathetic remains are among the most enduring effects of war.
By far the most common and widely distributed war trophy was the head or skull of an enemy. The custom of taking heads is recorded from many cultures in New Guinea, Oceania, North America, South America, Africa, and ancient western Europe.2 The popularity of this practice is probably explained by the obvious fact that the head is the most individual part of the body. For warriors the world over, the prestige or spiritual power accruing to the victor depended on the personal qualities and reputations of his victims. More than any other body part, the head of a vanquished foe was an unequivocal token of the individual that had been overcome. Such trophies were so representative of the individual from whom they were taken that victors often spoke to their trophy heads by name, reviling and exulting over them. For example, an early missionary in New Zealand heard a Maori warrior taunting the preserved head of an enemy chief in the following fashion:
You wanted to run away, did you? but my meri [war club] overtook you: and after you were cooked, you made food for my mouth. And where is your father? he is cooked:—and where is your brother? he is eaten:—and where is your wife? there she sits, a wife for me:—and where are your children? there they are, with loads on their backs, carrying food, as my slaves.3
In Maori warfare, decapitation marked the beginning, not the end, of a vanquished warrior’s humiliation.
The taking of trophy heads certainly occurred prehistorically in several areas of the world.4 The 7,500-year-old caches of trophy heads found in Ofnet Cave in Germany have already been mentioned in earlier chapters. Several headless skeletons with cut-marks on their neck vertabrae indicating decapitation were recovered from a late prehistoric site in Illinois. Prehistoric chiefdoms in Central and South America left depictions of warriors taking and displaying trophy heads, as well as the heads themselves.
The native North American custom of taking scalps is well known, although historical revisionists have popularized the notion that Indians only learned scalping from Europeans. Undoubtedly, the “scalp bounties” offered by some colonial authorities did much to encourage scalping and helped spread the custom to a few tribes that had previously disdained the practice (such as the Apaches) or that instead took the whole head as a trophy (such as the Iroquois). Nevertheless, the custom of scalping enemy dead was observed at first contact among tribes ranging from New England to California and from parts of the subarctic down to northern Mexico.5 Scalps and scalping were embedded in the myth and rituals of so many tribes that the custom’s indigenous roots in North America are beyond serious question. For example, among the Pueblos of the Southwest, “warriors’ societies” or “scalp societies” performed important ceremonial, social, and military functions; membership in them was restricted to men who had taken an enemy scalp. By contrast, the custom was unknown in ancient, medieval, and early modern Europe, where the preferred trophies were usually whole heads. Here again, archaeological evidence provides the decisive and unequivocal proof. Because the skin of the scalp is so thin, removing it from the skull leaves characteristic cut-marks on the cranial bones; such cut-marks have been found frequently on pre-Columbian skulls from many regions of Norm America.6 Indians were plainly the scalpers, and it was from them that the colonists learned the custom. However, it was the—civilized” Europeans who turned human scalps into an item of commerce.
Less common trophies taken by tribes in various areas of the world included hands, genitals, teeth, and the long bones of the arms or legs.7 These long bones were made into flutes in South America and New Zealand. Several chiefdoms in Colombia kept the entire skins of dead enemies. Often the women who accompanied their men to the battlefield flayed the victims. One group even stuffed these trophy skins, modeled the features of the victims in wax on their skulls, placed weapons in their hands, and set the reassembled trophy “in places of honor on special benches and tables within their households.”8
The symbolic significance of trophies varied enormously from one culture to another. In some, they merely provided a tangible numerical measure of a warrior’s prowess. In others, they possessed magic powers that strengthened their possessor or transferred the victim’s spirit to the victor’s benefit. They might be necessary paraphernalia for rituals honoring deities, initiating youths, or cleansing their taker of the spiritual pollution of homicide. These items might degrade the victim, injure his afterlife, or enrage his survivors, as was the intention of the Paez of Colombia, who displayed the trophy penises of their enemies in order to “shame the foe.” Body-part trophies have meant
some combination or all of these things to various societies. As is so often the case in an ethnographic survey, a fundamentally similar behavior pattern displayed by many diverse groups conveys a huge range of meanings to its exhibitors.
Even if no trophies were taken, mutilations were commonly inflicted on victims’ corpses—eyes removed, bellies slit, genitals severed, features defaced, and so on—with a similar variety of significances.9 For example, the Zulus of South Africa slit a victim’s belly to release his spirit, thereby saving the killer from pollution and insanity. To express their contempt for the social group of an enemy, the Mae Enga of New Guinea mutilated his corpse by stuffing his severed penis in his mouth or, in the heat of battle, chopping him to pieces with axes. Different Plains tribes mutilated their foes’ corpses in characteristic ways as a kind of “signature”: the Sioux by cutting throats, the Cheyenne by slashing arms, the Arapaho splitting noses, and so on (Plate 2). In the aftermath of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Indian women used marrow-cracking mallets to pound the faces of dead soldiers into pulp. Perhaps the most common mutilation was “overkill,” which involved shooting so many arrows into an enemy’s body that he looked like a “human pin-cushion.” In these cases, the disfigurements expressed hatred for the enemy and were meant to enrage surviving foes.
War Before Civilization Page 14