Political Structure and Military Behavior in the American Indian Wars

The American Indian Wars provide unusual insight into debates about group structure and military behavior. These conflicts present a cross-section of experience with a relatively high degree of unit homogeneity; it is possible to gather information on tribes that fought as well as those that did not; scholars have recorded information about the tribes’ political and economic structures in detailed and consistent ways; and because these institutions took shape prior to military contact with U.S. and British forces, they are plausibly exogenous to the wars the tribes fought. This paper examines 167 tribes, showing how groups with more centralized political institutions were more likely to engage in political violence, to wage large-scale “wars,” to fight conflicts that were more destructive, to fight for more protracted periods, and to achieve more favorable battlefield outcomes. The results shed light on open historical debates about the American Indian Wars while speaking to broader theoretical questions about how intragroup politics affect intergroup conflict. Jeffrey A. Friedman ([email protected]) is a predoctoral research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, a graduate student associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and a Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy at Harvard University.