Aggressors may organize armed attacks on the settlements of an Indigenous people for the purpose of looting, seizing material valuables, driving off livestock, and taking civilians captive. This practice depletes the demographic and economic potential of the colonized society, deprives people of the resources needed for survival, and creates a zone of constant physical threat around the metropole's installations.
The government of the Tsardom of Muscovy organized attacks on the territories of the Nokhchi for the mass capture of prisoners and booty: historian Ya. Z. Akhmadov states that in 1718 there took place a "predatory expedition of detachments of Don Cossacks and Kabardian princes allied with Peter I into the 'Chechen uezd' along the Sunzha and the Argun"[1], as a result of which "800 prisoners were captured, not counting 'belongings'"[1], and in 1721 the Astrakhan governor A. P. Volynsky "invited the Don Cossacks and, together with the Terek Cossacks, organized raids to the Agrakhan and Aksai rivers against the Kumyks and Chechens"[1].