Scottish Independence: Quebec Edition

[derspiess]

Is there any actual evidence of Indians not having a concept of private property?

Tecumseh's address to Harrison, maybe.

[viper37]

Direct promises like that are pretty hard for politicians to go back on. And there's no reason for them to do so

Quebec has been promised that for 2 referendums, it never happenned.  The first time, they signed the Constitution without us, the second time they passed some bullshit that the Federal parliament sould decide the question and the modality of independance.

Great Britain and Canada are two different countries, but I'm very suspicious of politicians promising change only when they have a gun to their head.

Of course, it's all to the Scots to decide if they can trust their politicians, one way or another.  But if these promises for more autonomy had been made 5 years, would we have a referendum today?  I doubt it, but at the same time, I'm willing to admit my ignorance of the finer details of the Scottish independance plan.

[grumbler]

Is there any actual evidence of Indians not having a concept of private property?

Tecumseh's address to Harrison, maybe.

Was that pre-contact or post-contact?  And was Tecumseh in a position to know the concepts of every Indian tribe ever?

[derspiess]

Shit, man.  I don't know.  WTF

[Malthus]

Techumseh's vision was expressly utopian. His idea was that all natives should unite as one, to avoid the tribes peacemeal selling out to the Americans.

Houses are built for you to hold councils in. The Indians hold theirs in the open air. I am a Shawnee. My forefathers were warriors. Their son is a warrior. From them I take my only existence. From my tribe I take nothing. I have made myself what I am. And I would that I could make the red people as great as the conceptions of my own mind, when I think of the Great Spirit that rules over us all. I would not then come to Governor Harrison to ask him to tear up the treaty [the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, which gave the United States parts of the Northwest Territory].

But I would say to him, "Brother, you have the liberty to return to your own country." You wish to prevent the Indians from doing as we wish them, to unite and let them consider their lands as a common property of the whole.

...

The way, the only way to stop this evil, is for the red people to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be now -- for it was never divided, but belongs to all.

This was not an anthropological description of actual pre-Columbian practices, but a vision of what the future should look like, based on an allegation of a past golden age of equality and unity that, in point of fact, never actually existed - something this vision has in common with similar visions of past golden ages made by others throughout history.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/nativeamericans/chieftecumseh.htm

[derspiess]

Well, I did say "maybe" 

[grumbler]

Shit, man.  I don't know.  WTF 

The problem with gross generalizations like "individual possession of land was unknown to them, pre-european contact" is that it flies in the face of the human experience undergone by pretty much every people that have lived, and assumes that lack of evidence is proof of lack.  Pretty much the best we can say based on evidence to date is that, based on the experience of similar cultures elsewhere, some tribes/peoples probably didn't employ private possession of land, and, again based on the experiences of similar cultures elsewhere, some probably did,.

Tecumseh was, of course, pleading a specific case with specific language; he never says that no Indian society anywhere has ever had a concept of individual ownership of land.

[Berkut]

It is interesting how pervasive the "noble savage" meme is though - and not just around Native Americans.


And while it is obviously very difficult to study, actual scholarship around aboriginal societies suggests that the reality is that they were probably much *more* violent overall than later social societies.


Was it Diamond's book that was pointing out that murder was a leading cause of death in many relatively primitive societies?

[Tamas]

Could somebody rename this thread to "Two guys from Quebec want independence badly" please?

[garbon]

Could somebody rename this thread to "Two guys from Quebec want independence badly" please?

Well there's two things mongers and Tamas having in common - both live in the UK and both are whiny bitches.

[derspiess]

Tecumseh was, of course, pleading a specific case with specific language; he never says that no Indian society anywhere has ever had a concept of individual ownership of land.

Well, I didn't say he was.  I was just answering Raz.

[derspiess]

Was it Diamond's book that was pointing out that murder was a leading cause of death in many relatively primitive societies?

You're not allowed to call NA societies "primitive" 

[viper37]

There is exactly zero evidence of this.

Iroquois and Hurons were semi-nomadics, staying in one place for about a decade, until the land production started to decay and game was rarer.  Once that happenned, they moved to another location.
Quite often you would see women managing the fields and men hunting during summer&fall.

And they were using most of the animal.  You wouldn't see north american indians, on the east coast at least, hunting solely for trophy.  Or for just one part of the animal.  Skin, bones, meat, horns, everything was used.  That changed with the European's arrival.

The vast majority of Native Americans were not "nomads", but village-dwelling agriculturalists. Villages did move locations when immediate local resources played out, but were not by any stretch of the imagination "nomadic or semi-nomadic".

Take the Montagnais (Innus nowadays, for most of them) for example.  Their territory extended from northern Quebec and Labrador, close to the Inuits to the St-Lawrence river, on both side.  They were hunting and fishing all accross the area, established non permament camps, and go back to a winter village.  Once people got to old to follow, they were left behind.

Iroquois and Hurons were semi-nomads, meaning they had agriculture, but instead of using lay-farming, they were simply moving elsewhere, letting the land "heal".  they could move to a place for 10 years, and come back near their original place 10 years later.

They had defined territories, and warfare over territory was common. How individual Natives felt about private property is not known with any certainly, but if later examples are any guide, they certainly did not lack any notion of property. 

Individual property of the land was non existant.  No individual could possess land, land was not seem as a commodity to be traded, unlike, say, a woman, for some tribes.

They usually claimed a territory, not that well defined, as their hunting grounds.  Even agricultural societies were hunting.  And fishing.

Warfare was made for various reasons, most often to capture slaves from other tribes.  Women and children, sometimes warriors.  Sometimes they were adopted in the tribe, sometimes not.  Sometimes they were boiled and eaten.  Sometimes they were burned alive.  Sometimes they were cooked over a great fire, sometimes not.

But examples of one tribe launching a war of extermination, or domination, over another tribe are pretty rare.  I can think of "canniabalistic" raids, when food was scarce, where one tribe would hunt another tribe for food, somewhere around 1100-1200, IIRC, mostly in the southern US.  No such evidence in north east NA, so far.

Far from portraying them as "bloodthirsty savages", I'm portraying them as similar to other tribal, agricultiural peoples worldwide - pretty well all of whom engage in warfare over territory. The claims that the native Americans were somehow totally different, in the face of all the copious evidence to the contrary, is the product of decades of myth-making and romanticism. 

Mound culture aside, for wich we don't know much, it was totally different than ancient Israelites, or Hittites, or Egyptians. These people had well defined territories and fortified permanent cities made of stone.  Iroquois, Hurons, Micmacs, Algonquins, Montagnais... they had nothing of the sort.  The best you could expect would be a walled city made of woods. Something that could be easily dismantled.

In the prairies, the introduction of the horses and various epidimics certainly made them nomads, buffalo hunters, mostly.
Prior to the first european contacts, say, 1200-1300, I have no ideas how they lived exactly, if they were semi-nomads like the Hurons of the 1600s*, or if they were totally sedentary like ancient Egyptians.

Of course, they were quick to adapt to Europeans arrivals.  Iroquois tried to establish their own little empire, selling lands of other tribes to English and Dutch merchants, and establishing themselves as intermediaries between the tribes of the Ohio valley and the French&English merchants for the fur trades.  This is what led to the Beaver Wars: control of the resources for the Iroquois to be the sole, exclusive dealers with European buyers.

Specific to warfare, prior to European arrivals, you wouldn't see wars of extermination in eastern north america.  It's not that they lived along merrily, just that there was lots of space for not so many people.  There was ritual cannibalism in some tribes, boiling and eating a captive.  There was torture, it's something anyone with a Catholic education in Quebec will certainly learn in school (torture of the missionaries by the Iroquois tribes).  There were wars to supplement one's tribes with captives from another, but the goal was not to kill everyone of tribe X to take their lands.  Push them out of the way, sure.  Capture women, children, and warriors for torture, sure.  Wars of extermination?  Not so much.  Wars of total conquest like in Europe, where you annex one's village to  yours and subdue the new subjects?  Not so much.  Did it happen? Not really.  Was it frequent?  No. Was it the norm? No.

Once the Europeans set foot here though, things started to change, with tribes in contact to the Europeans, the Beaver wars being a good example.


*If the subject is of interest to you, I would recommend visiting the Huron-Wendake museum and village in Quebec city.

[viper37]

Could somebody rename this thread to "Two guys from Quebec want independence badly" please?

Wich ones?  I certainly don't want independance badly.

[Malthus]

It is interesting how pervasive the "noble savage" meme is though - and not just around Native Americans.


And while it is obviously very difficult to study, actual scholarship around aboriginal societies suggests that the reality is that they were probably much *more* violent overall than later social societies.


Was it Diamond's book that was pointing out that murder was a leading cause of death in many relatively primitive societies?

I know it gets a mention in Keegan's History of Warfare.

Also, people in North America tend to imagine Native Americans as far more "primitive" than they in fact were. The mental imagry comes from the nomadic indians of the great planes and of the 19th century, while the vast majory (by population) of actual native americans, pre-columbian, lived in agricultural villages. Hence in this very thread people with a straight face claiming that native north americans were "nomadic or semi-nomadic" and knew nothing of property rights (highly unlikely in agricultiral societies!).

Few people, for example, would associate north American natives with building towns or cities - but they did, in several places. In the southwest, they even built them out of stone, including buildings with several sories.

As far as "knowing nothing of property rights" goes, the natives of the pacific northwest certainly did - although again, we know little of their culture pre-contact, there is no reason to suppose this was a purely post-contact invention: they even competed with each other in rituals designed to show off their weath - the famous "potlatch" ceremony.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch

This isn't unusual in anthropology. It would be very unusual if a society of that complexity *lacked* notions such as property or aristocracy.