In societies that experienced frequent armed conflict with neighboring groups, a warrior ethos usually developed among men, and the transition phase often included a requirement to undergo physical pain, including body piercings or circumcision, to test and then publicly validate one’s manhood. In many Indigenous North American societies, such as the Blackfoot in the Great Plains, the transition phase involved a vision quest in which the boy had to go out alone to a sacred site, chosen by the elders, where he fasted for four days while praying to the spirits for a vision or revelation of his
...more
