Do Native American Combat systems still exist?

T

Thrawn

Joined
Apr 24, 1999
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I know this is probably the wrong forum, but in the Tactics and training forum, this doesn't really fit.

Anyway, I was just wondering if any of you knew if any of the combat (hand to hand and weapon) systems of any Native American people have been preserved. The reason why I ask is b/c these days, people like James Keating have helped to revive interest in lesser-known methods of fighting (i.e., the ABC series and Keating's growing interest/expertise in Bowie methods) as have others (see James Loriega's article on Navajas in Tactical Knives). So now, not only is there FMA, there's a Bowie/American knifefighting crowd and a similarly growing European knifefighting crowd out there, too. What about how the Native Americans? You know, I always think about the Last of the Mohicans when I think about this topic. i think of Magua standing there w/ his Tomahawk and knife in a shifting crossguard, or Chingachkook (I know, I butchered the guy's name) w/ his gunstock hatchet getting ready to beat Magua's ass. Pick any of the fight scenes in there. If you watch the way Magua shifts around, you have to wonder (even though the guy's an actor) who trained them to move like that and how to hold their weapons and even fake like they knew how to use them? Sure, you could probably get some FMA guy or a CQC consultant to do it, but that's besides the point. The Native Americans didn't figure out how to fight w/ a tomahawk and a knife simlultaneously by watching Comtech videos, they had to base their martial arts off of something, and that would mean a generational evolution and passing down of those arts, presumably to be overshadowed in the future by the advent of the firearm.

So my question is, where can I find stuff aobut Native American combative systems? It doesn't have to anything instructional, I just wanna know what they did and possibly still do. I want to know how knife oriented and weapon oriented the more warlike tribes were in their combative systems. It's just interesting to me, that's all. I figure if we're going to be bringing back medieval/Renaissance combat methods and the knifefighting methods of the Old West, we should also take a good look at why some Native American tribes were such a pain in the ass to settlers and the expansionists when it came time for CQC and general combat, but mainly CQC. Any historical commentaries or first person accounts of a soldier's impression of how battles (I know, I'd be hard-pressed to find an un-biased one) went might be interesting, too.
 
From what I have been able to learn the real American indians in the Old West carried knives but were not particularly skillfull knife fighters. They usually lost to whites using Bowie knives.

I think that there are two surviving American 'martial arts" from the last century.
One is the right foot forward knife fighting style using a Bowie knife in the right hand.
The other would be the drawing and firing of an effective caliber hndgun from a holster and rapidlt hitting man-size targets at relatively short ranges.
 
I've always wondered about this (especialy after seeing 'The Last of the Mohicans), but I doubt there is any documeted evedence out there. I'm sure somebody will emurge eventualy and at least CLAIM to teach an authentic Native American art. Maybe this could be Loriega's next book
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Originally posted by Clip Poimt:
From what I have been able to learn the real American indians in the Old West carried knives but were not particularly skillfull knife fighters. They usually lost to whites using Bowie knives.
Um ... does the concept of reporting bias mean anything to you? Let's see ... out of the knife fights between natives and wasichu that were reported by the wasichu ... the wasichu usually won? Sheesh ... there's a random sampling for you ... I wonder what the percentage was ... if much less than 100% wins for the wasichu side, some of those reports must have been made via ouija board.

When you talk about "Indians" you're talking about hundreds of very different cultures on two continents ... it's kind of like asking what was the Eurasian system of knife-fighting. Some tribes were warlike and did a lot of training, and there are still members of some tribes living in the old ways, who don't speak English and don't leave the reservation -- but if they're practicing traditional martial arts they're not likely to share them with anybody outside the tribe. Anybody who does appear on the scene selling a native martial art is most likely to be a complete phony; some of the phony ninjas are diversifying currently....

I've read a little about Apache training, but whether it was accurate or not I don't know. If it was accurate it would be unlikely to be similar to any other tribe's style, unless it were a tribe that had fought with the Apache.

One thing that sticks in my mind from that reading was sparring with sticks that had a red dye smeared on them to show hits. According to the book when Geronimo was a teenager he painted his whole body red so the hits didn't show ... seems unlikely that would be allowed, but that was what the book said.

-Cougar :{)
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
I want to apologize for the tone of that ... there are a great many books around that say "Indians" didn't know anything about scientific knife fighting (or boxing), didn't even know how to grip a knife "properly" ... can't blame people for repeating what they've read, especially when they're read it over and over in every book that mentions the subject.

We may never know how many times it was said around the campfire, "Wasichu don't know anything about knife-fighting ... they're okay with guns at a distance but once you get close to them they have no fighting skills at all ... let me tell you some of my experiences fighting them...." Those experiences didn't get written down in books.

-Cougar :{)
 
If you're willing to look further South, check out http://www.yaomachtia.com

However, I've never heard anyone discuss their stuff.

BTW, the Berserkertec knives look to have influences from Busse and Laci Szabo.
 
Thanks, guys, for the site info. I know there are many, many tribes, and thus, many, many styles. But as it's a general question, I figured ANY info would be helpful. Yeah, I doubt that the Native Americans were pretty proficient at knife fighting, despite biased accounts. You'd think, even from an anthropological perspective, a knife would be an everyday part of life for Native Americans, not so much a weapon, but as a tool. Therefore, its constant companionship would lead to its logical use as a weapon in combat. That leads to training, which leads to martial arts styles, equally affected by combat w/ other tribes as much as working knowledge of a knife. In any case, I believe that any account stating that Native Americans (in and of itself a generality) lack expertise is either very biased or bases its opinion on a very biased sample, such as Bowie duelists who specialize in said combat, versus a young, inexperienced NA warrior. It's all relative, after all. Oh yes, I liked the site about Aztec combatives. It sounds very similar to FMA, a result of Spanish influence?
 
I have read, in an article by one of his students, that Massad Ayoob has studied Native American knife fighting but I dont recall the name of his instructor. If you contact the Lethal Force Institute I would think they would be able to provide details
 
:
Thrawn, et al:
As far as I know Cougar is exactly right.
Our people's ways were based on oral tradition and many things that were passed down still aren't shared with the yoneg or white ones.
I am of Tsalagi known as Cherokee and also Osage and possible Mvskokee or Muskogee Creek heritage.
The weapon of choce for the Tsalagi was the warclub. Later the Tomahawk took a lot of the warclubs duties since some of them could be used for tools as well.

There were and still are Warrior Societies and I can only speak a little about those.
The societies brought brave promising young men into their ranks and practised war games a bit more than the others in the tribe.

Almost every book written about Indins,( mispelled on purpose because that's the way I and most other "real" Indins say it, another term is NDN.)
is written by non-indins.
Even one of the best craft books written is by the yoneg.
The yoneg get way to technical for us Indins.
smile.gif

Consequently you get a skewed story of what actually is/was.

What is true is that youngens grew up much like the NDN people in the southern continent and learn by listening and watching their elders. Small bows and arrows, blowguns and the like aren't toys in the sense that the american public think.
They are actually used for learning the ways of the people.

One interesting thing about the Tsalagi is the blowguns that used to be made and used by my people. Good ones were made from either Honey or Black Locust saplings that grew close together which made their grain straight and relatively knot free for a good distance.
They were cut and split and using a variety of methods hollowed out and seasoned.
Many of them were similar to the s.american style in length and were as much as 16 feet long!!
The darts were almost always made from the Black Locust of which bows were also made from. The wood is very tough and hard and resilent. It can be fire hardened very effctively. The fletching is still used today on the small cane blowgun darts and is from the seed fluffs of the thistle plant.
The fluff is wrapped and tied on with a very thin flexable thread and sewing thread is used today. When wrapping it the dart is turned and the thistle down is layed on and wrapped at the same time.
I never did learn how to do it and some of the Elders make it look so very easy. Some of the ones that play with the little ones a lot can hit the Spade in the Ace of Spades at 30 feet 9 tmes out of 10 and better!!

Our knives were made from flint and other like stones in the old days and were usually pretty large to start with. Use of stone knives however careful you are usually cause chipping and they can be pretty easily wore out. Reshapening also takes a heavy toll on them.
( I have seen some western people's blades of obsidian that are about 10 to 12 inch blades and 3 to 4 inches wide.)

This will perhaps make some of you cringe, but a real good stone for chipping or knapping blades of all kinds from is the stone that the Wa$hita Hones are made from.
I believe it is called Novaculite and is found in Arkansas.
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Boy!! Some things that profanity filter filters out. You cannot spell Wa****a without asterisks.
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Some trivia and information that is true, probably more than you wanted to know.

I know of no formal martial arts training of any kind by any of the indigigneous people of this continent.

------------------
>>>>---¥vsa---->®

"Know your own bone, gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it again."

'Thoreau'

Khukuri FAQ

[This message has been edited by Yvsa (edited 03-16-2000).]
 

I took a look at
http://www.blayshalla.com

<rant>
and boy, that is EXACTLY the kind of front page that I *HATE TO HELL* -- you couldn't even scroll to the bottom to get to "ENTER"; if you tried to do that their damn Java app or whatever would actually START OVER FROM THE TOP so it takes even longer to get to the actual stuff. I almost want to cite them right away to Web Pages That Suck.
</rant>

The martial arts stuff looks pretty interesting <rant>once they finally let you get to it</rant>.
 
One of the things that caught my attention in regards to the Blays Halla stuff is their claim that their methods are based on the Viking art of battle. Which is fine, only problem is that there are no records of their exact techniques anywhere. At best it is conjecture based on the style of weapons most often used and the tales told in pieces of work. For instance, The Edda and the icelandic tales. There are no accurate and detailed descriptions of Viking battle lore, no technical manuals and I can guarantee you that there are no tiny villages in Sweden and Norway where the traditions have been preserved during the last 1000 years.
I honestly don't know, where Blays Halla got their stuff or if it is any good.
But I doubt that he got it from where he claims he got it.
I wish that it was true and that these traditions had been preserved. As a Danish national myself, I consider the Vikings to be an integral part of my heritage.
And I can sympathise with those of Amerindian heritage that wish to explore the arts of their own ancestors...Sadly, the White Man has a habit of forcing those that they conquer to adopt the White Mans ways and to forget their own ways...
Well, end of rant. I'm gonna step down from my soapbox now.

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Regards
Joshua "Kage" Calvert

"Move like Water, strike like Thunder..."
 
Well, since Blays Halla has been brought up, let's just open it up to martial arts of societies based on oral tradition in general. Yvsa, thanks for your post I was hoping to get someone of specific descent to comment on this subject. The oral tradition point is something that I hadn't really considered, seeing as how so many westerners, especially anthropologists and historians, have various (albeit biased--everything is, even the stuff done by anthro's) accounts of Native American cultures. It is, however, a very strong point when considering that that is why NA MA aren't widespread (as opposed to the Asian MA, or even Greco-Roman wrestling or Boxing). I, too, am a descendant of an indigenous peoples of the Philippines. No, not Lapu Lapu's people, for any of you historians/FMA buffs out there, but that would be cool, eh? Anyway, I would compare my ancestors to many of the South/Central American tribes and maybe some of the Pac NW (and then, only the tribes I know a LITTLE about) peoples. A mountain-based culture, they apparently had their own combative methods, but b/c of their oral tradition (I can't believe I missed that!) and suspicion of outsiders, combined w/ their constant enroachment upon their lands of occupation and culture in general, those methods have yet to be revealed or even really spoken of in any great detail.

Although disappointing from my student-oriented perspective, I find that although NA MA are being preserved in small, select groups, it is better than nothing. Better some people get passed down the knowledge than none at all. After all, that's how escrima/arnis/kali lived to their current height of popularity.
 
Hmm.

At this point, it seems as though only Blays-Halla claims to teach a Native American system, this "Nagondzog". However, all searches I have done for "nagondzog" lead back to www.blayshalla.com . Curious. I'm inclined to think that they invented it, but I'll reserve judgement.

If all else fails, Thrawn, we can start asking questions down at the res.
 
From what I've read, there wasn't any real definitive style that native americans used. Their style would vary from tribe to tribe, each one having something it liked best, or something that was taught from generation to generation. Some preferred a runnning battle on horseback to hand to hand fights, others preffered man to man on the ground.I think its more matter of the weapons that were available. Tribes from the plains, and woodlands would have much more limited resources to things like obsidian which was used to make knives, but would probably have more supplies available to make lances,bows and arrows( these could have flint heads, but smaller peices are easier to find than large chunks suitable for knives). Tribes from mountanous regions would have more access to things like obsidian and larger rocks to make clubs from, and less to wood suitable to make a bow and arrows from. Once the weapon is made theres only a certain number of ways to hold it and use it. So as long as they're limited to that group of weapons they're limited to that style of fighting.

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Fix it right the first time, use Baling Wire !
 
As best I recall, looking at native American artifacts, real weapons were war clubs/hammers, spears, and bows. In Mesoamerica they made swords of wood (palm fronds?) with obsidian chips to make a composite blade. Knife fighting probably wouldn't have become a serious activity until the advent of the metal trade knives. I've seen knives used in counting coup type sports/tests, but I don't know if they are historical.

 
Stone knives don't seem to have been used as weapons much, presumably due to brittleness, but it's hard to say for sure whether they were used as weapons or not because steel knives were adopted so fast, usually long before whites reached the area. Knives and guns were traded hundreds of miles away from the nearest white trading post ... the Plains Indians had guns a hundred years before whites knew the Plains Indians existed, and they thought the locals were stupid to demand a kind of gun that wasn't at all suited to woodland deer hunting ... they had no idea the locals were trading them to buffalo hunters....

The stone tomahawk was more of a hammer than a hatchet and they often didn't even have a rudimentary edge. They continued to be used after steel tomahawks became available, but stone knives don't seem to have been -- for any purpose.

The same applies to other stone age peoples around the world; they adopted steel knives immediately they became available.

-Cougar :{)
 
Okay, I am not even vaguely Amerind (american indian), but I wanted to be one as young man and read everything I could get my hands on. Within the limits of their time and place, most Amerind cultures were quite sophisticated. Unfortunately, they did seem to fight a lot with each other and often rites of passage involved killing someone from an 'enemy' tribe or group. I can not believe that in a warrior culture, where bravery and skill were so highly valued, that you were just handed a club or tomahawk and told 'smash the bad guy'.
Just as the majority of FMA was originally taught verbally to close family members or friends, the Amerind arts were IMHO family or tribal. Unfortunately the Amerinds ended up living in a place run by the people who stole their land and probably don't want to share it very much.
 
I think that we all “Count Coup” everyday, one way or another…

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James Segura
San Francisco, CA
 
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