fight to annihilate.^25 Native Americans also became well known as linguists,
often speaking two European languages (French, English, Dutch, Russian, or
Spanish) and at least two American Indian languages. English colonists
sometimes used Natives as interpreters when dealing with the Spanish or
French, not just with other Native American nations.
These developments were not all matters of happy economics and voluntary
syncretic cultural transformation, however. Natives were operating under a
military and cultural threat, and they knew it. They quickly deduced that
European guns were more efficient than their bows and arrows. Europeans
soon realized that trade goods could be used to win and maintain political
alliances with American Indian nations. To deal with the new threat and
because whites “demanded institutions reflective of their own with which to
relate,” many Native groups strengthened their tribal governments.^26 Chiefs
acquired power they had never had before. These governments often ruled
unprecedentedly broad areas, because the heightened warfare and the plagues
had wiped out smaller tribes or caused them to merge with larger ones for
protection. Large nations became ethnic melting pots, taking in whites and
blacks as well as other Indians. New confederations and nations developed,
such as the Creeks, Seminoles, and Lumbees.^27 The tribes also became more
male-dominated, in imitation of Europeans or because of the expanded
importance of war skills in their cultures.^28
Tribes that were closest to the Europeans got guns first, guns that could be
trained on interior peoples who had not yet acquired any. Suddenly some
nations had a great military advantage over others. The result was an
escalation of Indian warfare. Native nations had engaged in conflict before
Europeans came, of course. Tribes rarely fought to the finish, however. Some
tribes did not want to take over the lands belonging to other nations, partly
because each had its own sacred sites. For a nation to exterminate its
neighbors was difficult anyway, since all enjoyed roughly the same level of
military technology. Now all this changed. European powers deliberately
increased the level of warfare by playing one Native nation off another. The
Spanish, for example, used a divide-and-conquer strategy to defeat the Aztecs
in Mexico. In Scotland and Ireland, the English had played tribes against one
another to extend British rule. Now they did the same in North America.^29