The Name of War
Page 17
To argue that warring non-Christians rely exclusively on natural law for guidance, Grotius had to assume that non-Christians, who know neither Scripture nor the law of nations, lack any kind of religious and secular mores that might impose additional restraints on war. In making this assumption, Grotius may well have been influenced by his interest in the New World; in 1642 he even published a short tract called On the Origin of the Native Races of America (in which he confidently concluded that America’s indigenous inhabitants were primarily descended from Germans and Chinese).69 Like many political theorists of his time, Grotius was fascinated by the peoples of the New World who, in the eyes of theoretically minded Europeans, lived in a world free from the conventions of civilized society, and as such provided partial inspiration not only for just war doctrine but also for social contract theory.70 Whether they saw Native Americans as living in a state of nature or a state of war, seventeenth-century political theorists, most famously John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, were quick to exploit the example provided by the peoples of the New World, at least as a rhetorical device. “In the beginning,” according to Locke, “all the world was America.”71 And Hobbes, who argued that the state of nature is a state of war “of every man, against every man,” pointed to the New World as proof, “for the savage people in many places of America … have no government at all; and live at this day in that brutish manner.”72
Europeans who had had more contact with Native Americans than Grotius, Locke, and Hobbes were likely to see things differently, but many made similar assumptions, especially English colonists in New England. Thomas Morton, for instance, wrote in 1637 that “these people are since fide, since lege, & since rege.”73 And Roger Williams said the Indians, “having lost the true and living God their maker, have created out of the nothing of their owne inventions many false and fained Gods and Creators.”74 Meanwhile, even though some early visitors to New England argued that Indians recognized the law of nations,75 and some colonists attempted to “teach” Indians certain codes of conduct (as when the Massachusetts Council explained how a white flag is “used by civil nations in tyme of war”76), most were pessimistic about introducing the Indians to the laws of war, “they being a people not so acquainted with such waies, nor the usages of civill nations.”77
Most colonists in New England were unable to believe that Algonquians were truly like themselves—humans, possessed of both reason and the knowledge of God, and members of sovereign nations that abided by universally binding rules. While the colonists cannot be said to have taken a consistent or consensual position in defending their war, they did manage, in a rather paranoid fashion, to defend themselves on nearly every possible grounds: not only were the Indians infidels, they were also devils and barbarians who lacked both reason and dominion and who perpetrated atrocities violating both the law of nations and the law of nature. As the colonists insisted, Indians had few if any codes of conduct, engaging in “savage” wars with wanton motives.78 On a practical level, this meant that the colonists themselves were freed to abandon the laws of war. As historian Barbara Donagan has argued of seventeenth-century England, “Against a Christian foreign enemy, the laws of war, posited on hostilities between sovereign states, were straightforwardly applicable. In a colonial war, especially one with strong racist, religious, and retributive elements, many argued that the laws of war were abrogated, since barbarian or heretic others’ or outsiders did not merit the protections due to the civilized and Christian.”79
The historian who pores over the records of King Philip’s War will search in vain for a coherent political ideology or a single legal, moral, or religious justification of the war. Living in a world in which the laws of nature and of nations were, in effect, being invented, and in which the idea of holy war lingered even as a secular conception gradually replaced it, colonial writers participated in these debates more than they followed preexisting notions. And always, they covered their bases. In condemning Indian cruelties, New England’s colonists often lumped violations of the laws of nations and of the laws of nature together, as when Roger Williams said that the Indians “had Forgot they were Mankind, and ran about the Countrie like Wolves tearing and Devouring the Innocent, and peaceable.”80 Predictably, supposed Indian violations of the laws of war produced some of the colonists’ most vitriolic prose. In the colonists’ words, enemy Algonquians fought like beasts, marauders, and fiends, or even like women, not truly fighting but “skulking”: “creeping: & cruching: behinde any bush, tree, rock, or hill, Sometimes one alone: two or three to gether, & then (as they See need) start up & run away (Soe fast) among the Shrubs & rocks: that noe horse (as the place & man may be) can catch them.”81 John Freeman reported to Governor Winslow in July 1675, “We see their design is not to face the army; but to keep a flying army about the woods, to fall on us and our army, as they have advantage.”82 Or as Philip Walker put it, “Thes murthres Rooges like wild Arabians thay / Lurk heare & there of every thing make p[rey].”83
Perhaps more definitively than any other Algonquian practice, skulking violated every English code of conduct. To the English it implied cowardice and deceit and, as Josiah Winslow maintained, “unmanliness.”84 Similarly, Samuel Gorton believed “the manner of their warre appears to be such that a rascall like boy may take his opertunitie to be the fall of the most hardy and puisassant souldier.”85 Roger Williams wrote that “all their War is Commootin they have Commootind our Howses, our Cattell, our Heads &c & that not by their Artillerie but our Weapons: that yet they are so cowardly, that they have not taken one poore Fort from us in all the Countrey, not won (no scarce fought) one battell since the beginning.”86 After the war, Urian Oakes would recall fighting against “a despised & despicable Enemy, that is not acquainted with books of military Discipline, that observe no regular Order, that understand not the Souldier’s Postures, and Motions, and Firings, and Forms of Battel, that fight in a base, cowardly, contemptible way.”87 The Massachusetts Council declared in August 1675 that “it is the manner of the Heathen that are now in Hostility with us, contrary to the practice of the Civil Nations, to execute their bloody Insolencies by stealth and sculking in small parties, declining all open decission of their controversie, either by Treaty or by the Sword.”88
To some, the Algonquians’ multiple violations of the laws of civil nations and even of the laws of nature meant that their fighting ought not to be dignified by being classed with European conflicts. After all, William Hubbard refused to call the conflict of 1675 and 1676 a war because, “being rather Massacres, barbarous inhumane Outrages, than Acts of Hostility or valiant Achievements,” it didn’t “deserve the Name of a War.”89 But did Algonquians have their own laws of war?90
III
NEARLY ALL human cultures that practice war follow rules of their own prescription. When cultures with different rules go to war they may well borrow from each other’s traditions, but perhaps more important, their fundamental differences are brought into sharp relief. Warring societies may even exaggerate their differences to make the killing easier; the more foreign the enemy, the better.91 And war sometimes causes people to call into question their own basic assumptions about the world—ideas, for instance, about what it is to be human, or what God’s role is in human affairs. Although we are less likely to find sources discussing how Algonquians felt about these matters, it is clear that King Philip’s War precipitated just such a moral and epistemological crisis for New England’s colonists. Nowhere is this crisis more visible than in the colonists’ justifications for the war itself and for their conduct within it. King Philip’s War was not an easy war for the English settlers to justify, but the language they employed to that end pulled the peoples of seventeenth-century New England farther and farther apart. Meanwhile, Algonquians communicated their ideas about war in ways that the colonists largely ignored or deliberately silenced.
Benjamin Tompson declared that “Indian spirits need / No grounds but lust to make a Christian bleed” and most English colo
nists insisted, with John Leverett, that the Indians began the war “without any just cause, or provocation given them.”92 Thomas Wheeler prayed “The Lord avenge the Blood that hath been shed by these Heathen who hate us without a Cause?93 And, much as the English justified their own conduct at great length, embracing and accommodating a wide diversity of opinions and philosophies, what possible cause might have driven their Indian neighbors to war, the colonists professed not to know. Hearing that Philip had taken up arms, Samuel Gorton confessed himself mystified. “On what hinge the ocation thereof turned,” he admitted, “I know not.”94 Josiah Winslow insisted, “Wee have not soe much as heard of any thing that hee alleageth as ground of his discontent and taking arms against us.” And Benjamin Batten wrote in a letter published in The London Gazette, “the reason of this taking of Armes Wee knowe not.”95
But Winslow and Batten knew very well what initially propelled Philip to war. Batten supposed that the execution of Sassamon’s alleged murderers, “thay being [Philip’s] Cheife men,” may have “Inraidged him.”96 And Win-slow said he knew nothing about Philip’s justification, “save only hee sayth wee had began a war” by “the execution of three Indians for a murther.” (Such a claim was absurd, Winslow implied, because the Sassamon trial was fair and legal, “the three Indians after sentenced to day acknowledging the justice of the Courte and giveing us thanks for our fayer tryall of them, and the last of them that was executed, at execution confest the fact; so that hee had no ground of complaint of injury to him or his, in that or any other respect [that we know of].”)97 Just weeks after the execution, a group of Narragansetts asked Roger Williams “why Plymmouth pursued Phillip.” At first Williams offered a brisk, formal reply: “He broke all Laws and was in Armes of Rebellion against that Colony.” Then, with more candor, Williams added, “it is believed that [Philip] was the Authour of murthering John Sossiman for revealing his plots to the GOVR of Plymmouth.” Williams failed to mention how the Narragansetts responded to this explanation, but two days later he noted that many in Rhode Island “wish that Plymouth had left the Indians alone [or] at least not put to death the 3 Indians upon one Indians Testimony a thing which Philip fears.”98 As John Easton reported, Philip had listed among his grievances against the English that “if 20 of there [h]onest indians testefied that an Englishman had dun them rong, it was as nothing, and if but one of ther worst indians testefied against ani indian or ther king when it plesed the English that was sufitiant.”99
When pressed, then, most colonists admitted that the execution of Sassamon’s alleged murderers seemed to have been the immediate cause for war, the “irruption of this flame,” but few were willing to look beyond that, at broader economic, cultural, or religious tensions. Even Easton was ultimately uninterested in the Wampanoags’ grievances. “We knew what ther Cumplaints wold be,” Easton recalled, and so tried to put the Wampanoags off, saying “it was not Convenient for us now to Consider of,” since they had more urgent business to attend to. But Philip would not be silenced. He “Charged it to be disonesty in us to put of the hering of the complaints,” and eventually Easton’s delegation “Consented to here them.” The Wampanoags then proceeded to offer a long list of grievances, including the colonists’ taking Indian lands, interfering with Indian agriculture, and attempting to convert Indians to Christianity.100
If nearly all of the colonists’ explanations for the war boiled down to John Sassamon’s death and the execution of his alleged murderers—the same immediate cause Wampanoags and Narragansetts cited—why then did the English continue to profess their ignorance of Indian motives, denying even the possibility that such motives might exist? One answer, of course, is that the colonists rarely put the question to Indians themselves. And when, on occasion, colonial authorities did interrogate Indians about their reasons for fighting, full and candid answers were hardly forthcoming: captured or surrendering Indian men and women were not likely to court execution by speaking defiantly. When Peter Awashonks presented himself to the Plymouth Council to make peace with the English in June 1676, he was quick to declare that “The English never did us any hurt or wronge to this day.” “If they had,” he assured his examiners, “we would speak of it.” Although his questioners urged him to “Speake freely, without fear,” it seems unlikely that Peter would have wanted to do so, despite his and their assurances to the contrary.101
Yet, even if the surviving sources tell us little, or little that is credible, about Indian justifications for the war, that doesn’t mean that Algonquians had nothing to say on the subject. Most, no doubt, had strong opinions about why they were fighting. And certainly they had rules of war and codes of conduct, however unfamiliar these may have been to their English neighbors.102It is, in fact, that very unfamiliarity that should interest us most. Unfortunately, historians, like the colonists themselves, have rarely been interested in exploring this unfamiliar territory. As one scholar has recently pointed out, historical scholarship has largely ignored “the possibility that the non-state societies of aboriginal North America may have waged war for different—but no less rational and no more savage—purposes than did the nation-states of Europe.”103
Algonquians in New England had well-developed ideas about war. That their standards were at variance with those held by the English is illustrated by the colonists’ condemnation of certain Algonquian practices, including the torture of captives. Yet the two cultures undoubtedly shared some common assumptions about war. There is considerable evidence that Algonquian standards included a distinction between concepts roughly equivalent to jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Narragansetts who fought with the English in the Pequot War, for instance, agreed with the waging of the war in the first place, but then refused to participate in acts they found unacceptable to their notions of just conduct. When the English burned hundreds of women and children trapped in a compound, the Narragansetts backed off, crying, “Mach it, mach it; that is, It is naught, it is naught, because it is too furious, and slays too many men.”104
Many Algonquians also either shared or quickly learned and borrowed from English codes of conduct, using them to protect themselves in combat or to defend their own actions before the colonial authorities. On one occasion, during the early years of settlement, Plymouth authorities went to arrest a sachem they thought to be hidden in a house occupied by a group of Indians. On arriving, the colonists announced that they “would not at all hurt their women or children,” and then began firing. Hearing the shots, several Indian boys in the house cried out, “Neen squaes! that is to say, I am a woman.”105 Another example, from King Philip’s War, reveals a curious irony. Accused of the murder of a colonist and his family, William and Joseph Wannuckkow and John Appamatogoon were quick to excuse their involvement by making reference to an English war doctrine. Although they admitted to having been present at the attack, the three Indians claimed that they “neither killd nor Burnt not tooke away any thing there, But were Instrumental to save Goodman Eames and his children alive.” “Besides,” they continued, they ought to be immune from prosecution since “It was a time of ware when this Mischiefe was done; and though It was our unhappy Portion be with the Enimies, yet we conceive that depredations and Slaughters in warre are not Chargable upon Particular persons.”106 In jail for crimes committed during wartime, William and Joseph Wannuckkow and John Appamatogoon excused their actions by claiming the special exemptions due to soldiers during wartime.107
One common purpose for Algonquian war was to gain captives to increase a diminished population, a practice anthropologists call “mourning-war.”108 Often such wars were initially waged in response to the deaths of valued members of a tribe; in the case of King Philip’s War, the three Wampanoags executed for the murder of John Sassamon. Among the nearby Iroquois, “warfare was a specific response to the death of specific individuals at specific times, a sporadic affair characterized by seizing from traditional enemies a few captives who would replace the dead, literally or symbolically, and ease the pain o
f those who mourned.”109 Traditional warfare among Algonguians in New England may have sometimes met similar needs, where wars of retaliation ended as soon as retribution had been inflicted and “native hostilities generally aimed at symbolic ascendancy, a status conveyed by small payments of tribute to the victors, rather than the dominion normally associated with European-style conflicts.”110 Yet, although retaliation was one of many possible motives, attributing such wars to simple revenge is unfair, according to one historian, since they can be better understood as “justified reprisals.” Or, in short, just wars.111 One seventeenth-century Lenape Indian in Pennsylvania, for example, propounded a just war protocol whose complexity might have won even Hugo Grotius’ admiration. “We are minded to live at peace,” the Lenape man declared.