Peaceful Cultures Living in Harmony with Nature

[uniface]

skeletons of 128 of those hunter-gatherer women display damage from arrows and sharp objects such as knives comparable to skeletal injuries of 289 presumed male warriors, Pilloud and her colleagues found. Whether those women fought alongside men or carried out other dangerous battle duties, such as sneaking up on enemies to cut their bow strings, can't be determined from their bones. Individuals in this sample came from 19 Native American groups in central California, and had lived in any of five time periods between around 5,000 and 200 years ago.

https://www.sott.net/article/433545-Hunter-gatherer-skeleton-damage-hints-that-some-women-may-have-fought-in-battles

 

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[Siwash]

I have a problem with any rewriting of history, unless there are newly-available primary sources (e.g., the Kremlin archives post 1989). Hollywood is horrible with history.

 

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[unclemac]

I remember reading a DNA study from Europe a couple years back with the authors "suggesting" that women were an important part of trade networks and and early social communications networks in pre-history, based on the fact that their remains were found far away from their birth places. Whereas male remains were typically found much closer to home. No mention or supposition that women were raped, captured, bartered for or stolen mind you...no, no...the position was that women were much more important and held positions of authority throughout Europe 3-4 thousand years ago.

 

[islamoradamark]

And to this day I would never turn my back on a woman holding a knife with a mean look on her face

 

[unclemac]

And to this day I would never turn my back on a woman holding a knife with a mean look on her face

the only people that have EVER stabbed me were women!

 

[uniface]

I have a problem with any rewriting of history

Only recall the axiom that "History is written by the victors."

The more time passes, the better the perspective becomes, and the significance of events comes into much better focus. Not to mention that outright lying propaganda is recognised as what it was (e.g., laughing German soldiers tossing Belgian babies into the air and impaling them with their bayonets while raping nuns during WW I).

A lot of such "facts" have been known to be lies at the time but the truth about them censored.

 

[Kray Gelder]

the only people that have EVER stabbed me were women!

More than once? More than one? I've had a boring life. LOL.

 

[Siwash]

Only recall the axiom that "History is written by the victors."

The more time passes, the better the perspective becomes, and the significance of events comes into much better focus. Not to mention that outright lying propaganda is recognised as what it was (e.g., laughing German soldiers tossing Belgian babies into the air and impaling them with their bayonets while raping nuns during WW I).

A lot of such "facts" have been known to be lies at the time but the truth about them censored.

Good point. A lot of history may well have a bias. I've been reading Rodney Stark, who writes about Christianity from the perspective of a secular historian, and he notes the old antireligious/antiCatholic biases of the old 19th century German historians. His take on the Crusades is interesting as well as on the inquisition.

 

[uniface]

from Indian Slavery In Colonial Times Within The Present Limits Of The United States by Almon Lauber (Colombia University, 1913):

Individual instances of slavery proceeded from other causes. The Indians were inveterate gamblers, and when nothing else was left, both men and women not infrequently staked themselves to serve as slaves in case of loss. Such slavery was sometimes for life, and sometimes for such short periods of time as a year or two. In case of famine, the Indians even sold their children to obtain food.

The slaves possessed by a given Indian tribe were oftener obtained through barter with other tribes. This intertribal traffic, though probably not common, was evidently far-reaching. Owing to the wandering habits of the Indians and their custom of bartering goods with other tribes, articles of copper became distributed throughout the North west, especially in Wisconsin. The Illinois Indians possessed slaves who came from the sea coast, probably Florida. The Illinois also bartered their slaves with the Ottawa for guns, powder, kettles and knives, and with the Iroquois to obtain peace. Marquette found (1673) among the Arkansas Indians, knives, beads and hatchets which had been obtained partly from the Illinois and partly from the Indians farther to the east. The Jesuit, Grelon, relates that in Chinese Tartary he met a Huron woman whom he had known in America.

The transition from the method of obtaining slaves by actual warfare and barter to that of mere slave raids was an easy one. The desire to gain the reputation of a skillful hunter, and, still more, of a brave warrior, and thus to win the esteem and regard of his tribesmen, was inherent among the natives. To be a brave warrior was to be truly a man. So eager was the Indian to acquire the name of “brave ” that he unhesitatingly underwent any hardships to obtain slaves or scalps as a proof of his qualifications for the title. This means of obtaining slaves was used by the stronger tribes like the Illinois and the Iroquois.

The slaves bartered by the Illinois were generally taken in the territory beyond the Mississippi. This the Illinois were better able to do after the coming of the whites, as they were provided with guns, while the Indians to the westward had no weapons of the sort. One of the chief sources from which these slaves was obtained was the Pawnee nation. In 1719, Du Tisne wrote to Bienville, the commandant at New Orleans, that the Pawnee were afraid of him when he arrived among them, as their neighbors, the Osage, had made them believe that his intention was to entrap and enslave them.

The same practice was followed by the other northern tribes. La Jeune, in 1632, found slaves among the Algonquin. The Indians of the Great Lakes region had a young Esquimaux as a slave in 1646. Tonti found Iroquois slaves among the Huron and Ottawa. The Dutch navigator, Hendrickson, in 1616, found the Indians of the Schuylkill River country holding Indian slaves.

FWIW