Tribe and Tribal Boundaries

One of the more vexing problems with which students of primitive social organization have been concerned is that of the definition and characterization of the tribe. The term has been applied almost casually to a variety of social groupings ranging in size and complexity from a wandering family or polygynous household to West African kingdoms and New World empires. And while nominal precision may sometimes be unimportant if one goes on to specify the form and functioning of the group under consideration, there is no question that careless use of the term tribe has often contributed to important misunderstandings about the nature of a particular group. It should, of course, be pointed out that anthropologists and others have in a sense inheritedW many of the tribes to which, with frequent indiscrimination, they often apply the label. Early explorers, traders, trappers and missionaries themselves used the designation so haphazardly that they presented us with a remarkable proliferation of aboriginal groupings which often defied not only identification, but understanding and analysis as well. To their

Ancient history · Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Sociology · Tribe · African history and culture analysis · Anthropology · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · History · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology

• The Political Context of a New Indian History

  R F Berkhofer•Pacific Historical Review•1971

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• Thomas F.Thornton. Being and Place among the Tlingit. Seattle

  Open Access•Robert L Clark, Ying Yang•North American Dialogue•2012

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• Ethnohistory's Ethnohistory

  Open Access•Michael E Harkin•Social Science History•2010

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• The Tribe as a Unit of Subsistence

  Open Access•Emanuel Marx•American Anthropologist•1977

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