Warfare and Captive-Taking across the Colonial Divide

Colonial engagements in Africa and the Americas transformed the social landscape of these places and warfare and captive-taking were a significant part of this process.  However, warfare and enslavement were not introduced by Europeans, but were activities of long-standing in both Africa and the Americas.   Warfare among the many non-state societies in Africa and the Americas prior to European contact was undertaken in part to obtain captives.   But unlike the millions of young male captives acquired by Europeans for work on American plantations, indigenous warfare generally targeted young women and children who were incorporated into captor society in a variety of social locations ranging from slave to wife.  In fact some indigenous raids or wars were undertaken specifically for the purpose of obtaining wives for young male warriors.

This paper is explicitly comparative and approached from the intellectual framework of anthropology.  It will, however, use historic, ethnohistoric, ethnographic, as well as archaeological accounts from Africa and North and South America to explore the nature of warfare and captive-taking among indigenous groups in these areas in pre-colonial and colonial times.   First, the nature of warfare and captive-taking prior to the colonial era will be discussed, followed by an assessment of the effects of colonial encounters on these practices.   The paper will specifically highlight the role of captives in indigenous societies, in contrast to that of captives/slaves in European societies.   The social boundaries that captives faced in indigenous societies were quite different than the strict social and racial boundaries developed by European-Americans.  Furthermore, because of differences in gender and age of indigenous captives in comparison to captives in Euro-American society, knowledge transfer from captive to captor society was different, although no less potent.