Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

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Title: The Nature of the Land-Holding Group Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection # of Pages: 7 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-09-03 14:31:16 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 05:53:18 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 05:53:18

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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—_ Ethnohist Athabascans from Wailaki to Whilkut, for most of the Win Maidu and Nisenan. But such broken indications as we h» yoint to either lineage or tribelet organization and land ow; ,in these obscure areas. Vv I believe that from Oregon north to Alaska native society anized on bases similar to the Californian tribelet and line ily pride, wealth ostentation, an art devoted to a sort of h -y of descent, and exogamic formalizations give this north: stal organization an aspect that superficially often seems . inctive. Yet I believe that except for variations of the sort ited, and perhaps minor ones of populational size dependen: logy, the delimitation of political and land-owning units was dlar to that of native California. Many years ago, in 1923, ! bted aloud in print whether there had existed a genuine “tr: che Pacific coast of North America. It is impossible fully to examine continental conditions in ° sent compass. There were tribes that fitted our conventio: ige of the tribe: in the Plains, perhaps also in the East; the: -e more groups that did not fit it. The ethnic nationality is e, as having been usual in most of the United States and Ca: is the band-village-community-tribelet group. “The tribe” : uinority phenomenon. It might yet prove to be wholly a phe: in of Caucasian contact, construal, pressure, or administra’ venience. This is at least a problem to be kept in mind. The Southwestern pueblo is on the one hand a tiny city, on other a sort of theocratic tribe. Yet how many pueblos hac julation of under 500, how many of more — anciently and now the first event they were of tribelet size, in the latter like bes. Six to eight Hopi towns, before their fissions, with 2,200 ils in'them, were surely in the tribelet range. Zuni, with 1,60% en I knew it and perhaps 2,500 now, is the full equivalent of a be; but Zuni is the Spanish consolidation of the seven “cities” Land-Holding Group 313 of Cibola, and has been further held together by an indivisible Spanish land grant to the community and a fairly generous Amer‘can reservation. High cultural Mexico was a region of nationalities, some aumbering in the hundreds of thousands of population; and, within these, it was also a region of city-states, in the strictest sense {that term. Except beyond the peripheries, and possibly here ind there in minute mountainous enclaves, it can be doubted whether central and southern Mexico held anything that was genuinely a “tribe.” VI The total drift is this. The more we review aboriginal Amer:ca, the less certain does any consistently recurring phenomenon secome that matches with our usual conventional concept of tribe; nd the more largely does this concept appear to be a White man’$ reation of convenience for talking about Indians, negotiating with them, administering them — and finally impressed upon their own thinking by our sheer weight. It cannot yet be fairly affirmed that ‘he current concept of tribe is wholly that. But it certainly is ‘hat in great part; and the time may have come to examine whether ‘tis not overwhelmingly such a construct. The larger nationalities, ethnic but non-political, are sure. So are smaller units, whether they be called villages, bands, towns, tribelets, lineages, or some‘hing else — and they no doubt varied regionally in kind and in function. On the whole, it was these smaller communities that vere independent, sovereign, and held and used a territory. The tribe is the least defined and the least certain in the chain of native socio-political units. How does this interpretation affect the pending Indian land claim exsedg On a narrow technical construal, it might affect them adversely, because the claims have largely been presented in the frame ofa “tribal” presupposition. ee PRS Ty PC eee TERE Fo AIR