The fundamental question of survival forces any society to maximize its institutional skills and energies in the presence of war and peace situations. Scholars diverge widely in their views about how skilfully American Indian societies in the northeast woodland cultural area defended their societal and territorial interests. A large number of the most thoroughly informed first- hand observers of Indian life in the eighteenth century believed that the Indians were relatively sophisticated in military matters. Some of these observers linked this military expertise with an emphasis on a private/public war-making distinction in which two entirely different types of warring took place. The terrorist-type action needs to be distinguished from the large- scale public armies whose appearance always seemed to surprise most colonial military. Tactically and strategically the two types of war differed immensely. The formal use of councils to control public war constituted the characteristic political difference between the two types of war; however, many primary and scholarly sources that challenge the very possibility of large-scale Indian military organizations following council directives can be readily adduced. Only the acceptance of the general outlines of a model of societal relations founded on recent, viable stateless societies can begin to explain both the apparent administrative anomalies of Indian woodland war and its wide success.