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Show i9oo] INDIAN INDUSTRIES attention was given to the decoration of these shields, the designs being symbolic and of a deep religious significance to the owners. Other defensive armor was practically confined to the Pacific coast and the plateaus, where a cuirass of wooden slats or sticks was the means of protection. Thick hide was also used in some places. Military art can hardly be said to have existed. Besides the natural advantages of land formations, fortifications consisted only of stockades, or occasionally of a rampart of earth reinforced by a ditch. Campaigns were little more than sudden raids carried out by small bodies of warriors brought together for the particular occasion. Surprises and ambuscades were the limit of the Indian devices. Massacre without mercy was the rule, though prisoners were sometimes taken, and either put to death at some later time or adopted into the tribe of the captors, or made slaves, as the case might be. Adoption following capture was much more common among the tribes of the eastern woodlands than in other parts of the continent; and slavery, as has been shown, was more prevalent in the extreme west than elsewhere. Torture of prisoners was afeo more common in the east, but even there was not as general as is popularly supposed. Selected individuals were taken for the purpose, and there was usually a religious motive behind the practice. It was also a custom in many tribes to eat the flesh of one of the victims |
