The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (12 page)

AFTERTHOUGHTS

Let us close with a few words on the potential for inequality in societies that labor in the shadow of ancestors and celestial spirits. As long as no living human was more than a gamma, the social playing field was level. Emus, cicadas, dingoes, and water hens coexisted peacefully in the Alcheringa, and the living clans named for them were all considered equal.

In later chapters, however, we will encounter societies that revised their cosmology to create inequality. We will see some lineages that claim to have descended from the older of two cosmic brothers, allowing them to outrank the descendants of the younger brother. Others will argue that, in contrast to everyone else’s beta ancestors, their lineage descended from a celestial alpha. This closer relationship to the sacred entitled them to be the social unit from which all future leaders would come. Thus the concept of the sacred, which had once strengthened human society by encouraging selflessness and reducing status confrontation, would one day be manipulated to create a hereditary elite.

FIVE

Inequality without Agriculture

Inequality, according to Rousseau, began when self-esteem gave way to self-love. Foragers knew that as long as they suppressed ambition and greed, they would be well thought of. They were obligated to share food and reciprocate all gifts, yet they were discouraged from shaming their partners with gifts too grand to match. Once larger units such as clans had arisen, however, a number of societies witnessed changes in social logic. Such larger units might collaborate to support members who, in Rousseau’s words, “desired to be esteemed by others.”

Let us consider only two behaviors, gift-giving and marriage. Among clanless societies, bride service and bride-price only passed between individuals and families. Some societies with clans, however, decided to require even larger gifts between the clans of the bride and groom. Sometimes these gifts went on long after the marriage had been consummated.

In some cases the bride’s clan considered itself superior because it was giving “the gift of life,” that is, future children. That clan might demand such an expensive bride-price from the groom as to drive him into debt, forcing him to borrow from his clanspeople.

Similar changes took place with the custom of reciprocal gift-giving. Most clanless societies took pains to reciprocate with gifts of equal value. No one wanted to be shamed by receiving too valuable a gift from a kinsman. Many clans, however, did not mind shaming a rival clan with expensive gifts. If being generous was good, being more generous than another clan made one superior. Some clans came close to impoverishing themselves while shaming their rivals with lavish gifts and feasts.

Rousseau suspected that self-love became more common after the adoption of agriculture and animal husbandry. He felt that farming could exacerbate natural inequality by allowing smarter, stronger, and more industrious individuals to create the food surplus they needed to outstrip their neighbors. Many of today’s anthropologists would agree, to this extent: societies with agriculture and animal husbandry do seem to create more opportunities for inequality.

There are, however, a few exceptions to the preceding paragraph. Most were unknown in Rousseau’s day. Some hunting-and-gathering societies did not wait for agriculture to promote self-love. They produced both wealth and inequality using only wild foods.

In this chapter we examine some of the ways in which foragers could wheel and deal their way out of Rousseau’s State of Nature. To document the process, we need go no further than the Native societies of western North America. We begin with California Indians who became wealthy middlemen in the movement of seashell ornaments. We end with Alaskan fishermen who were divided into aristocrats and slaves.

In our examination of western North American societies we are not limited to early European eyewitness accounts, because those eyewitnesses were preceded by thousands of years of prehistory. Here is a case where social anthropology and archaeology can work together. Social anthropology gives us, in great detail, the historic tip of the iceberg. Archaeology gives us, albeit in less detail, the mass of prehistoric ice that is hidden from view. Only when we employ both disciplines do we see the whole iceberg.

THE CHUMASH OF THE CALIFORNIA COAST

California once displayed a prodigious diversity of hunting-and-gathering peoples. Its deserts were home to small-scale clanless groups, while its great Central Valley could support societies with lineages and clans. The Yokuts of the San Joaquin Valley, like the natives of Australia, had hereditary leaders and clans with totemic mascots. To the north, in the Sacramento Valley, lived their linguistic relatives the Wintun. Several Wintun leaders not only inherited their positions but also went on to establish regional spheres of influence, expanding their group’s territory at the expense of their neighbors. This influence, however, was ephemeral. It depended heavily on the charisma of individual leaders and produced only modest inequality.

A number of archaeologists have committed themselves to explaining the rise of inequality among the Indians of California. One of the best documented cases is that of the Chumash, who once occupied the California coast from San Luis Obispo to Malibu Canyon and colonized the islands of the Santa Barbara Channel. A long-term project, led by archaeologist Jeanne Arnold, has revealed that the historic Chumash were the end product of 7,500 years of social change.

Since the Santa Barbara mainland is now densely covered with modern buildings, Arnold chose to focus her research on Santa Cruz Island. No Spanish missions had ever been built there, so at least five of its historic Chumash villages were relatively undisturbed. These had been villages composed of 125 to 250 people living in very large houses. Each residence was built of poles, thatch, and reed matting, and each housed groups of people related through the male line. Arnold’s team located at least 35 deep, circular depressions left by such multifamily dwellings.

Some 7,500 years ago, the Santa Barbara region and the Channel Islands were occupied by nomadic foragers who divided their effort between the inland acorn groves and the marine resources of the Pacific. For the next 5,000 years, as far as one can tell from the archaeological record, their society seems to have been egalitarian. These coastal foragers were limited in their ability to capture large fish by their simple watercraft, which were made of bulrushes and waterproofed with natural asphalt from the California tar pits.

The turning point in Channel Island prehistory seems to have come between
A.D.
500 and 700. The key innovation was the creation of a large oceangoing plank canoe. The raw materials for this canoe included redwood logs that had washed up on the Channel Islands as driftwood. One of Arnold’s sites contained more than 200 fragments of redwood, as well as asphalt brought from the mainland in abalone-shell containers.

The
tomol,
or Chumash plank canoe, required 500 man-days of labor to make. The result was a vessel 19 to 22 feet long, made of redwood planks sewn together with milkweed cords and caulked with a mixture of asphalt and pine tar. In contrast to the earlier bulrush vessels, which were only eight feet long and held two to three passengers, the tomol could hold either 12 passengers or a ton of cargo. These canoes were capable of going 65 miles out to sea, making the 12–31 mile trip between the coast and the Channel Islands easier.

Between 500 and 1150, the tomol began to alter the archaeological record. First, the ancestors of the historic Chumash began pulling in swordfish and tuna, large fish that would have capsized a bulrush vessel. Second, each plank canoe could carry a ton of asphalt from the mainland for future caulking. Third, the Channel Islanders became producers and middlemen in the shell trade along the California coast.

Between 1150 and 1300 the sources of flint on Santa Cruz Island were increasingly converted into blades and drills for cutting and perforating shell. The Islanders made huge quantities of beads from olive shells, abalone, and Pismo clams. Mainland groups had an insatiable demand for these shell ornaments and were willing to surrender basketloads of acorns, piñon nuts, and edible grass seeds to get them.

According to anthropologist A. L. Kroeber, it is likely that the Chumash furnished the bulk of the shell valuables used in the southern half of California. Not only were the strings of shell beads used for bride payments, they also came to be used as a medium of exchange which, like the wampum of the eastern North American Indians, functioned as currency. By the time Europeans arrived in California, each unit of shell made by the Chumash was worth a third more to the Gabrielino of Catalina Island and four times as much to the Salinans of the California mainland.

Our first eyewitness accounts of the Chumash come from Spanish colonists, many of whom visited the Mission of Santa Barbara during the late 1700s. While they do not seem to have had actual named clans, the Chumash had lineages that reckoned descent in the male line. The Spaniards claim that each large Chumash village had three to four “captains,” one of whom outranked the others and was referred to as a
wot
or
wocha
(“head chief”). The role of chief normally passed from father to son, pending village approval. If a suitable male heir was not available, however, the office could be held by the former chief’s sister or daughter, allowing her lineage to hold on to leadership until an appropriate male was available.

Most Chumash men painted their bodies with motifs specific to their communities, but they went naked except for a waist-length skin cloak. The chief, on the other hand, was entitled to a special bearskin cape or vest and could wear his skin cloak to his ankles as a way of distinguishing himself from ordinary men. Chiefs were allowed two or three wives, while ordinary men had only one. This was a sign of wealth, because each wife required a bride payment of shell valuables, sea-otter hides, and rabbit-fur blankets.

Chiefs monopolized the ownership of plank canoes. They also controlled access to hunting and seed-collecting territories, served as war leaders during periods of raiding, and presided over ceremonies. The two latter roles were interrelated, since the refusal of a chief’s invitation to a ceremony was considered an insult punishable by group violence.

Chiefs received payments of food and shell valuables from their followers. While some chiefs’ influence is said to have extended beyond their home villages, Spanish authors stress that their authority was not absolute.

The plank canoe clearly enabled the Chumash to haul in bigger fish. Perhaps of even more importance, however, was its ability to transport massive quantities of shell ornaments at the very time that they were becoming a widespread form of currency. By monopolizing the canoes, Chumash chiefs were able to employ large numbers of lower-ranked craftsmen in the conversion of marine shells to beads. They then used their role as middlemen to increase the shells’ value.

Most leaders in societies with lineages or clans call upon their kinsmen when extra labor is needed. Arnold, however, believes that historic Chumash leaders went beyond this, and that they controlled the labor of craftsmen who were not even their kin. The shell trade was so profitable that even members of other descent groups were willing to accept a position of subservience to the chief.

Diversity and Tolerance in Chumash Society

There is one more lesson we can learn from the Chumash. Spanish eyewitnesses observed that a small percentage of Chumash men lived and worked as women, even dressing in the paired, knee-length buckskin skirts of a woman. These men were referred to as
joyas,
the Spanish word for “jewels.”

To the Chumash, the fact that some members of their community lived as members of the opposite sex was accepted as part of nature’s plan. The Spaniards, on the other hand, were scandalized.

Lieutenant Pedro Fagés was a Spanish soldier who spent the late 1770s at the Mission of San Luis Obispo and traveled among the Chumash of the Santa Barbara coast. He took note of “Indian men who, both here and farther inland, are observed in the dress, clothing, and character of women.” Fagés estimated that there were two or three of these men in each village. Some, he said, permitted others “to practice the execrable, unnatural abuse of their bodies. They are called joyas, and are held in great esteem.”

In later chapters we will see more examples of transgendered Native American men and women, often referred to by their societies as “two-spirit people.” Almost without exception, two-spirit people were seen as having been supernaturally destined to live life as a member of the opposite sex. They were not merely accepted by their society but considered more attuned to the spirit world than the average individual.

One could hardly imagine a greater contrast than that between the tolerance of the Native Americans and the intolerance of the European colonists. In Lieutenant Fagés’s case, we are not sure which fact appalled him the most—that such men existed, or that they were “held in great esteem” by their society.

THE FORAGERS OF VANCOUVER ISLAND

Let us now move north along the Pacific coast to regions where social inequality was hereditary and exceeded that of the Chumash. The social complexity of the Pacific Northwest has often been attributed to its spectacular fish resources, but we believe that there is much more to the story. There were at least two different forms of inequality involved. Sometimes whole kin groups were ranked relative to one another; in such cases a chief was simply the head of a highly ranked kin group. In other cases elite individuals within the same kin group might be ranked relative to one another and the chief. In both systems chiefs displayed their wealth and rank by sponsoring ceremonies at which guests were treated to food and gifts.

There are two conflicting interpretations of these ceremonies. One group of anthropologists considers such “feasts of merit” to have been the mechanism by which chiefs rose to prominence. The chief who threw the most spectacular event, they argue, humiliated his rivals because they could not match his generosity. This scenario is based on the principle that one is shamed by a gift he cannot reciprocate.