So also did the Iroquois people and the southern Algonkin tribes, in the form of "wampum".

The principal articles of barter were skins of fur animals, porcupine quills, dogs, slaves, and women.
First Hunting (to supply food), then Trading in the products of the chase, and lastly War were the main subjects which occupied the Amerindian's thoughts before the middle of the nineteenth century.
They usually went to war to turn other tribes out of profitable hunting grounds or productive fisheries; or because they wanted slaves or more wives; or because a chief or a medicine man had a dream; or because some other notability felt he had given way too much to tears over some personal or public sorrow, and must show his manliness by killing the people of another tribe.

In their wars they knew no mercy when their blood was up, and frequently perpetrated frightful cruelties for the sheer pleasure of seeing human suffering.

Yet these devilish moods would alternate with fits of sentimentality.

A man or a woman would suddenly take a war prisoner, or a person who was wounded or half-tortured to death, under their protection, and a short time afterwards the whole war party would be greeting this rescued wretch (usually a man--they were far more pitiless towards women) as brother, son, or friend, and even become quite maudlin over a scratch or a bruise; whereas an hour or so before they were on the point of disembowelling, or of driving splinters up the nails and setting them on fire.