On the other hand noted academic, scholar and polymath Bruce Dickinson asserts that the only good Injuns are tame, although I hasten to add he might have been quoting as-of-yet anonymous sources. I tried to prod him further on the subject but he couldn’t be reached, having run to the hills some time prior to the publication of his work (indeed he alluded to such a plan in the opus itself).
I’m afraid you’re not going to get much of an answer now - Prof. Dickinson passed away with his boots on some time ago, at two minutes to midnight. He asked for no prayer for the dying, noting that only the good die young.
I suspect one would most fruitfully look at the advanced civilizations of Mexico and Central and South America. Along with the Mesoamerican ball game, some sort of martial art would not be at all surprising.
I’m happy to annouce that you are mistaken in your claim of Professor Dickinson’s demise; my friend Charlotte told me she saw him alive and well just last night.
Just a quibble, pre-contact American cultures were not necessarily subsistence cultures. There were many large towns, cities, groups, empires. However, I agree that there must have been “real war” with mass killing–we know there was from the cultures for which we have some kind of records (the Inca, the Maya), and we can infer that conflict between large organized societies such as those along the Mississippi was more likely to look like “war” than ad-hoc raiding, perhaps partly ceremonial, of small bands.