Proverbs

[rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu]

>> Rory said:
>> If we find proverbs to be almost non-existent in some cultural
>> regions, and overpowering in others, then perhaps their presence or
>> absence is an indicator of differences in the historical life
>> circumstances of the people living in these respective regions.

> John replied:
> I'd agree that that's a likely hypothesis, but my understanding is that
it
> is widely agreed that the Mississippian cultures were in many cases
> chiefdoms.  [...]

I concede that the Mississippian cultures might be problematic to
my hypothesis.  I can think of at least three possible defenses:

1) They might not have been around long enough to have developed
   a tradition of proverbs.

   But they did flourish for over half a millennium, which ought
   to be plenty of time if the hypothesis is really any good.  I
   don't want to go this route.

2) The languages with which we are familiar when we say we do not
   find much in the way of proverbs in aboriginal North America may
   be of peoples who did not participate centrally in the Mississippian
   chiefdoms.  Siouan is questionable in this regard.  What about
   the situation in Muskogean, Cherokee and Natchez?  If they are
   equally non-proverbial, that would pretty well settle this doubt.

3) At the risk of reopening an argument I had with my North American
   Archaeology professor last spring, which turned unexpectedly ugly,
   I'd like to register my doubt that the Mississippian societies
   were necessarily chiefdoms in the sense that we usually think of
   when we use that term.  I don't mean to imply that they did not
   have chiefs; after all, so did many of the Plains Indian societies
   with which we Siouanists are most familiar, but which are not
   generally called chiefdoms.  I also don't mean to imply that the
   chiefs were not elevated very high, perhaps even to semi-divine
   status.  The one historical account I have heard of, relating to
   the Natchez, describes a supreme ruler called the Great Sun, who
   headed an exogamous matrilineal royal clan.  Everyone outside of
   that clan was a Stinker, including, of course, the Great Sun's own
   father, children and inlaws.  (I'm going off memory from a popular
   rendition; I think this is right.)

   In temporate European history, the Celtic and Germanic societies
   around the time of the Roman Empire were pretty certainly what we
   would consider chiefdoms.  But some two to three millennia earlier
   there had already appeared monumental central places like Stonehenge,
   Avebury and Silbury Hill, which might be reasonably comparable to
   the temple mounds and other works of the Mississippian period in
   North America.  The societies that built these European monuments
   are also generally believed to have been chiefdoms.  If so, were
   they sociologically more comparable to the historically recorded
   chiefdoms of the Roman period two or three millennia later, or
   to the presumably tribal societies that had immediately preceded
   them?

   What I suggest is that "chiefdom" covers a range of societal
   forms that may span thousands of years of gradual evolution from
   "tribal" to "feudal" or "state".  Its earlier phases would be
   nearer "tribal" and its later phases would be nearer "feudal" or
   "state".  Its earlier phases might be ethnographically unrecorded
   due to the accident of no major, undevastated regions of the world
   happening to be in these phases in the past two hundred years that
   Westerners have been scientifically researching foreign societies.
   In this case, use of the term "chiefdom", with all its
   "late-chiefdom" ethnological connotations, may seriously prejudice
   our interpretation of archaeologically recorded societies that are
   in fact "early-chiefdom".

   How would an "early-chiefdom" compare with a "late-chiefdom"?  I
   would think that in an "early-chiefdom" society, each person would
   still belong to a discrete band and tribe which moved, foraged and
   acted together.  There would still be unclaimed areas of terrain
   available to shift to if one's current area became untenable.  The
   chiefdom would initially be a formal, permanent federation for
   defense, and for the controlled exploitation and redistribution of
   exotic goods brought into the common territory.  The chief at this
   stage might be primarily a sacred figurehead accepted by the leaders
   of the various constituent bands, who could always defect to another
   chiefdom if they wished.  The federation would have a central
   ceremonial site, upon which its members would invest much patriotic
   labor to make it appear as formidable as possible to all onlookers.
   Participating bands and individuals would be rewarded in the coin
   of special honors and rights within the federal community.  The
   chief would have little direct power over his people.  Freedom of
   speech would usually be safe, since most of one's life is spent
   within one's own band, which can always move if threatened, and
   within which one's own personal position is secure.

   A "late-chiefdom" would be a much more rooted society.  Virtually
   all available subsistence terrain would already be owned by
   someone, so being forced to move would be a serious hardship.
   Resource exploitation would be intense, and almost everything
   useful would be owned.  Corporate kinship groups, perhaps
   descended from the original bands, would still exist, but would
   tend to be extended networks converging on locally important
   individuals and families rather than discrete units.  Closeness
   of kinship to powerful individuals would be more important than
   simply belonging to their division.  Many people would be mere
   household hangers-on, living at the tolerance of those who
   actually owned the resources, and doing their bidding.  Some
   would achieve a measure of independence by specializing in some
   craft, and bartering their product for their necessities.  In
   this type of society, we would see formalized ownership of
   terrain, craft specialization, intensive quid-pro-quo commerce,
   slavery and other household dependency relations, peddlers of
   charms and superstitions, and probably the development of
   proverbs, riddles and other genres of cryptical rhetoric.
   This is what I usually have in mind when I think of
   chiefdom-level society.  It might or might not be headed by a
   chief.

   So this is my third, and preferred defense: that Mississippian
   societies (and 3rd millennium B.C. temperate European societies)
   are examples of my proposed "early-chiefdom" societies, and
   despite their chiefs and monumental central places were not any
   too different sociologically from the Indians found in eastern
   temperate North America in the last four hundred years.

   Rory