Iroquois of upper New York

“The connection between war and mourning rested on beliefs about the spiritual power that animated all things. Because an individual’s death diminished the collective power of a lineage, clan, and village, Iroquois families conducted ‘Requickening’ ceremonies in which the deceased’s name, and with it the social role and duties it represented, was transferred to a successor… In Requickenings, people of high status were usually replaced from within the lineage, clan, or village, but at some point lower in the social scale an external source of surrogates inevitably became necessary. Here warfare made its contribution, for those adopted ‘to help strengthen the familye in lew of their deceased Friend’ were often captives taken in battle…

“But if the grief of the bereaved remained unassuaged, women of the mourning household could demand the ultimate socially sanctioned release for their violent impulses: a raid to seek captives, who, it was hoped, would ease their pain… Such large-scale campaigns seem frequently to have culminated in carefully planned, relatively bloodless, largely ceremonial confrontations between massed forces protected by wooden body armor and bedecked in elaborate headdresses… When the victors returned home, village leaders apportioned the prisoners to grieving lineages, whose elder women then chose either to adopt or to execute them.”

Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 32–33, 35.