Saturday, November 15, 2008

The New Indian Mythology: Part II

Myth #2 - Indian warfare consisted of counting coup, period.

So sez my niece, who is taking a Native Studies class at the U of S. Yeah right. Poor girl never would have known she was being fed a pile of bullshit by her "prof" if I hadn't blown my stack during the conversation I had with her. See part 1 here. But how many innocent and wide-eyed young 20-somethings swallow this bullshit lock stock and barrel, without knowing that they are being indoctrinated, not educated? If the growth of the Indian Industry over the past forty years is any indication, their numbers are legion by now. Most go on to graduate never knowing what a crock they have been fed.

So what is the truth? First of all, in its formative years, and to its credit, the Indian Industry quite rightly took great pains to condemn the all too common assumption that all North American Indians were the same and the prototypical Plains Indian wearing the feathered head dress whooping down on the hapless settler with a hail of arrows shot from primitive bows was the standard. No, the nascent Industry rightly said. On so many levels that was an ignorant stereotype promoted, to its great shame, by Hollywood.

But please, that was darn near 40 years ago that that point was made. Will you now examine your own stereotypes and hold them up to the same glare of scholarly research, fer chris sake!! Or is scholarly research such a foreign and risky proposition that, unlike the courageous Indian warrior, you dare not go near it for fear of discrediting your industry?

Every scholarly account of the "counting coup" phenomena clearly shows that it was a Plains Indian cultural practice. It was not universal, and as my previous entry, The New Indian Mythology: Part 1 shows, blood, gore and killing were part and parcel of Indian warfare elsewhere, just as much as counting coup was a common, but by no means only, feature of plains Indian warfare. Capturing and enslaving the enemy, and what we would today call terrorism, was also a common practice in many parts of pre-contact North American warfare. Killing in wars and revenge killing were part and parcel of a Warrior Society's duties.

But the most cogent points to be made about counting coup need further elaboration than just that. Quotes from these articles on the topic, brief and to the point, make clear why counting coup was a source of such great prestige. (Emphasis added.)

From the first article:
"Any blow struck against the enemy counted as a coup, but the most prestigious acts included touching an enemy warrior, with the hand or with a coup stick, then escaping unharmed. Counting coup could also involve stealing from the enemy. Risk of injury or death was required to count coup."
From the second:
"Risk of injury or death was involved, should the other warrior respond violently."
So Miss Native Studies expert-paid-with-my-tax-dollars-to-indoctrinate-my-niece, how could counting coup be such a great source of prestige, without taking into account the great "risk" involved in pulling it off? In that respect, it was no different than any other form of warfare. Without the invariably very great risk of death and injury that is inherent in any war at any time in any culture, counting coup would count for nothing. Got it?

It was a source of prestige because the warrior managed to get extremely close to the enemy and escape without getting killed, ergo, getting killed was the norm. The man who had been touched and let the coup counter get away was shamed, as any great warrior would not have allowed that to happen. Being able to get that close and escape unscathed was the great exception, hence, its prestige.

No. The coup counter always lives to tell the tale around the camp fire. (Another manifestation of counting coup, by the way, was the "recounting" of the episode to the folks back home during storytelling time and inspiring other young warriors to bravery in the face of the enemy, which itself was another source of prestige.)

It's really not that hard to understand. What is hard to understand, is why the myth is so persistent. Well, no. I guess it isn't that hard to understand. It's the wages of political correctness, pure and simple.

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