The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire by Kent Flannery, Joyce Marcus Read Free Book Online
Authors: Kent Flannery, Joyce Marcus
interact with the Spirit of the Air.
THE NETSILIK ESKIMO AND THE CREATION OF LARGER NETWORKS
The caribou that winter near the tree line in Manitoba migrate north to the Arctic coast in spring. By September they are headed south again. In days of old they had to pass through the land of the Netsilik Eskimo, who used long fences of boulders to divert the caribou toward bowmen.
Anthropologist Asen Balikci describes Netsilik territory as a tundra with lakes and rivers and, near the Arctic coast, saltwater bays. Ringed seals were common in these bays and were easier to hunt in winter, after the caribou had moved south. During that season, with the bays frozen over, seals could be killed at their breathing holes by men waiting with harpoons. The Netsilik also fished for the migratory salmon-trout, or Arctic char, with spears and leisters; they captured seabirds by hurling bolas of stones and thongs.
Like many other Eskimo groups of central and eastern Canada, the Netsilik lived in a society without clans. Female infanticide was frequent but could be forestalled when women were in short supply. At such times the parents of infant girls might be asked to betroth them early. This is a good example of a contradiction in social logic, which can be expressed in the following principles:
1. Male infants are valued because they will become hunters.
2. Female infants are expendable because the Arctic has few plants for women to gather.
3. Hunters need wives to process their caribou and seals.
4. At the moment, there are not enough girls to provide wives for all the young men in the region.
5. Premise 4 trumps premise 2, so female infants are no longer expendable and might even be worth bride service.
SEAL-SHARING PARTNERSHIPS
We come now to a very important Netsilik social strategy called niqaiturasuaktut. That awesome word is the name of a Netsilik meat-sharing partnership, first described in 1956 by a priest from the Pelly Bay Mission, and it has implications far beyond the Netsilik.
Early in the life of a Netsilik boy, his mother chose for him a group of male partners, ideally 12. Close relatives and members of the group who camped with the boy’s family were not eligible; his mother’s goal was to choose individuals who, under ordinary circumstances, would have no close relationship with her son.
Eventually the time came when the boy in question had become a hunter. Waiting silently by a breathing hole in the ice, he saw his chance and harpooned a seal. Ritual demanded that the animal be placed on a layer of fresh snow before being carefully skinned ( Figure 1 ). Though dead, it was given water so that its soul, when reincarnated, would be grateful and allow the seal to be killed again.
Next, the harpooner’s wife cut the seal open lengthwise and divided the meat and blubber into 14 predetermined parts. Twelve of these parts would go to the partners chosen for him. The last two parts, the least desirable, would go to the harpooner himself. The first partner—addressed by the term okpatiga, “my hindquarters”—would receive the okpat or hindquarters of the seal. The second partner—addressed by the term taunungaituga, “my high part”—would receive the taunungaitok or forequarters. Subsequent partners received the lower belly, the side, the neck, the head, the intestines, and so on.
FIGURE 1. Netsilik Eskimo families created social networks through the sharing of seal meat. After laying the dead seal on a layer of clean snow and offering it a drink of water, an Eskimo woman would use her ulu knife to skin it and cut it into 14 portions. (Only 11 of the portions are shown on the diagrams, as the other three are internal.) Twelve of the 14 portions were then given to meat-sharing partners.
Netsilik meat-sharing partnerships could become hereditary. When two adult hunters became habitual partners, they often arranged for their sons to be future partners. If one partner were to die, he
THE NETSILIK ESKIMO AND THE CREATION OF LARGER NETWORKS
The caribou that winter near the tree line in Manitoba migrate north to the Arctic coast in spring. By September they are headed south again. In days of old they had to pass through the land of the Netsilik Eskimo, who used long fences of boulders to divert the caribou toward bowmen.
Anthropologist Asen Balikci describes Netsilik territory as a tundra with lakes and rivers and, near the Arctic coast, saltwater bays. Ringed seals were common in these bays and were easier to hunt in winter, after the caribou had moved south. During that season, with the bays frozen over, seals could be killed at their breathing holes by men waiting with harpoons. The Netsilik also fished for the migratory salmon-trout, or Arctic char, with spears and leisters; they captured seabirds by hurling bolas of stones and thongs.
Like many other Eskimo groups of central and eastern Canada, the Netsilik lived in a society without clans. Female infanticide was frequent but could be forestalled when women were in short supply. At such times the parents of infant girls might be asked to betroth them early. This is a good example of a contradiction in social logic, which can be expressed in the following principles:
1. Male infants are valued because they will become hunters.
2. Female infants are expendable because the Arctic has few plants for women to gather.
3. Hunters need wives to process their caribou and seals.
4. At the moment, there are not enough girls to provide wives for all the young men in the region.
5. Premise 4 trumps premise 2, so female infants are no longer expendable and might even be worth bride service.
SEAL-SHARING PARTNERSHIPS
We come now to a very important Netsilik social strategy called niqaiturasuaktut. That awesome word is the name of a Netsilik meat-sharing partnership, first described in 1956 by a priest from the Pelly Bay Mission, and it has implications far beyond the Netsilik.
Early in the life of a Netsilik boy, his mother chose for him a group of male partners, ideally 12. Close relatives and members of the group who camped with the boy’s family were not eligible; his mother’s goal was to choose individuals who, under ordinary circumstances, would have no close relationship with her son.
Eventually the time came when the boy in question had become a hunter. Waiting silently by a breathing hole in the ice, he saw his chance and harpooned a seal. Ritual demanded that the animal be placed on a layer of fresh snow before being carefully skinned ( Figure 1 ). Though dead, it was given water so that its soul, when reincarnated, would be grateful and allow the seal to be killed again.
Next, the harpooner’s wife cut the seal open lengthwise and divided the meat and blubber into 14 predetermined parts. Twelve of these parts would go to the partners chosen for him. The last two parts, the least desirable, would go to the harpooner himself. The first partner—addressed by the term okpatiga, “my hindquarters”—would receive the okpat or hindquarters of the seal. The second partner—addressed by the term taunungaituga, “my high part”—would receive the taunungaitok or forequarters. Subsequent partners received the lower belly, the side, the neck, the head, the intestines, and so on.
FIGURE 1. Netsilik Eskimo families created social networks through the sharing of seal meat. After laying the dead seal on a layer of clean snow and offering it a drink of water, an Eskimo woman would use her ulu knife to skin it and cut it into 14 portions. (Only 11 of the portions are shown on the diagrams, as the other three are internal.) Twelve of the 14 portions were then given to meat-sharing partners.
Netsilik meat-sharing partnerships could become hereditary. When two adult hunters became habitual partners, they often arranged for their sons to be future partners. If one partner were to die, he
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