War in the Tribal Zone Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare Edited by R. Brian Ferguson and Neil L. Whitehead With a new preface by the Editors ~ School.of American Research Press Santa Fe, New Mexico James Currey Oxford WAR IN THE TRIBAL ZONl Contributon Thomas S. Abler R. A. L. H. Gunawardam School of American Research Department of Anthropology Department of HistoIJ Advanced Seminar Series University of Waterloo University of Peradeniyc Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Peradeniya, Sri umk~ Douglas W. Schwartz, General Editor Michael F. Brown Ross Hassi~ Department of Anthropology Department of Anthropolog} and Sociology University of Oklahoma Williams College Norman, Oklahoma Williamstown, Massachusetts Robin Uiw R. Brian Ferguson Department of History Department of Sociology; University of Stirling Anthropology; and CriminalJustice Stirling, Scotland Rutgers University Newark, NewJersey D. J. Matttingly Department of Classical Studies Eduardo Fernandez University of Michigan Lima, Peru Ann Arbor, Michigan Andrew Strathern Department of Anthropology University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Neil L. Whitehead Department of Anthropology University of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin i I] School of American Research Press James Currey Ltd Content~ Post Office Box 2188 73 Botley Road Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87504-2188 Oxford OX2 OBS Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: War in the tribal zone: expanding states and indigenous warfare / edited by R. Brian Ferguson and Neil L. Whitehead. Preface to the Second Printing xi p. em. - (School ofAmerican Research advanced seminar series) R. BRIAN FERGUSON AND NEll L. WHITEHEAD Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-933452-79-9. -ISBN 0-933452-80-2 Preface xxxvii 1. War and society-Cross-cultural studies. 2. Warfare, Primitive-Cross-cultural R. BRIAN FERGUSON AND NEll L. WHITEHEAD studies. 3. Territorial expansion-Cross-cultural studies. 4. Indigenous peoples. 1. Ferguson, R. Brian. II. Whitehead, Neil L. Ill. Series. GN497.w28 1992 1 303.6'6--dc20 91-39599 The Violent Edge of Empire 1 CIP R. BRIAN FERGUSON AND NEll L. WHITEHEAD British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: War in the tribal zone: expanding states and indigenous warfare.­ 2 (School of American Research advanced seminar series) War and Peace in Roman North Africa: 1. War and society-Cross-cultural studies. 2. Military art and science­ Observations and Models of State-Tribe Interaction 31 Cross-cultural studies. 3. Indigenous peoples-Cross-cultural studies. 1. Ferguson, R. Brian. II. Whitehead, Neil L. D.]. MATTINGLY 303.6'6 ISBN 0-85255-913-5 3 Conquest and Resistance: Copyright © 1992 by the School of American Research. All rights reserved. Pre-State and State Expansionism in Early Sri Lankan History 61 Preface to the second printing © 1999 School of American Research. Manufactured in the United States of America. R. A. L. H. GUNAWARDANA library of Congress Catalog Card Number 91-39599. First paperback edition 1992. Third paperback printing 2001. 4 Aztec and Spanish Conquest in Mesoamerica 83 3 4 5 04 03 02 01 Ross HAsSIG Cover: Two boy soldiers, merribers of the government-allied Kamajor (civil defense forces in the south), at a training center run by the Christian Brothers, a local NGO that works 5 with unaccompanied, abused, and street children, as well as former child soldiers, in Bo, Warfare on the West African Slave Coast, 1650-1850 103 Sierra Leone. Copyright © 1998 UNICEFIHQ98-0569/Giacomo Pirozzi. ROBIN LAw 6 Tribes Make States and States Make Tribes: Warfare and the Creation of Colonial Tribes and States in Northeastern South America 127 Illustrations NEIL L. WHITEHEAD 7 Beavers and Muskets: Iroquois Military Fortunes in the Face of European Colonization 151 THOMAS S. ABLER 8 2.l. Principal tribal groupings in Tripolitania 34 Tribe and State in a Frontier Mosaic: 2.2. Diagrammatic view of North African tribal hierarchy 36 The Ashaninka of Eastern Peru 175 2.3. The Roman frontier zone in North Africa 39 MICHAEL f BROWN AND EDUARDO FERNANDEZ 2.4. Frontier interaction model, first century B.C. and early first century A.D. 47 9 2.5. Frontier interaction model, later first century to early third A Savage Encounter: century A.D. 48 Western Contact and the Yanomami War Complex 199 7.l. The Iroquois and their enemies 156 R. BRIAN FERGUSON 8.l. Central jungle region of Peru 178 8.2. Portrait of Ashaninkas 186 10 10.1. The expanded field of warfare and alliances between Mul and Dei Let the Bow Go Down 229 councils, Papua New Guinea 237 ANDREW STRATHERN 10.2. A comparison of processes flowing from state and tribal policies in Highland Papua New Guinea 246 Appendix: Provisional Diagrams from the Advanced Seminar 251 R. BRIAN FERGUSON AND NEIL L. WHITEHEAD References 255 Index 289 ~. Preface to the Second Printing he time was right for War in the Tribal Zone. By the late 1980s the anthropology of war had grown into a large, cacophonous field, T surging with conflicting theories that attributed war to one or another aspect of indigenous society and culture. At the same time, the growth of historical anthropology had increasingly revealed the funda­ mental changes that the colonial encounter had wrought, and various studies had shown that the practice of war was particularly sensitive to changes brought on by Western contact. Ferguson (1990) and Whitehead (1990) both recognized that this fact needed to be incorpo­ rated better into anthropological theory. In War in the Tribal Zone, our goal was to map out the main dimensions of state expansion and its effect on warfare as practiced by indigenous peoples, and to that end the xii FERGUSON AND WHITEHEAD PREFACE TO THE SECOND PRINTING xii concept of the "tribal zone" was advanced. As we indicated in our intro­ A tribal zone perspective has been accepted by, or has directly influ­ ductory essay, "The Violent Edge of Empire," a tribal zone is that physical enced, theoretically diverse students of war, including those working or and conceptual space that radiates out from the borders of the intrusive contemporary "ethnic conflict"-a subject to be discusse'd belo\\ state system. This zone beyond the state's immediate control has a (Abbink 1993; Besteman 1996; Fukui and Markakis 1994:2-3; Hall et al dynamic effect on developments within the colonial enclave and pro­ 1996; Hoskins 1996:3; Knauft 1992:400; Peregrine 1996:493; Sponse: foundly influences the social and cultural life of the independent peoples 1997:621; Tainter 1998:185-88; Van der Dannen 1995:94, 495; cf within its scope. Otterbein 1994:213-17, 1997:266-68; and see special issue 0: The term "tribal" was chosen to express the very particular effects on Ethnohistory 46:4, Warfare and Violence in Ethnohistorical Perspective) social structures and cultural proclivities that this kind of proximity to a Some authors (Bamforth 1994:95-97; Shankman 1991:299-300) haw colonizing state appears regularly to induce. Interestingly, but at that challenged jeffrey Blick's (1988:654-55) categorical distinction betweer moment unknown to the editors, research in the field of colonial litera­ traditional patterns of restricted feuding driven by revenge, and a post· ture and history by Mary Louise Pratt (1992) had resulted in a similar contact pattern of genocidal killing motivated by new economic goals-, notion-that of the "contact zone"-to describe the transcultural recon­ distinction we too would dispute, but not without recognizing th€ struction of indigenous and colonial ideas and practices in that ambigu­ importance of Blick's general argument to developing the perspective 0: ous space that lies at the margins and borders of direct political control War in the Tribal Zone. by the metropolitan states. Since then there has been an increasing recog­ On the other hand, Lawrence Keeley (1995) bases his trade book, Wal nition that the nature of borders and boundaries in such contexts is before Civilization, on the premise that scholars such as ourselves an highly permeable, constantly breached and put into question by the blinded to reality by political correctness and that we maintain that nc symbiotic and mimetic processes that belie the colonial discourse of dif­ war existed before the Europeans arrived on the scene. Napoleor ference and distinction (Taussig 1995; Whitehead 1997a, 1997b). In Chagnon's (1996:207) response to documentation that Yanomami war· addressing these issues, War in the Tribal Zone also represents a bridge fare is related to Western contact (Ferguson, this volume, 1995) has beer between humanistic and social scientific approaches to violence and to compare the idea to the film "The Gods Must Be Crazy," in whid warfare. "Bushman" society is disrupted by a bottle tossed out of a passing air· As summarized in the volume Introduction, material circumstances, plane: just "substitute the words 'machete' or 'steel tool' for 'Coke bottle." patterned social interactions, and structured ways of thinking are in count­ Psycholinguist and evolutionary psychology popularizer Steven Pinkel less ways disrupted and recast by this process of culture contact. In most echoes this view, dismissing the idea that war was intensified by Westerr cases, the direct and indirect result of this was to worsen levels of collective contact as "romantic nonsense" (Pinker 1997:509). violence among indigenous peoples. Whereas imperialists have longjusti­ fied their mission as bringing peace to bloody savages, prior to any pacifi­ THE TRIBAL ZONE PERSPECTIVE AND THE cation the expansionist impact was quite the opposite, and the heightened ANTHROPOLOGY OF WAR violence the encounter produced has distorted the image of tribal peoples As we discussed in the Introduction to this volume, bringing history intc for centuries. Contrary to the straw man position a few critics set up to the analysis does not rule out, but may enhance, efforts to link war to var· attack (e.g., Keeley 1996:20; and see below), we never suggested that war ious aspects of social and cultural life such as ecology, social organization among nonstate peoples was nonexistent or benign until the arrival of the politicS, and cosmology.