We know that during De Soto's travels they were rather warlike with each other and De Soto had no problem exploiting the past issues between the "kingdoms" of the southeast. The Arawak peoples of the Caribbean region and the Calusa of Florida (both coastal people who never heavily relied on agriculture and never took up "Mississippian" ways) were well known among the natives for their skills at "inter-tribal" warfare prior to contact with the Spanish. The simple fact that many of the kingdoms that De Soto encountered had palisades (there is only one reason for them, defense) tells you warfare was common. Most cultural collapses have a very common thread, that is warfare with neighbors. I would assume that was going on by the end of the 15th Century with the natives of the southeast with the deterioration of the Mississippian culture. With the rise of agriculture in all societies warfare followed simply because there was always a village, town or city state that occupied better agricultural lands than some of their neighbors and there was always a struggle for said lands. We know the Mesoamerican peoples' cultures revolved around warfare, the largest Empire at the time, the Aztecs rose to their apex due to warfare with other natives and had a religious system that relied upon warfare. Most scholars believe that the Mississippian Culture was influenced, and in part, inspired by the Mesoamerican cultures and much of the evidence backs that theory up so it would only stand to reason that warfare played an important part. We know the Mississippian peoples had a rather rigid caste system and with caste systems typically warriors hold an important place. Also there are many pre-Columbian artifacts that would only be used in warfare with no other practical purpose. Heck, the Anastasi of the southwest, a culture that collapsed due to the mini ice age mentioned in my other response, built their towns with defense in mind similar to the very early towns of Anatolia which are considered some of the oldest towns in the world. De Soto found slaves in pretty much every Indian Kingdom he encountered and they were often who he used for interpreters and the only way those slaves would have existed would be they were captured from competing kingdoms. Oh yeah, we know through archeological evidence that many Mississippian City States had palisades for defense during the height of that culture prior to any collapse, Cahokia had palisades and they were the apex of the Mississippian Culture...once again, there is only one reason for palisades, military defense. So yeah, warfare was common in the southeast long before Columbus sailed the sea so blue, and even the Norse commented on the natives and their love of war almost 500 years before Columbus. BTW Europeans often used the term Savage for those who had not adopted Christianity and had nothing to do with a "savage" disposition as we think of it.
When Lawson went through what are now the Carolinas in 1700, he described often traveling 20 miles in a day, and encountering people that afternoon who spoke a totally different language from the ones they stayed with last night.
Yeah, even Benjamin Hawkins wrote about the numerous languages and dialects spoken by members of the Creek Confederacy and the confusion it caused at times at the main councils when they were called. Oddly enough by the time the US was born, one of the most influential members of the Creek Confederacy, Alexander McGillivray, needed an interpreter to speak at most councils because he could barely speak any native dialect. For whatever reason, modern Americans want everything to fit nicely in a box and want the natives of the southeast to be homogeneous. We have some false sense of romance when we talk about native Americans, especially those of us in the southeast. We somehow have a longing for a Utopia that never existed and somehow have attempted to put our southeast natives above the jealousies, the hatreds, the desires and prejudices of Europeans. Even one of the most famous native American remains, the Kennewick Man, a late Paleo-Indian had a spear point embedded in his hip and ribs broker by blunt force from which he recovered from. This showed violence among the natives prior to the advent of agriculture in the Western Hemisphere. The brutality of the Aztecs would make Rome's excesses under Nero pale in comparison, in reality the natives of the Americas were just as brutal, war like and desirous as the Medieval Europeans that first made contact with them. The only difference was they could not compete with the late 15th and early 16th Century technology and then the numbers of the Europeans and later the Americans. I am one of those rare people who do not hold some romantic notion of our natives and believe if they could have done to us what we did to them, they would have. The only thing that kept them from doing that with the early English in Virginia and then in Plymouth and the Dutch in New York was their desire for our manufactured goods they could not reproduce. By the time the realized what was happening, it was too late. I did not mention the Spanish in Florida simply because by the time St. Augustine was settled, most of the natives in Florida were in their twilight and largely gone. The French were a different story and they never tried to take land from the natives and only sought trade with them for the most part.
Cahokia which was abandoned completely around 1350, had defensive palisades. Like I mentioned earlier, Kennewick Man, a native from the late paleo period had numerous injuries from fighting other people, not the least of which was a spear point embedded in his hip. Warfare is the one constant conditions of our species, archeology and history show us that. Even one of our closest genetic relatives, the Chimps are known to practice a form of warfare against neighboring groups. Warfare often has desire at its root, someone wants something someone else has.....this has also led to the desire to be in control, it is the human natural state.
I understand what you are saying and believe it to be true. Like I said, I know they were at war with each other. But it doesn't change the fact that they were painted as being "Natives" or "Savages" by fighting with the things that made them fight the White man.
Interesting. They wouldn't have been the only culture in history to base power off controlling the food supply. The Japanese used the measure of rice to feed one person for one year called a Koku to determine wealth and power. A regional chief had to have influence over a certain amount of Koku to be considered a lord.
I've read a lot about the beginnings of corn and it's importance. Including Nixtamalization which made it even more valuable. I find that interesting that a ear of corn used to be about the size of other grass grains. I can see them engineering it bigger for food but did they know soaking it in lye would make it more nutritious?
Yeah, civilization was born through the control of food and with it warfare always followed, this is true anywhere in the world. Conquest was often necessary to impose order. By this I mean you needed to conquer your neighbors so they would not attempt to take your food, goods and land that all came about due to being settled. Through conquest kingdoms/empires arose, kind of like a dog chasing its tail, because your neighbors attempted the same thing and the balance of power always shifted at some point in time.....one always leads to the other and then you throw organized religion into the mix......which is said to be the cement that holds civilization together, you get the story of man kind, the world over. This cycle played out in the Americas too, in some places on a much smaller scale but in other places on a scale near as large as Europe. The Aztecs were as large as most contemporary European societies as were the Teotihuacans who subjugated the lowland Mayans in the 4th century.
The cultivation of corn led to the rise of the earliest Mesoamerican civilizations, the Zapotec which conquered much of Oaxaca and ruled much of southern Mexico until they were conquered by the Teotihuacans. Archeologist found that as soon as corn was domesticated and those that domesticated it settled down, they were immediately set upon by their less sophisticated neighbors who wanted what they had. They attempted to steal the fields of the early agriculturalist which led these small family groupings to forming villages, and then those villages over time forming towns and eventually to the formation of the first Mesoamerican city....Monte Albán, which was a mountain top fortress. These communities were formed for mutual defense, or so the archeologist say. This "corn culture" worked its way into North America and eventually to the southeastern US. With corn and agriculture came the need for mutual defense...etc....etc....
