North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence

North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence. Edited by Richard J. Chacon and Ruben G. Mendoza. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8165-2532-4. Photographs. Figures. References. Index. Pp. ix, 283. $50.00.

This book is an important contribution to the study of Native American warfare. It is the first volume of a collection of papers presented at a symposium at the 2003 American Anthropological Association meeting in Chicago. It is published simultaneously with a separate volume that discusses indigenous warfare and ritual violence in Latin America.

The papers presented here effectively dispel the myths that native societies in North America coexisted peacefully before the arrival of the Europeans and that native warfare was uncommon and relatively bloodless. The contributors to this volume show that warfare and ritual...