Intersocietal Relationships by Evolutionary Levels among North American Indians

Intersocietal Relationships by Evolutionary Levels among North American IndiansAuthor(s): John A. PriceSource: American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1983), pp. 1-20Published by: University of Nebraska PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1184684 .

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INTERSOCIETAL RELATIONSHIPS BY EVOLUTIONARY LEVELS AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS

by John A. Price

E VOLUTIONARY THEORY HAS proven to be valuable in understanding the processes of development that occur within societies. This

article extends that theory in an examination of some of the patterns related to evolutionary levels that occur between societies, with em- phasis on North American Indian situations. It examines four degrees of intersocietal integration: (1) first contacts, (2) low, (3) medium, and (4) high.

For example, the French had relationships with the Cree which ranged from (1) first contacts in the 1500s and 1600s; (2) the low integration of the early fur trade in the 1700s; (3) medium integration in the 1800s and 1900s with Catholic missionaries and schools, some intermarriage, and some use of Indians and M6tis as voyageurs in the fur trade; and (4) at present, some situations of high integration with combined French and Cree ethnicity. Since Cree is the largest Indian society in Canada, its various communities have a wide variety of relations ranging from two to four, but is predominantly of medium integration.

Where societies with a primary (primitive) heritage are integrated with states, low integrations might be characterized as colonial; medium integration as neocolonial; and high integration as ethnic. For example, the various native societies of Canada are in different degrees of integration with the Canadian nation - some in the far north are still colonial because of the relatively high level of their autonomy. Most of the natives living on reserves and in rural areas of southern Canada are in a neocolonial relationship-but even the reserves have quite a range of relationships, with some 47% of the reserves lacking access by regular roads so that travel is only by water, airplane, or rough trails through the forest. Most of those living in the urban or developed parts of the country have an ethnic relationship of high integration with the Canadian nation. Beyond high integration, there is a kind of fifth stage in which the ethnic society has become fully assimilated and ceases its separate existence, except as a memory culture. Anthropologists usually work on cultures in states 1, 2, and 3; sociologists in stage 4; and archaeologists and historians in stage 5.

The conventional terms of "band," "tribe," "chiefdom," and "state,"

I



2 AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, SPRING 1983

are used here to refer to four stages of evolution (Price, 1978; 1979). These are seen as convenient and arbitrary cuts on a continuum of systematic changes. Where there is sufficient information, it is also useful to make several evolutionary stages or use ordinal scales or mathematical formulas to express the continuum. Thus, the scales of cultural complexity developed by Kroeber (1939), Carneiro (1968), and Murdock and Provost (1973), are found to be useful in evolutionary analysis.

Kroeber's early scale used seven levels of cultural intensity, with plus and minus subgrades. To Kroeber, increases in intensity meant: (a) increases in the number of culture traits; (b) the increased specialization and systematization in the relationships of those traits; and (c) the development of certain features of cultural content- such as a precise calendar, complex rituals, social classes, religious hierar- chy, property laws, and refinements in art and literature.

The Carneiro scale shows the most precision by arraying data from several dimensions of culture in terms of a large range of small discrete steps in development. The Murdock-Provost scale is a mathematical one, based on accumulated points in several categories of social complexity. Each scale has a unique value in assessments, so their combined use makes sense in understanding evolutionary processes; however, the crude band-tribe-chiefdom-state model is still useful in cross-cultural studies.

For precision of comparison, the initials of evolutionary positions and numbers can be used to discuss relationships. Thus "BB" is the general relationship between band level societies; "TT" between tribes; "CC" between chiefdoms; and "SS" between states. Further, there are six interevolutionary relationships: BT, BC, BS, TC, TS, and CS. Each of the types has four degrees of integration: 1 (first contacts); 2 (low); 3 (medium); 4 (high). BB1 is the initial contact between band level societies. BT is the general relationship between band and tribes and BT1 is the initial contact between bands and tribes.

This author judges that the Iroquois of the U.S. and Canada are now at the end of the range of relationships with TS4, or the ethnic level of integration of a tribal heritage society with states. Other judgments on current Canada/Indian relationships are Tsimshian, Haida, Kwakiutl, and Nootka - CS3 (neocolonial); Coast Salish - TS4 (ethnic); Interior Salish - BS3; Blackfoot - TS4; Cree and Ojibwa - BS2 to BS4 (depending on the location and history of the specific community); and Inuit and Dene - BS2 to BS3 (depending on the specific community).

Another way of expressing the last situations of the Inuit and Dene is to characterize them as currently shifting from a colonial style of



PRICE: INTERSOCIETAL RELATIONSHIPS 3

integration -where they are politically subordinate, but still a cohesive and somewhat self-determining community - to a neocolonial integration, in which self-determination is weakened by participation in the state's legal system, government administration system, communica- tion system, etc. Because they have been so weakly influenced by the state and are still in the numerical majority in their homelands, the Dene and Inuit are trying to negotiate a continuing colonial status, but the Canadian state is unyielding on this issue and will only tolerate a neocolonial status. Even this, however, is one of the most tolerant treatments in the world today of a state for band heritage societies. The recently negotiated Alaskan agreement, by contrast, is only ethnic in its shallow long-term tolerance of diversity. There have been no negotiated settlements at all with band heritage societies in such countries as Mexico, Chile, South Africa, and only some minor negotiations in Australia.

The Canadian province with the greatest range of Indian integration today is Quebec, which includes the northern Inuit and Cree in a BS2 relationship; Abnaki, Algonkin, Malecite, Micmac, and Mon- tagnais primarily in BS3 relationships; and the Huron and Mohawk in TS4 relationships. Alaska has the greatest range of native integration in the United States.

Mexico was created by a fusion of a conquering state with its aboriginal societies, including state level societies. Mexico seems to have had all of the ten basic relationships. Because of this, Mexico would seem to be one of the best places in the world to study interevolutionary relationships. The area of provincial size with the greatest evolutionary diversity in the Americas is British Columbia. Both Mex- ico (between Tamaulipas and Vera Cruz), and British Columbia (between the coast and interior), had some BC relationships which are rare, because bands and chiefdoms rarely every occupy adjacent territories.

Normally there are geographical gradations by evolutionary levels. Thus, the neighbours of any society have tended to be either about the same evolutionary level or slightly higher or lower. The neighbours of states have tended to be other states or occasionally chiefdoms, but not tribes and never bands. The bands were at the environmental fringes of the world, in terms of the historical diffusion of agriculturally based tribes, chiefdoms, and states; however, states have tended to send specialized individuals out beyond their bound- aries as traders, missionaries, and so forth. Thus a few individuals from states have penetrated the more static fields of primitive societies; also, it has been principally the states which have conquered and colonized other societies.




Under conquest by a state society, bands have been the most peaceful and acquiescent; tribes have been the most reactive and resistant to assimilation in the early stages of integration; and chiefdoms have usually been incorporated into the state through the media- tion of largely peaceful, political, and economic processes. Band cultures tend to be passively dissolved by the individualistic and universalistic structures of state societies.

Band heritage people tend to be assimilated as individuals and families rather than as communities-unless the state institutions maintain the band communities. French SB relationships in Canada have been more assimilative than British SB relationships in Canada, in part, because the British had stronger institutions to hold the Natives in a continuing colonial stage - such as the Hudson Bay Com- pany, the institution of the treaty, and the segregation of the reserve system.

Tribes give states the most difficulty because they have some significant military capacity, but their political, economic, religious and other institutions do not fit in well with state systems. Chiefdoms have even greater military capacity than tribes, but they also have a hierarchical political and economic system that is more compatible with that of the states. Tribes and chiefdoms tend to continue more cohesive communities than bands under state conquest and tend to find collective ways to relate to state institutions.

Under conditions of conquest, tribes often react with militant resistance, while chiefdoms use more legal and negotiable means if possible (Price, 1978: Chap. 3). If the evolutionary level is correlated with phases of most resistance upon state conquest, it is seen that chiefdoms have their greatest resistance during phases 1 and 2; tribes during phases 2 and 3; and bands during phases 3 and 4.

The age of band resistance has finally arrived, so anthropologists are traveling the world studying the "liberation movements" of Bushmen, Australian aborigines, Eskimo, northern Dene, and northern Algonquians. These movements use a validating rhetoric of the return to an ecologically sound and socially healthy golden age of the past. The special claims which natives have are grounded in the past. Such movements call for land controls, aboriginal rights, and a special status as a founding race and culture. Typically, these movements call for less integration but, at the same time, the most integrated kinds of organizations and means are created in the process so the actual result is an increase, rather than a decrease, in integration to the state. Thus, band heritage societies have recently created large political organizations, employ advanced print and electronic communications,




and use such modern weapons as political lobbying, court actions, and civil disobedience.

Variations in the situations of Eskimos show the importance of the contextual state cultures in these band struggles; they are mov- ing toward different kinds of BS4 relationships. In the U.S.S.R., there is support for the use of the Inuit language in Eskimo schools and, of course, the policies there are designed for assimilation into a com- munist society. Under the Alaskan Native Agreement, the Eskimos are being taught to be capitalists with royalties, regional corporations, and per capita payments. The Agreement.terminates all special laws, rights, and status for Alaskan Natives in 1991 (Price, 1978: 256-61). The Inuit struggle in Canada is following the usual pattern of a 20 year lag behind the U.S.A. in native policy formation (Price, 1981), so a final agreement is not expected there for several years. Nevertheless, it is clear from the James Bay Agreement and current negotiations that it will be more socialistic than in the U.S.A.; will not involve termina- tion; and will emphasize native control of the traditional native resources of fish and game. Traditionally the most progressive, the 40,000 Inuit of Greenland achieved a "home rule" relationship with Denmark in 1979 (IWGIA, 1979).

The following table summarizes the estimated current stage of predominant integration that-linguistically defined-aboriginal societies currently have in Canada, with related information on evolutionary heritage, population, and language viability. The societies are arrayed in a rough ranking order by degree of social complexity at the time of extensive white contacts, based on Kroeber (1939, Table 18) and the author's own judgments from reading the ethnographies.

Multiple intensity scores are assigned where different segments of large and scattered societies evolved to different levels. These differences were aboriginal in the Inuit and Tlingit cases, and related to the historical stimulation by white cultures in the cases of the Cree, Sarsi, and Ojibwa. The highly evolved Tlingit-speaking people of northern British Columbia now live around Tagish Lake and call themselves Tagish. They seem to have assimilated the band heritage Tagish-speaking people. The true Tagish are now a small ethnic group within the Tlingit, a BC4 relationship. This kind of assimilation process was also involved in the extinction of the St. Lawrence Iroquois (primarily by the Huron, and historically a TT4 relationship); Neutral- Erie (by the Iroquois); Nicola (a small Athapascan society surround- ed by Salish); and Tsesaut.

The populations are of status Indians registered with the Depart- ment of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (1980). The language codes are: Extinct; CE (close to extinction-less than 10 speakers); TE




(threatened by extinction-10-100 speakers); FS (fairly secure-101-1,000 speakers); and Secure (more than 1,000 speakers). An asterisk (*) indicates the possibility of an additional community of speakers in the U.S.A.

INDIAN INTEGRATION WITH THE CANADIAN STATE

CULTURAL INTEGRATION LANGUAGE SOCIETY INTENSITY STAGE POPULATION VIABILITY

BANDS

1. Chipewyan-Slave Yellowknife 1 2 11,097 Secure

2. Dogrib-Bear Lake-Hare 1 2 2,461 FS

3. Loucheux- Kutchin 1 + 2 2,600 FS*

4. Nahani-Tanana- Tutchone-Han 1+ 2 1,305 FS*

5. Tahltan-Kaska 1+ 2 793 FS 6. Tsesaut 1+ 5 Extinct Extinct 7. Naskapi 1+ 3 389 TE 8. Montagnais 1+ 3 6,987 Secure 9. Beothuk 1+ 5 Extinct Extinct

10. Inuit 1+, 2, 2+ 2 18,000 Secure 11. Cree 1+, 3 3 92,664 Secure 12. Sekani-Beaver-

Sarsi 1+, 3+ 3 2,197 FS 13. Micmac 2 3 11,525 Secure 14. Malecite 2 3 2,176 FS* 15. Abnaki-Penobscot 2 3 694 CE 16. Algonkin 2 3 4,648 FS 17. Ottawa 2 3 1,874 FS 18. Ojibwa-Saulteaux 2, 3, 4- 3 62,545 Secure 19. Carrier-Chilcotin 2 3 7,204 Secure 20. Shushwap 2 3 4,347 FS 21. Okanagan-Sanpoil-

Colville-Lake 2 3 1,753 FS 22. Thompson 2 3 3,023 FS 23. Lillooet 2 3 2,961 FS 24. Tagish 2 3 ? CE 25. Nicola 2 5 Extinct Extinct 26. Kutenai 2 3 446 TE*

TRIBES 27. Assiniboine 3 4 1,376 FS* 28. Potawatomi 3 4 998 CE* 29. Delaware 3 4 999 CE* 30. Tuscarora 3 4 841 CE* 31. Gros Ventre 3+ migrated out of Canada 32. Dakota-Sioux 3+ 3 6,517 FS* 33. Blackfoot 3+ 4 9,875 Secure* 34. St. Lawrence

Iroquois 3+ 5 Extinct Extinct 35. Comox-Seechelt 3+ 4 1,534 CE




INDIAN INTEGRATION WITH THE CANADIAN STATE (Cont'd.) CULTURAL INTEGRATION LANGUAGE

SOCIETY INTENSITY STAGE POPULATION VIABILITY TRIBES

36. Songish-Lummi- Clallam- Semiahmoo 3+ 4 1,443 FS*

37. Cowichan- Halkomelem 3+ 4 7,118 Secure

38. Squamish 3+ 4 1,430 FS* 39. Neutral-Erie 4 5 Extinct Extinct 40. Oneida 4 4 3,260 CE* 41. Seneca-Cayuga-

Onondaga 4 4 3,680 TE* 42. Mohawk 4 4 16,640 FS* 43. Huron-Petun 4 4 1,205 Extinct

CHIEFDOMS 44. Nitinat 4 3 422 TE 45. Nootka 4 3 3,753 FS 46. Tlingit 4, 5 3 522 FS* 47. Niska 4+ 3 2,893 FS 48. Gitskan 4+ 3 3,149 FS 49. Haisla-Kitimat 4+ 3 989 FS 50. Bella Bella-

Heiltsuk 4+ 3 1,424 FS 51. Bella Coola 4+ 3 730 TE 52. Kwakiutl 4+ 3 3,155 FS 53. Tsimshian 5 3 3,452 FS 54. Haida 5 3 1,560 FS

TABULATIONS

INTEGRATION STAGE BAND TRIBE CHIEFDOM TOTALS

2 7 0 0 7 3 16 1 11 28 4 0 13 0 13 5 3 2 0 5

Population Averages 9,295 3,557 2,004 6,050 % of Aboriginal Population 134% 49% 49% 94% LANGUAGE VIABILITY BAND TRIBE CHIEFDOM TOTALS

S 7 3 0 10 FS 12 4 9 25 TE 2 1 2 5 CE 2 5 0 7 E 3 3 0 6

TOTALS 26 16 11 53




Levels of integration tend to be colonial or neocolonial for bands; ethnic for tribes; and neocolonial for chiefdoms. That is, there is not a simple, straight line correlation between evolutionary heritage and degree of integration because of the strong movement of so many tribal level societies to the ethnic level of integration- several of which came from the U.S.A. in the earlier period of militant resistance. Around the world tribes have often flip-flopped-from strong resistance to integrated ethnicity.

While population densities per area were historically lowest in bands; intermediate in tribes; and highest in chiefdoms-the average population per society in the current data is just the opposite: lowest in chiefdoms; intermediate in tribes; and highest in bands. More important for this present historical analysis is the relatively high population growth rates of band level societies. The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs data is only on status Indians and registered Inuit, which is about /2 of the total native population of the country. The total population of natives with a tribal and chiefdom heritage is now about the same as the aboriginal populations of those societies, but the populations with a band heritage have had a much greater growth rate and are now about 21/2 times their aboriginal size. This high growth rate for band heritage peoples seems to be zn uncommon pattern found only in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland.

Compared to the rest of the Americas, language viability is very high in Canada and is correlated somewhat with the pattern of integration; that is, there is stronger viability for bands and chiefdoms than for tribes. Several of the band heritage societies with large populations and a low or medium integration - such as Cree, Ojibwa, Inuit, and Chipewyan - have a particularly good chance for long-range language viability, with use in schools, periodicals, and the continuing development of written literatures.

Initial Contacts

Contacts between primary societies (BB, BT, BC, TT, TC, and CC) are the poorest recorded relationships because one has to rely on oral traditons and ethnographies. For states, the initial contacts are the least known. It would be interesting, for example, to know more about the relationships which ancient states had with primary societies. Ex- plorers' written reports give some data on SB1, ST1, and SC1; however, the great diversity of kinds of states still makes this category difficult on which to generalize. The experiences of the late imperialistic na- tions of Europe-such as England, France, Spain, and Russia-




account for a large part of data, because these countries were so literate and contacted so many societies.

Adult men the world over are the major agents of initial relationships; women and children tend to stay closer to the home village, while men range out to hunt, trade, and raid. Strangers to a village are usually greeted first by men from the village.

Bands have tended to lack institutions to handle intersocietal relationships, so that such contacts, for them, were normally infrequent and treated similarly to the guest/host relationships which occurred between band segments of a linguistically-defined society. They tended to have relatively peaceful relationships between groups within the society, and extended that peaceful and accepting attitude to outsiders by the familistic styles of food-sharing and gift exchanges as individuals to strangers. Mistrust, fear, and hostility did occur in band level societies -particularly with strangers-but their habitual response to strangers was still one of repeated attempts at family style hospitality. There are no autonomous, band level hunting and gathering societies left because most have adopted farming, pastoralism, and wage work in Africa, the U.S. Great Basin, and South America, or trade of meat and furs for agricultural and manufactured products in Southeast Asia and Canada. Australia, the U.S., and Canada also provide large financial and other supports to their aboriginal peoples. First contacts with the Beothuk and Washo show the patterns in two different environments and historical periods.

Beothuk

The early Beothuk contacts with European fishermen and fur- riers, seen from both sides, seems to have been guarded, somewhat hostile, conflicting in interests, and one of avoidance by both sides. That is, here is a case of BS1 that is not peaceful; the band people were not acquiescent. They were killed off in the BS1 phase-the only clear case in Canada of genocide of a total society by whites.

This author suspects that the general isolation of an island en- vironment meant that Beothuks had no experience or routine cultural means of handling relationships with strangers, and that this cultural weakness contributed to their poor relationships with whites and, thus, to their genocide. There is evidence that a Dorset Eskimo population lived in Newfoundland alongside the Indians in a cold period between AD 300 and AD 700 (Such, 1978); then the Vikings were there briefly around AD 1,000.

John Guy came to Newfoundland in 1608 to study the area for the establishment of a colony. He returned in 1612 and left some




presents in a deserted village near Dildo and later met several Beothuks in two canoes. There was then an exchange of presents, some feasting, and an agreement to meet the next year; however, he soon came back to the same village and found that the Indians had already gone.

The Indians had brought some furs in the interim and left them, whether as presents or, more likely, as articles of trade. Guy exercised good sense and integrity by taking only those furs for which he was able to leave articles equivalent in value. (Rowe, 1977: 16).

Beothuk/white relationships deteriorated after that brief series of peaceful relations. The fishermen of the 1600s and 1700s considered the Beothuks to be a thieving and hostile enemy who, many felt, should be killed on sight (Rowe, 1977: 40). The Beothuks - like the Guaycurans isolated at the end of the Baja California Peninsula, and the Tasma- nians on the island south of Australia-are one of the classic cases of genocide of a primitive society. These cases involve the great cultural differences of SB relationships, the weakness of mediating institutions in the first contact stage, and islands or peninsulas where the natives do not learn how to relate peacefully with other societies and which allow no retreat for the primitives. The Beothuk contrast with the Micmac, Naskapi, and other Canadian Maritime band level societies who had much more land within which they could retreat.

The deculturation which is typical at the frontiers of states is also a contributor to the difficulties in intersocietal relationships. Thus, for example, the genocidal decline of such Texas groups as Atakapa, Karankawa, and Tonkawa, seems more understandable when it is seen as the result of an interaction between deculturated white fron- tiersmen, and band level societies in a phase of first contacts. Few Indians were left in Texas after the whites had firmly settled in.

Washo

The Washo of western Nevada and the Lake Tahoe area of Califor- nia also have a band heritage, but are more typical of bands than the Beothuk in having survived the conquest by Europeans (Price, 1980). Aboriginal contacts with the surrounding band societies were infrequent, restrained, and somewhat fearful when they did occur, but generally peaceful and accompanied by a small amount of exchanges. The Washo traveled into the territories of the surrounding societies primarily to gather foods. Their relationships with the Northern Paiute bands seem to have been rather cooperative, except that the Washo were protective of their right to harvest pinenuts in the Pinenut Hills. Relationships were more hostile with the Miwok on the western




slope of the Sierra Nevada, where the Washo occasionally went to harvest acorns when the pinenut crop was bad. Their conflicts with the Miwok were not over the gathering of acorns, which were abun- dant, but due to the Miwok practice of stealing brides from non-Miwok societies.

The Washo pattern of first contacts with whites was to follow them at a safe distance. Occasionally-particularly when the whites set up camp for the day-a single Indian would enter the camp area, offer pinenuts to the strangers, then squat down and start eating some pinenuts himself. Soon, other Indians would come and gather around the campfire. Apparently this setting of a campfire and food-sharing was an assurance of peaceful relationships.

There were individual exceptions to this pattern. In one case, an Indian leader was much more forward with John Fremont and started right away relating in a graphic manner what a tragedy it would be to try to take his group over the Sierra Nevada in winter. The Indian invited the party to wait at his camp until spring and, when Fremont refused, arranged for a young man to guide the Fremont party over the mountains. Fremont called his guide "Melo," the Washo word for friend, presumably a word frequently used in these intial exchanges.

The second, or colonial level, of integration with white society was brief for the Washo because, once the whites started coming, they came in great waves-first to the California gold rush after 1849, then to a silver rush a decade later based in Virginia City, Nevada. After that, the Washo lived on the margins of white society and continued to fish but were then in competition over declining resources with the large netting operations of white commercial fishermen. Those who settled into squatters' camps at the garbage dumps of the white towns were relocated into small government administered colonies in the early 1900s. In terms of individual pride and community spirit, the early decades of reservation life seem to have been their low point. Those communities have since become essentially lower middle class, racially segregated suburbs, while the Washo became integrated as one of the poorer ethnic groups in western Nevada.

Apache, Miskito, and Mbaya

Helms (1970) made a comparison of the contact histories of certain Apache groups in Arizona and New Mexico, the Miskito of Nicaragua, and the Mbaya of Paraguay. All three had some subsistence mobility; bilateral descent; matrilocal postmarital residence; and lived in the frontier regions of Hispanic American states. Her conclusion was that "the cultural stability and continuity provided by matrilocali-




ty among simpler societies may be particularly adaptive when it oc- curs in conjunction with bilateral social structures." (Helms, 1970: 208). Some of the other common features of these relationships were that the territories were never effectively colonized by the early Spanish; that all societies gave effective military resistance to conquest; that all societies raided Spanish settlements for goods; and that all societies incorporated large numbers of captives taken in their raids into their societies.

From the perspective of evolutionary analysis, the three societies were somewhat different from each other, with the Apache at a simple tribal level, the Mbaya at a more advanced tribal level, and the Miskito at the chiefdom level. Their specific histories are far more understandable in terms of the holistic appraisal of their evolutionary levels than such isolated traits as extent of mobility, descent form, or form of postmarital residence. For example, the incorporation of foreigners was a minor activity related to raiding among the simple Apache (comparable to the Blackfoot in Canada); such a major activity among the Mbaya that foreigners outnumbered their captors and formed an insipient lower class which stimulated the development of many features that are typical of chiefdoms (compare Iroquois); and was just part of a thriving slave trade carried out by the Miskito (compare Kwakiutl).

Also one has to ask why these societies were at the fringes of Hispanic settlement. The initial historical orientation of Hispanic con- quests in the Americas was toward the indigenous states and chiefdoms because they were richer and provided better workers than the tribes and bands, and were more easily integrated than the tribes. Part of the richness of the states and chiefdoms comes from their long histories of filling out the best ecological niches for agriculture so that, even after such riches as gold were shipped to Spain, the agricultural potential under a Spanish colonial regime continued to focus on the lands of the states and chiefdoms. Then, the long run success of colonial regimes depends on the compliance of workers; people from tribal level societies the world over tend to be the least compliant. People from state societies usually make the best workers, followed by the people from chiefdoms and then bands, with the tribal heritage population being the most resistant in TS1-2-3 stages to compliant integration with states.

These kinds of processes universally, have meant that bands and tribes have usually been on the frontiers of colonizing states. Thus, the Aztecs and people from other Mesoamerican states and chiefdoms were usually quickly conquered and integrated as compliant workers in Spain's American colonies, while Spanish relationships with the




more primitive tribes were more troublesome. The most autonomous Indian societies in Latin America today are still usually those which were at a tribal level at contact time. That is, TS1 and TS2 relationships tend to last longer than SS1, SS2, CS1, and CS2 relationships. If bands survive the rather genocidal character of BS1 relationships, their compliance'gives them a good chance of thriving in the BS2 and BS3 periods.

Tappers and Trappers

In 1956 Robert Murphy and Julian Steward (1968) published a comparison on what they believed were parallel acculturation processes among the rubber-tapping Mundurucui near the Amazon River in Brazil, and the fur-trapping Montagnais of Quebec. The article was widely reprinted and is still being cited, although the analysis now seems to be basically incorrect.

The conventional wisdom in anthropology in the 1950s was that colonialism was invariably destructive and the specific mechanism of that destruction was typically the incorporation and use of native peoples by capitalist enterprises. Murphy and Steward's article emphasized an economic dimension in the acculturation processes, main- taining that the participation of these two societies in market-oriented collections of scattered wild products was crucial to their general social deterioration and specifically caused the two societies to shift to a nuclear family structure. The conclusions were that:

When the people of an unstratified native society barter wild products found in extensive distribution and obtained through individual effort, the structure of the native culture will be destroyed, and the final culmination will be a culture-type characterized by individual families having delimited rights to marketable resources and linked to the larger nation through trading centers. (Murphy & Steward, 1968: 233).

One problem with the Murphy-Steward analysis is that some destruction of native culture and some participation in the market system of a state is inherent in all cases of the integration of primary societies to state societies. The extent of the dispersal of the wild products or the degree of individuality in the collection of those products does not seem to have any correlation with the degree of destruction of the native social structure. Thus, fishing societies which gather and sell the concentrated products of their lakes and streams have the same kinds of deculturation problems as hunters and gatherers of the same evolutionary level. Murphy and Steward give no examples of societies with comparable levels of acculturation which kept their old




family systems because their participation in the new economy involved the selling of concentrated resources.

One error in the data is that fur-gathering is not just a nuclear family operation. Winter trapping camps today among the Quebec Algonquians are typically composed of two, three, or even four cooperating families.

Under the conditions of conquest and displacement by state societies, participation by primary societies in colonial enterprises has usually been of greater benefit than non-participation or pro- tracted military opposition, with benefit measured by such criteria as health and population growth. According to this idea, market participation by aboriginal people at least demonstrates that the primitives have some value to the conquering states-a demonstra- tion which offsets the common trend toward simple military conquest of opposing societies.

There is a pro-capitalist, anti-central government case which can be argued in relation to the Spanish and Portuguese versus English and French colonization of the Americas. The Iberian governments directly sponsored the conquest and colonization of Iberian America so that more military force was used, thus, there was more killing, more slavery, more tribes entirely eliminated, and far more molding of Iberian America into the feudalist forms of Europe.

English and French colonization was more individualistic and en- trepreneurial. There was less direct military oppression and less slavery of the natives, in part because the European entrepreneurs could not afford an expensive military establishment. Native peoples died less and prospered more under the greater freedom of English and French capitalism than they did under the tighter controls of Spanish and Portuguese forces.

Of course, the nature of the native peoples contacted has always been a crucial element in the intersocietal equation. In brief, the Spaniards just eliminated the recalcitrant tribal level societies they met in the Caribbean, but found that, once conquered, people from the chiefdoms - particularly the native states - made reasonably good workers in colonial feudal states. There was rarely ever much slavery by Europeans in those parts of the Americas where native states were conquered because these people made more efficient workers than slaves; they were obedient within systems of social ranking and would pay taxes, and they would obey the formal laws of a state. The latitudes of the 48 states of the U.S. were occupied mostly by tribal level populations-people who tend to give military resistance and make poor servants, slaves, or plantation workers. There were slave markets of Indians on the east coast, but Indians were not accustomed to work-




ing for others and kept escaping into the forests where they could easily survive on their own (Grinde, 1977). The slavery of African Blacks was more successful because the Blacks were away from their homelands and came largely from more highly evolved societies with social ranking, taxation in some form or another, and some formal laws and courts.

Things tended to be even more peaceful in the European occupation of Canada because most of the area was occupied by the relatively compliant and peaceful band level societies. People from several tribal level societies such as Cayuga, Dakota, Delaware, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Potawatomi, and Tuscarora, migrated into Canada as a result of problems in the U.S.A. People from bands do not make good servants and, so, they were generally ignored and easily pushed aside onto small reserves or incorporated into the fur trade. Thus, the per capita land area of Indians is 8.1 times greater in the lower 48 states than a comparable zone across the Canadian provinces; however, the fact that the Canadian Indians were largely ignored also meant that they had a higher survival rate than the U.S. Indians. Now, as a pro- portion of the national population, Canadian Natives (at 700,000) are about seven times more populous than U.S. Natives (at 900,000).

Today, the northern Algonquians are thriving, while the Mun- durucui are not. If the economic determination model is played out, it could be said that this is because the fur market remained strong while the Amazon rubber market collapsed in the face of synthetics, efficient rubber plantations in Southeast Asia, and the inefficiency of tribal level rubber-gatherers. Or, the evolutionary theme of this article could be emphasized to point out that the Montagnais have a band level heritage that is usually associated with a peaceful and compliant acculturation, while the Mundurucui have a tribal level heritage, usually associated with militant resistance and a troublesome acculturation. However, even a casual review of the differences between Brazil and Canada in the experiences of Native societies, of all economic relationships and all evolutionary levels, reveals that the Brazilian Indians have done badly while the Canadian Indians are better off today than most primary heritage societies in the world.

Portuguese Brazil has been one of the more inhumane cultures toward native peoples in the Americas, and Canada-particularly French Quebec where the Montagnais live-has been one of the most humane. The survival of native peoples, languages, and cultures has been stronger in Canada than any other area of comparable size in the Americas, and the Indians of Quebec have the best overall posi- tion in many indices among the Indians of Canada: highest average incomes, best housing, lowest arrest rates, highest evaluations by




whites in national attitute surveys, etc., (Price, 1979: Chap. 9). Mean- while the Mundurucui are living under unfavorable conditions in Brazil (Davis, 1977).

The Murphy-Steward study failed because there is so little basis for their notions about the collecting and selling of diffuse products; because participation in colonial institutions, such as markets, often provide a positive and beneficial transformation of primary societies in their integration with conquering states; and because they missed the human issues in the differences between the Portuguese and French Canadian cultures. From the perspective of this article, there are times when even evolutionary differences turn out to be only of minor importance in the analysis.

Victims of Progress

Victims of Progress by John Bodley (1975) is a survey of the modern dispossession of aboriginal peoples. It is rather simplistic because BS, TS, and CS relationships of various stages of integration tend to be lumped together as "tribal peoples". On the subject of military resistance, for example, one has tribes (Nez Perce, Sioux), a chiefdom (Maori), and a simple state (Zulu) lumped together. The basic method of the book is the moral condemnation of modern state con- quests and dispossessions around the world on the theory that "resource exploitation is clearly the basic cause of the destruction of tribal peoples and cultures .. " and that ethnocentric attitudes are used to justify the exploitation (Bodley, 1975: 9).

Bodley does not deal with the long history of primary peoples destroying each other, such as the Iroquois destruction and dispossession of some 250,000 of the Indians in the Northeast in the 1600s. He does not deal with ancient states doing the same for thousands of years-Egypt, Rome, China, Japan, Aztec, Inca, etc. These considera- tions are important, because they have some bearing on what can be expected of humans.

The arguments are moralistic because "exploitation" implies a destructive and unreasonable kind of resource use of the bad guys. A scientific analysis would have used more controls in the com- parisons. Thus one should ask how many cases are there where tribal populations were not destroyed, because the occupation of their territory by peoples from state societies occurred under conditions of normal and reasonable resource use. Does it make any difference if the state is just overpopulated and sends out waves of migrants to live and survive in a territory occupied by primary societies? Religious differences, rather than greed for resources, seem to be involved in




many conflicts; the only thing that the Catholic missionaries wanted in their missions to the Guaycurans was to convert them, but the Guaycurans still died out.

Bodley goes on to discuss primary societies in reference to frontiers, state policies, and applied programs. He concludes with a criticism of policies which advocate integration because this leads to the loss of the traditional satisfactions and balances built into most tribal cultures ... If these losses were always compensated for by increased security, health, personal satisfaction, and environmental stability, etc., then progress might be worth the cost; unfortunately ... the exact opposite is usually the case (Bodley, 1975: 167-172).

He argues that we should advocate policies of cultural autonomy to allow primary societies to exist independently of the state; to support local land rights, resource use, and cutural sovereignty; and to protect the indigenous peoples to such an extent that initiatives for outside contacts would rest with the indigenous people. The conclusions are similar to some of this author's on how one can foster legal, political, economic, and academic support for societies with a primary heritage (Price, 1978: Chap. 21; 1979, 98-9, 234-37).

The problem with this kind of sweeping policy advocacy is that many kinds of integration are inevitable; the integration can be beneficial; and policymakers need better guidelines to sort through the great variety of primary state relationships in order to establish workable policies. No one should seriously advocate total autonomy or sovereignty, but only certain explicit kinds of semi-autonomy- such as tolerant multi-culturalism with sustained enclaves and protected legal rights in such spheres as resource uses, taxation, religion, and family life.

Diggers and Doggers: BS2-3 Failures

Gould, Fowler, and Fowler (1972) compared the acculturation of the Western Desert aborigines of Australia (dog hunters), and the great Basin Paiute and Western Shoshoni (root diggers), in a parallel way to the earlier Murphy-Steward analysis. This article claims that the acculturation experience can be even worse than the market-integrated cases, if the society does not have anything worth bartering.

Gould, et al, wrote that the participation in the state's market institution provides peoples like the Munduruc6 and Montagnais with a means of cultural transformation. Things can be worse. The Great Basin Indians and the Australian aborigines experienced general cultural loss, deprivation, and subordination. They wanted manufactured goods, but they lacked any goods to offer in exchange and thus




were forced to accept a dependent status vis-a-vis white society; they settled on reservations ... and were compelled to subsist on white rations and whatever residual employment might be available ... [They had no] viable relationship to the world market economy, and as such they exhibit parallel failures in economic acculturation. (Gould, et al., 1972: 278).

The Australian and Great Basin cases are fairly typical of the acculturation to states for people from band level societies. It is the market-integrated cases, such as the Montagnais, that are uncommon in the world in BS2 and BS3 conditions. Band level societies usually offer little effective resistance to the occupation of their land by more advanced societies, particularly by such powerful societies as states. Band societies usually have little of material value to sell to states and they do not fit in well to the routines of salaried employment in state societies. Also supporting this kind of analysis is the fact that the band societies which became the most closely associated with the fur trapping and trading system in Canada (the Cree and Ojibwa) became the largest native societies in Canada.

CONCLUSIONS

Evolution is the systematic change of forms over time, while integration is the systematization process itself; that is, integration in- volves the coordination and interaction of the parts of the system. Societies interact with each other in the diffusion of traits, in the exchange of people in migrations, in trade, in warfare, etc., and thus stimulate each other's evolution. This interaction can also lead to the progressive absorption of one cultural system by another, to their integration into a new system. Some of the characteristic patterns of intersocietal relationships by evolutionary levels are as follows:

1. BB - Little contact, trade, or warfare except for the protection of food resource areas. Usually friendly and familistic in style when it does occur.

2. BT - Some trade of game for agricultural products: northern Algonquians with Iroquoians; Paiute with Hopi; and Pygmies with Bantu.

3. BC - A rare and poorly reported relationship. It includes such uncommon relationships as the BC4 situation of the Tagish ethnic group within Tlingit society.

4. BS1 - Genocidal-particularly when there is resistance-as in the Beothuk case. In spite of its genocidal quality, the bands are usually quite passive.




5. BS2 and BS3 - Prosperity seems to depend upon the band's successful participation in the state's colonial institutions, as well as the humane policies of the state.

6. BS4 - This situation is just now emerging among certain segments of surviving band heritage societies and is marked by an ethnic renaissance among Eskimo, northern Dene, and northern Algonquians (and Australians in the Old World) which is comparable to the earlier ethnic renaissances of tribal and chiefdom societies.

7. TT - Competitive and either hostile or with a military alliance. Trade requires protections, such as trading partners. Con- quest can result in TT4 situations, such as the Huron incorporation of the St. Lawrence Iroquois and the Iroquois incorporation of the Neutral-Erie.

8. TC - The tribal level societies may be preyed upon for slaves by the chiefdoms, as in the Wakashan raids on the coastal Salish villages and the Miskito slave raids.

9. TS - Generally hostile and marked by warfare and militant resistance in the TS1 and TS2 stages; then religious revitaliza- tions and political resistance are common in the TS2 and TS3 stages; and then, a relatively rapid shift to TS4 ethnicity. While band heritage people were quite compatible with a continuing colonial relationship within the Canadian fur trade system, tribal heritage people would only briefly enter the fur trade as rather exploitive trappers, as voyageurs, and as entrepreneurs trading with other Indians.

10. CS - Some militant resistance with a few cases of genocide- such as that of the Natchez-but generally a fairly peaceful relationship marked by trade, negotiated agreements, and the least traumatic integration of all the primary societies.

11. SS - The most extreme in variety because there are so many kinds of states, but also the most institutionalized with such features as formal and fixed borders and negotiated agreements on trade, immigration, and warfare. Conquest leads to reciprocal acculturation and syncretism, as in the thorough Indianization of Mexico.

REFERENCES CITED

Carneiro, Robert L. 1968 "Ascertaining, Testing, and Interpreting Sequences of Cultural Development."

Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 24.



20 AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY, SPRING 19&3

Davis, Shelton H. 1977 Victims of the Miracle: Development and the Indians of Brazil. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press. Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development

1980 Linguistic and Cultural Affiliations of Canadian Indian Bands. Ottawa. Gould, Richard A., Don D. Fowler, and Catherine S. Fowler

1972 "Diggers and Doggers: Parallel Failures in Economic Acculturation." Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 28.

Grinde, Donald, Jr. 1977 "Native American Slavery in the Southern Colonies." The Indian Historian, 10(2).

Helms, Mary W. 1970 "Matrilocality, Social Solidarity, and Culture Contact: Three Case Histories:"

Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 26. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA)

1979 Home Rule in Greenland. Newsletter 22. Kroeber, A. L.

1939 "Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America."University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 38.

Murdock, George P. and Caterina Provost 1973 "Measurement of Cultural Complexity." Ethnology, 12.

Murphy, Robert E and Julian H. Steward 1968 Tappers and Trappers: Parallel Process in Acculturation. In Man in Adapta-

tion: The Cultural Present, Y. A. Cohen, editor. Chicago: Aldine. Price, John A.

1978 Native Studies: American an Canadian Indians. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. 1979 Indians of Canada: Cultural Dynamics. Toronto: Prentice-Hall of Canada. 1980 The Washo Indians. Carson City: Nevada State Museum. 1981 "Historical Theory and the Applied Anthropology of U.S. and Canadian Indians."

Human Organization, 21(1). Rowe, Frederick W.

1977 Extinction: The Beothuks of Newfoundland. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. Such, Peter

1978 Vanished Peoples: The Archaic, Dorset and Beothuk People of Newfoundland. Toronto: NC Press.



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Intersocietal Relationships by Evolutionary Levels among North American Indians