StressFree: Okay, now you've engaged me a bit more here as I see that I should respond to you more fairly Kansan because I did leave out some key points in relation to your assessment.
Tribes warred and fought in this hemisphere but even in this respect they were different. Their value system also reached into their warfare...they had flowing boundaries. They existed for thousands of years in that state and did not have a record of leaders who attempted or were successful in conquering massive areas of the continent. The Iroquois never had Iroquoian legions that invaded all of North America to establish themselves as rulers. The Sioux had no leaders equivalent to Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler or Alexander, who wept because he thought he had no more lands to conquer.
Tribes in North America did not fight over what would be regarded as a mystery.
Among the Indians, tribal warfare was on a much smaller scale and of much shorter duration. Military weaponry among the North American tribes did not evolve or change toward increased killing efficiency because mass destruction was not their main interest. They had no need to evolve beyond the bow or the spear. The Euro-American mind became very inventive for better performing weapons of unimaginaable destruction.
I believe spirituality was the Native Americans' primary and highest focus. Not materialism as wee see today.
Spirituality was very important on an
individual basis, not necessarily so on a 'national' one. Please don't tell me that materialism wasn't part of the culture. Any man worth his salt who couldn't gift a prospective 'father-in-law' with enough horses, hides and/or other gifts to please him would never marry. Tell a Lakota warrior with the biggest horse herd in the nation that he didn't need all those horses to be successful because his ultimate goal was spirituality and he'd laugh at you and take your hair - and then your horse.
At the same time, depending upon the tribe, it wasn't uncommon for someone to gift himself into poverty. You'd think that someone else would immediately step forward and see that they wouldn't then starve, but I assure you that this was not the case.
There are alot of points we could argue and I'm sure that some of it would be 'give and take' but frankly, I'd rather watch T.V. with my lovely wife, since I'll be leaving out at 5:00 a.m.
If you're really interested though, I could suggest some books - written by the people who were there - that might further your understanding a bit. If you'd REALLY like to learn, I could give you the address of the man (Grandfather Ugly) who walked me through my first vision quest and then saw to it that I was inducted into the War Eagle Society...
Later...
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