Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter One To Drink of Death: Tukup's Headhunter Autobiography and the Characteristics of Tribal- Warrior Autobiography
- Chapter Two The Kinds of Street-Gang Autobiography
- Chapter Three The Bubble Reputation: Honor, Glory and Status among the Warriors
- Chapter Four Glory Manifest: Coup Tales, Warrior Boasts and Gangsta Rap
- Chapter Five Brutal Honesty
- Chapter Six The Education of the Warrior
- Chapter Seven The Warrior Choice
- Chapter Eight Mona Ruiz's Two Badges: Women Warriors and Warriors’ Women
- Chapter Nine Sam Blowsnake and the Unfortunate Pottawatomie
- Chapter Ten The Gangbanger Autobiography of Monster Kody (AKA Sanyika Shakur)
- Chapter Eleven Battle, Raid and Stratagem
- Chapter Twelve Berserks and the Tragedy of Warrior Individualism
- Appendix A On Circumcision
- Appendix B A List of All the Tribal Peoples and Street Gangs Mentioned in This Book
- Annotated Bibliography
- Works Cited
- Index
Chapter Eleven - Battle, Raid and Stratagem
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 June 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter One To Drink of Death: Tukup's Headhunter Autobiography and the Characteristics of Tribal- Warrior Autobiography
- Chapter Two The Kinds of Street-Gang Autobiography
- Chapter Three The Bubble Reputation: Honor, Glory and Status among the Warriors
- Chapter Four Glory Manifest: Coup Tales, Warrior Boasts and Gangsta Rap
- Chapter Five Brutal Honesty
- Chapter Six The Education of the Warrior
- Chapter Seven The Warrior Choice
- Chapter Eight Mona Ruiz's Two Badges: Women Warriors and Warriors’ Women
- Chapter Nine Sam Blowsnake and the Unfortunate Pottawatomie
- Chapter Ten The Gangbanger Autobiography of Monster Kody (AKA Sanyika Shakur)
- Chapter Eleven Battle, Raid and Stratagem
- Chapter Twelve Berserks and the Tragedy of Warrior Individualism
- Appendix A On Circumcision
- Appendix B A List of All the Tribal Peoples and Street Gangs Mentioned in This Book
- Annotated Bibliography
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
We come away from the Iliad with a vivid sense of the battles fought there on the plains of Troy. We see warriors dying in battle after battle. On one day we see Diomedes sweeping all before him. Hektor has his day. When Achilles returns to the fight, he kills Trojans in shoals. Homer describes all this in such detail as to compel belief. But in fact, when tribe faced tribe in set battles, the body count was seldom high. The battle we see in the film Dead Birds is closer to the tribal norm: we see the warriors of two tribes facing each other on a grassy field. They meet each other in ragged lines. As the battle begins, one side surges forward, as the other side moves back. After fifty feet or so, the surge— we cannot call it a charge— begins to weaken, like surf spending itself on beach sands. Spears are more often brandished than thrown. Once a warrior has cast his spear, after all, he has lost his favorite weapon. An arrow shot is an arrow lost. Arrows and spears are personal property— and they take a long time to make. And to approach close enough to throw a spear or loose an arrow is to come within range of the enemy's spears and arrows.
The typical tribal battle is remarkably like the battles of Hamadryas baboons described by the ethologist Hans Kummer:
Fights between bands usually break out in the evening when a band that does not ordinarily sleep at a particular cliff suddenly appears there […. On one such occasion] at White Rock at about five- thirty in the evening, the rather small cliff was overflowing with both resident and foreign baboons […]. A little before six o'clock […] two males began to fight, and soon there were three […. Then] screams […] began to be heard everywhere […]. More and more baboons threw themselves into the tumult […] they would chase one another with mantle hair standing on end and mouth wide open, or they would whirl in a circle, holding one another and fencing with their mouths. The noise was deafening.
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- Street-Gang and Tribal-Warrior Autobiographies , pp. 139 - 156Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2018