Comparisons of Warriors and Real-World Violence among Tribal Socities

Erin Hunter's Warriors has some comparisons to real world tribal societies. For example, the source of much conflict among the Clans in the Warriors series is caused by border disputes/or trespasses of territory between rival clans. Several tribal societies like various aboriginal bands in Australia, have conflicts over border disputes. In Warriors most incidents are one cat intrudes the territory of another clan, the warriors from the other clan will often escort the intruder out of their territory. The Australian Aborigines will often just kill the intruder [Otterbein 1996], with in retaliation the intruder's family will have a counter raid on the victim's murder's tribe (more on that latter). However, one key difference between the Warriors clans and the real world Tribal Cultures is the lack of feuding among the Warrior Clans. Fueding in real life is almost an epidemic in many extremely diverse cultures such as the Jivaro, various Papua New Guinea tribes [Keeley 1997], the Montenegrins [Boehm 1985], the Pashutans [Boot 2013], Tawianese Aborigines [Heath 1998] and among many other tribes. One Pashutan mentioned that "I killed 9 Taijks [they were of the same family] because they insulted my wife. I only lost my brother to them" as the man continued to boast. This attitude reflects the blood feuds in those tribes. To give a more clear example of those feuds, lets just say a tribesman#1 from village A kills tribesman#2, another man from village B just because he insulted him. Tribesman#3, the victim's brother, seeking vengeance kills tribesman#2's killer. Tribesman#1's son, tribesman#4 also seeking vengeance kills tribesman#3. This leads to murder and counter murder that leads to the destruction of many tribal groups, they as in the words of Edegerton's work "Sick Societies", maladaptive societies doomed to self destruction. Another unique think thing about the Warriors societies, is that male and female cats virtually have the same role in their culture. Both male and female cats share combat roles and leadership roles. Most real-world tribal cultures like that of the Yanomami are quite misogynist, and often have feuds based of abduction of women. In the Yanomami tribe, wives are often beaten and abused by their husbands. Another misogynist tribe is the Tasmanian Aborigines. The Tasmanians often force their wives into dangerous tasks like hunting and gathering, trade them for dogs with the Europeans, force them to abduct over women, beat them etc. [Edegerton 1992]. Genocidal attacks on rival clan in the warriors series is extremely rare (it only happened once in the series when Shadowclan under Brookenstar's regime attacked Windclan and displaced them), when in several Papua New Guinea and Polynesian chiefdoms have been known to have genocidal massacres of rival tribes, indiscriminately killing men, women and children [Keeley 1997, Clunie 2003, Diamond 1997, Davie 2012]. So all in all, Warriors is much sugarcoated version of real-world non-state societies.