Until about
11,000 years ago all humans were foragers, living by hunting, gathering, or
fishing. To study human evolution, and
in particular the interest of this author, the long evolution of collectibles -- non-fungible treasure and fungible
money -- we must try to reconstruct the nature of our ancestral forager
cultures. The ancestors of the vast
majority of currently living people lived in areas that, due to their relative
ecological abundance, have for centuries or millennia since been given over to
agriculture.
One possible
way gather evidence about our ancestral cultures is to study what small
fraction of their artifacts have been preserved by time and dug up by archaeologists. Fortunately one of
the desirable features of collectibles is their durability, so that a
disproportionate number of such artifacts survive. Another way is to study recent
observations that travelers, missionaries, ethnologists, colonial officials,
traders, and the natives themselves made and recorded about forager cultures
that existed in recent times (albeit not
ancestral to the vast majority of today’s humans, but “cousins”), before these
cultures were too severely disrupted by the many global waves of disease and
migration since Columbus.
With extremely few
exceptions, forager cultures either did
not undergo long-term recorded observation by ethnologists before severe
disruption to their native institutions (e.g. most indigenous American tribes,
Andaman Islanders, Ainu, west coast Australian aborigines), or lived in
nutrient-poor wastelands beyond the main streams of human evolution (Kalahari
desert, Australian outback, Arctic, American and Canadian Plains, etc.), living
in cultures far more dispersed and mobile than is likely for the forager
ancestors of most current humans. Some may have been young refugee cultures
fleeing the effects of the Columbian Exchange (for example, the Pirahã
may have lost some important
language features common to practically all other human languages).
By the time of
Columbus, the Americas were the only continents with foraging cultures living
in rich ecosystems – all other rich ecosystems had been converted to
agriculture (as had many, but far from all, in the Americas). Most American
foragers were soon disrupted beyond recognition by the massive waves of
post-Columbian diseases and immigration. The Yurok was a group of indigenous
American foragers with shared language and customs. They lived in a rich dense
ecosystem, yet furthest away from these biological and cultural tsunamis that had
overwhelmed the rest of the post-Columbian Americas. The unique position of the
Yurok and some of its neighboring language groups, especially the Hupa, and Karok or Karuk, (who occupied areas further up the
Klamath River), and the Tolowa
(who occupied the coast further northern into Oregon and the lowest reaches of
the Rogue River) can be visualized by comparing the Yuroks’ territories (their
population lived almost entirely within a few miles of the Pacific Coast and
the lower Klamath River) at the end of the 19th century to the
growing American railroad network. The
Pacific Northwest tribes more famous to anthropology had already been severely
disrupted by the time they were studied by ethnologists. With no ongoing contacts with white immigrants
until 1849, the Yurok and Hupa
did not experience substantial disruption “until
much later than other tribal groups in California and the United States”.
Ethnologists such as Goddard and Kroeber were able to interview Yurok and Hupa people
who had living memories of a minimally disturbed forager culture, including
some who still practiced much of the lifestyle.
 |
|
Railroads (red) within c. 300 miles of the Pacific
coast of the United States in 1890, vs. the extent of the Yurok tribe (blue) at
that time. The Yurok were among the last tribes in the rich ecosystems of the
American Pacific coast to succumb to the overwhelming influences of Western
immigration. As a result, recorded
observations of the Yurok are almost the only ones we have of a forager people
in a rich ecosystem in a nearly undisturbed and long-term equilibrium state.
|
The Pacific Coast of
North America features uneven seasonal rain patterns that make it difficult to
support early forms of agriculture.
Thus, even in nutrient-dense environments such as those populated by the
Yurok , this region was dominated by forager groups.
Even though the
Yurok didn’t have agriculture they did have permanent settlements due to the
rich salmon fishing on the Klamath River. When they finally encountered the
post-Columbian wave of disease, immigration, and modernity in the mid 19th
century (possibly also encountering some of the waves of disease that hit the
Pacific Coast as early as the 18th century), almost every technology the Yurok and
their indigenous neighbors had could probably have been encountered in similar
form along many Eurasian coasts before the dawn of agriculture over ten
thousand years ago, and perhaps even twenty or more thousand years ago. Yurok was one of the very few such cultures, quite possibly similar
to cultures that existed as long as tens of thousands of years ago, whose old
customs were observed and recorded before they converted to modern law, money,
and technology.
The closest
19th century railroad to the Yurok was hundreds of miles away, in contrast to the
more famous tribes of the Pacific Northwest, which were much more disrupted by
immigrants and their new laws before their customs were carefully observed and
recorded. The Yurok were one of
the very few forager cultures living in an abundant ecosystem, yet observed
within recent memory of a probably largely undisturbed long-term equilibrium
cultural state, and the recorded observations of this culture will almost
surely remain among the very few such records.
The Yurok lived in permanent
but very small villages. In 1900 their population was probably (per Kroeber) around 2,500
people living in over 50 such villages: a handful of families per
hamlet.
This represented a population substantially reduced by immigrant-introduced
disease. Since this is estimated to have killed off 75% of the Yurok population in the
second half of the nineteenth century – compared to the 95% death rate of other
indigenous Californians -- the original population may have been around 10,000.
The plurality of the Yurok diet was salmon; they also caught steelhead
trout, lamprey eel, sturgeon, and candlefish on the lower Klamath River. Yurok also gathered acorns and shellfish and
hunted large game (elk, deer, and sea lion).
Salmon were caught by nets, and during the height of salmon migration in
temporary weirs. They were finished off with long spears.
The aboriginal
territory of the Yurok people encompassed riparian lands along the lower forty
miles of the Klamath River, from its confluence with the Trinity River, its
major tributary, to the Pacific Ocean. It also included coastal lands from a
few miles north of the river's month south to Trinidad. … The river was their
world. North, south, east, and west did not exist for them. The only directions
were upriver or downriver. [Lufkin]
Lacking
animals or vehicles to ride, the Yurok often walked. But their main way to
travel long distance was by canoe, in both ocean-going and river-borne forms.
The two most strategic locations for the Yurok were Welkwaw, at the mouth of Klamath River, and Qu’nek,
at the convergence of the Klamath and Trinity rivers.
What the
Yurok could not eat during the spring and fall salmon migrations they preserved
by open-pit smoking. Food and other goods were stored in the many
baskets weaved by Yurok women. Salmon smoking, combined with the other abundant
food sources of the lower Klamath River and ocean environments, made their diet
reliable year-round, despite the boom-or-bust nature of the salmon migrations,
and let them settle in permanent and relatively dense habitations, in contrast
to inland foragers, recently surviving examples of which lived in far sparser
populations and generally moved once to several times per year to follow game.
The Yurok
had no state, government officials, chiefs, or even clan heads. Among the
highest income earners were shamans, usually elderly females, a role that might
be best described in modern cultural terms as combining the role of priest with
that of medical doctor. On the other hand, most important property was owned by
and most important wealth transfers decide by individual adult males, generally
not by females, no matter their earnings, nor by groups. These individuals
sometimes owned fractional shares in some kinds of economic property, for
example in customarily defined spots for salmon fishing.
Inheritances,
and the minority of claims that were not simply individual, were distributed
among variable groups of males defined by their kin distances to the deceased
or the bride. There were no fixed kin
groups; instead “a group of kinsmen shades out … and integrates with others.”
(Kroeber p392). Exogamy and endogamy were also defined this way, with respect
to the variable group that was one’s particular relative kin, rather than with
respect to fixed villages, clans, or any other such groups sometimes found in
other forager cultures.
Forager
societies in general, and indigenous Californian societies in particular, were
usually quite violent, particularly where populations were more dense.
Next only to environmental nutrient
density, violence was probably the main barrier to social scalability
among foragers. Reducing and mitigating this violence so as to allow family and
economic institutions to work was a predominant function of indigenous social
institutions. Violence took every form from one-on-one to small-scale,
gang-like wars, typically between small kin groups.
A leaderless
and policeless social order like that of the Yurok depended more on custom and
supernatural sanctions than modern legal systems do. Yurok
law contained a multitude of specific and negative taboos. The common
expectation that all sides should follow customary rules and, where
appropriate, customary property valuations and exchange rates, reduced
negotiations and arguments, and thus reduced disputes, and thus reduced the
violence that was often engendered by disputes. “Both
marriage and [injury compensation] were definite, commercial, negotiated
transactions ; all property possessed a value fixed by custom, or by previous
changes of ownership, but negotiations were a cause of much dispute, each side
claiming as much as it dared, and usually ending in compromise.” (Quiggins
p296)
The
following kin had priority for inheritance
of the largest pieces of property:
1. sons, but if none
2. brothers, but if none
3. brothers’ sons
Property
rights included incorporeal property, often bundled with corporeal
property. For example dance outfits,
often made at great labor out of deer-skin and rare woodpecker scalps,
demonstrating wealth as splendor and usually passed on as heirlooms, always came bundled with prayers and spells
that only the owner of a particular dance outfit could use.
“[E]very
invasion of privilege or property must be explicitly compensated”. Compensation
usually arrived at by “negotiation of the interested parties and their
representatives, and by them alone” – no chiefs etc., just strong custom and
respect for agreements. “Revenge causes two liabilities [to be compensated in
money and treasure] where one lay before.” (Kroeber p390-2).
For the
purposes of customary exchanges, bridewealth, and compensation for injuries, the
value of property was “either fixed by custom, or can be valued by consideration
of payments made for it in previous changes of ownership.” (Kroeber p392) Yurok law was “almost fully resolvable into
claims for property”. When faced with a
judgment or agreement ending a vendetta,
if a defendant could not cough up the specified value in property,
generally in the form of dentalia money
and non-fungible treasure, he or she became a slave of the plaintiff (the
victim or a deceased victim’s next-of-kin).
Such debt
slavery was the only way a slave could be created among the Yurok, since they
took no male prisoners in the small-scale, gang-like warfare in which ad-hoc
kin groups and allies sometimes engaged when disputes remained unsettled. They
either adopted or returned the women and children prisoners as part of
peace-making settlement (which indeed was not qualitatively distinguished from
the settling of smaller instances of violence).
If a defendant
in a dispute refused to either pay the agreed or adjudged compensation or
submit to debt slavery, vendetta remained. The main outcomes of disputes were
either continued violence, debt slavery, or (the most usual case) a final
transfer of wealth that sufficiently satisfied the disputants, their kin
groups, and third parties to bring an end to vendetta.
Yurok law
was “almost fully resolvable into claims for property” (Kroeber 1925). If a defendant could not pay, he or she
became a slave of the defendant or of a deceased defendant’s next-of-kin.
The Yurok
had at least two common kinds of procedures for settling disputes. The first
was direct negotiations between the disputants, usually including kin or
allies. The second was a procedure whereby each side picked two jurors, who
also acted as intermediaries between the two parties, who would not meet. The first method was more dangerous, as
arguments often escalated into violence.:
 |
|
(Quiggin p294)
|
Among the
Yurok…as typical among less specifically organized people, the ‘court’ was less
definite, but it was nevertheless there. An aggrieved Yurok who felt he had a
legitimate claim engaged the legal services of two nonrelatives from a
community other than his own. The defendant then did likewise. These men were
called ‘crossers’; they crossed back and forth between the litigants. The principals to the dispute ordinarily did
not face each other during the course of the action. After hearing all that each side had to offer
in evidence and pleading as to the relevant substantive law, the crossers
rendered a decision for damages according to a well-established scale that was
known to all. For their footwork and efforts each [crosser] received a piece of
shell currency called a ‘moccasin’.
(Hoebel p25, citing Kroeber, ‘Yurok Law’, 22nd Intl. Congress of Americanists, 1924, p 551).
Dentalia (terk-term in the Yurok
language) was a fungible form of
collectible – essentially money, and called such both by early Western
observers and by the Yurok themselves when they translated their language into
English. Most of the economic and legal
functions of dentalia shells had been
by the 20th century either take over by dollars or obsoleted by the move to the Western legal
system and the abolition of shamans and bridewealth.
Dentalia shells
were counted individually or in groups of five.
The value of a dentalium shell
was judged by its length, longer shells being disproportionately rarer. The
length of dentalia shells judged with
respect to length between finger creases, or by tattoos which themselves had
been made by shells of standard length. (p396).
The technique was the same among the neighboring Hupa:
As all hands and
arms are not of the same length it was necessary for the man on reaching
maturity to establish the values of the creases on his hand by comparison with
money of known length. He had a set of lines tattooed on the inside of the
forearm. These lines indicated the length of 5 shells of the several standards.
This was the principal means of estimating money. The first 5 on the string
were measured by holding the tip of the first shell at the thumbnail and
drawing the string along the arm and noting the tattooed mark reached by the
butt of the fifth shell (Goddard, 1903, p. 446).
 |
|
Mr. McCann [a Hupa, a language group upstream of the Yurok,
with many similar customs] “measuring dentalium shell
money against tattoo marks on his forearm. Photograph by Pliny E. Goddard,
Hoopa, Humboldt County, 1901 (15-2947).” Credit: Hearst Museum
Berkeley. [Source]
|
Collectibles served as money (fungible, divisible, and
transferable wealth) or as treasure (displayable and transferable wealth). The
chief collectibles of the Yurok were:
 |
|
A splendid headdress featuring woodpecker scalps, from
the nearby Tolowa people, 1924. [Source]
|
·
Size-ranked
dentalia constituted the most common
media for satisfying obligations, a standard counter-performance for exchanges,
and as a standard of value for determining the total value of a wealth transfer,
usually from custom, sometimes by negotiation, or a combination thereof, for a
given situation. Dentalia made up a
substantial part of nearly all, but usually less than half of most, of the
value of the largest wealth transfers (shaman or doctor fees, injury
compensation, and bridewealth).
·
Woodpecker
scalps came in two sizes, exchanged at a 6:1 ratio. Besides a store of value they were used to
add splendor to dance headdresses and regalia.
·
Deerskins
(used in dances; the very rare albino pelt was quite valuable)
·
Large
blades of obsidian or flint (the larger ones, either by being rarer or harder
to make, could be quite valuable)
 |
|
Yurok or Karuk obsidian
treasure blades displayed at the Denver Art Museum. The Yurok and their
neighbors, like most other indigenous American tribes, used obsidian in
practical axes, knives, and arrowheads. But they also knapped blades out of
rare large pieces of obsidian and used them for wealth transfer and ceremonial
display [Source]
|
 |
|
Hupa in dance regalia made out of albino deerskin,
which was very rare, and thus valuable as a collectible. [Source]. Ethnographers themselves followed the
collecting instinct: most ethnographic evidence was selected in favor of the
rare and alien and against the regular and normal.
|
An unsettled
vendetta could result in a disproportionate response leading to war. Yurok customary law made “no distinction …
between murder and war.” (Kroeber p420).
War deaths and murder were settled by the same injury compensation rules
(blood money). Yurok peace settlements
involved the same settlement dances and kinds of wealth transfer (albeit
usually on a larger scale) as individual homicide cases,. They did not include tribute, which meant the
victors often had to pay more compensation than the vanquished. Krober recounts one such war (p422):
 |
|
Hupa arrows for fighting and hunting [Source]
|
“A feud of some
note took place between [the villages of] Sregon and Ko’otep. When the leading
man [richest man and leader of this war party – not a permanent official] lost
his brother by sickness, he accused an inhabitant of [one of the small villages
of] Wohtek or Wohkero of having poisoned him. The suspect was soon killed from
ambush. After this a Sregon man was attacked and killed at Ko’otep, which is
only a short distance from Wohtek. The act involved the people of Ko’otep,
which was at that time a large village. After a time, settlement was proposed,
and the two parties met at an open place below Sregon to conclude the
negotiations. Each side was ready to make a customary [settlement] dance, when
some one fired a shot. In the fight that ensued, a [village of] Meta ally of
the Sregon people was killed. The headman of Sregon now went down river with
his friends and lay in wait at an overhanging and bush bank near Serper, where
the current takes boats close in to shore. When a canoe of his foes came up, he
attacked it and killed four of the inmates. The feud went on for some time.
Sregon, never a large village, fought, with only some aid from Meta, against
Ko’otep, Wohtek, and Pekwan, but lost only 3 men to 10 of their
opponents’. The headman at Sregon was
sufficiently wealthy, when settlement came, to pay for all the satisfaction he
had earned [i.e. the blood money for the 11 men killed by his side]. He once
said with reference to this experience in this and other feuds, that open
battles often took place without anyone being killed. Somehow men are hard to
hit, he philosophized: arrows have a way of flying past a human being when a
hunter is sure to strike a deer at the same distance….” (Kroeber p422)
Because dentalia was the main way to avoid
violence and enslavement, win the best bride, and pay for spiritual and medical
services, the Yurok in consequence had a strong desire to acquire dentalia:
They are firmly convinced that persistent
thinking about money will bring it. Particularly is this believed to be true
while one is engaged in any sweat-house occupation. Asaman climbs the hill to gather
sweat-house wood always a meritorious practice, ... he puts his mind on dentalia. He makes himself see them
along the trail or hanging from fir trees eating the leaves. ... In the
sweat-house he looks until he sees more money-shells perhaps peering at him
through the door. When he goes down to the river he stares into it and at last
may discern a shell as large as a salmon, with gills Working like those of a
fish. . . . Saying a thing with sufficient intensity and frequency was a means
towards bringing it about. A man often kept calling ' I want to be rich ' or '
I wish dentalia ' perhaps weeping at
the same time…(Kroeber 1925, p 41)
 |
|
Tolowa man measuring a dentalia shell string “thumb to shoulder”. [Source]
|
|
Length of
shell (estimated by length between finger creases or tattoo marks that had
been measured from standard shells; translated into English inches)
|
Shells to
a string of “thumb to shoulder” length (about 27 and ½ inches)
|
Rough
typical value of shell in c. 2010s U.S. dollars, based on c. 1900 dollar
value in trade with white immigrants and internal exchange after
incorporation of U.S. money
|
|
2 ½
|
11
|
$150
|
|
2 5/16
|
12
|
$90
|
|
2 1/8
|
13
|
$30
|
|
2
|
14
|
$15
|
|
1 7/8
|
15
|
$7.50
|
The dentalia used by the Yurok and
neighboring tribes came via repeated transfers from distant parts north. Dentalia
are found on the Pacific Coast above the 49th parallel. In the waters off the Vancouver and Queen
Charlotte Islands, indigenous peoples dredged live shells from a sea bottom
tens of feet below the surface. “They let down long poles to which
are attached pieces of wood fitted with spikes or teeth, between which the
shells become fixed.” Shells
harvested live have, even many decades after having been killed, a different
color than the dead dentalia shells
that commonly wash up on many Pacific Coast beaches. The former were valued as
scarce collectibles; the latter were not, and were not used by the Yurok or
their neighbors.
(Quiggins, p293-4)
 |
|
Dentalia
shell string and Northern California elk antler
purse for holding it. Probably Hupa. 1800s. [Source]
|
Yurok cosmology
– their view of the shape and size of the universe -- was largely bounded by
their personal experience and defined by the topology of the Pacific Coast and
the flow of the lower Klamath River and its immediate tributaries. Dentalia were obtained from transfers
down the Pacific Coast, from tribes further north, including trade in various
treasures and slaves with some Pacific Northwest tribes. “They speak in their
traditions of … strange but enviable peoples … who suck the flesh out of the [dentalia] univalves.” (Kroeber p394) As dentalia
percolated down the coast, their scarcity rose and their exchange rate
strengthened. “In Northern Oregon or
among the Yurok a slave was worth 1 string. Among the Nootka [who harvested the live dentalia off Vancouver Island], it took
5 fathoms to buy a slave.” (Einzig p173).
 |
|
Primary (net) directions of dentalia shell
transfers along the two topological axes of the Yurok: south along the Pacific
coast and up the Klamath River system.
The source of dentalia used by
the Yurok as a fungible media for the satisfaction of obligations was far from
local; the main source was probably the Vancouver Islands in British Columbia.
(The long distance of users from the
source ensured unforgeable costliness, i.e. a reliably and securely constrained
supply curve, a pattern repeated with many other instances of shell and stone
money).
|
As with the kula ring of Melanesia, the net flow of specific
transfers of dentalia shells followed
a geographical network, in this case from a source in the distant northern
Pacific Coast to sinks further south along that coast and up the Klamath River.
Many of the traditional stories
of the Yurok involve dentalia. At least one such story follows the journey
of two characters along this network -- down the Pacific coast and up the
Klamath River -- and how they dispense of their shells. Their dentalia are in demand in some [hamlets]
(or the hamlets are friendly, and allow them to trade), and not in other ones
(or they are hostile). Various payments do or do not occur as our characters
take follow the main flow of dentalia up the Klamath River. (Kroeber p397)
Two other
marine shells were often used as fungible money among the indigenous peoples of
western North America, even well inland, but not among coastal peoples such as
the Yurok:
 |
|
Hupa shaman [Source].
|
Other
shells used as currency in the Western States included olivella and
pieces of [the abalone shell] haliotis. The latter was in various
denominations according to its size... The value of pieces of the same size
varied according to the degree of their brilliance. There was a time when one
single shell bought a horse in New Mexico. (Einzig p173)
Haliotis shells “were
traded all down the West Coast from Alaska to Mexico” (Quiggin p299) But among the Yurok, the haliotis shell was common enough in the local environment that it
was only used whole, as a pendant with minor treasure value. Olivella was also locally abundant and
used liberally as an ornament, but not as substantial money or treasure. With
both fungible money and non-fungible treasure, we again see the signature
economics of collectibles at work: the unique interplay between supply and
demand, in particular the demand for scarce supply, which distinguishes a
collectible from a normal commodity.
The main kinds of Yurok obligations or deals, and the wealth
transfers that satisfied them.
|
Obligation
|
Type of
wealth
|
|
Shaman fees
|
Any kind of collectible treasure or the
occasional useful good of great value (e.g. canoe), almost always including
some dentalium but usually for no
more than half the value. Most common treasures used in these larger wealth
transfers were woodpecker scalps and large stone blades.
|
|
Injury compensation
|
Similar variety and frequency of items as
for shaman fees
|
|
Bridewealth
Recipient priority (p401):
1.
father of bride
2.
brothers of bride
3.
uncles of bride
|
Similar variety and frequency of items as for shaman fees (Quiggin
p296) “There was no
fixed price, for that depended on the rank and wealth of the individual, and
social status depended on the amount paid.” (Kroeber, 1925, pp. 21-2). Sometimes there were dowry
counter-payments, e.g. if the bride’s father was particularly wealthy.
|
|
Divorce (p402-3)
any time at a woman’s choice, as long as her kin repays
man must show just cause to convince her kin to repay
|
Repayment depended on fertility:
She died early => partial repayment
Ongoing infertility => partial repayment
Each child she bore => smaller repayment
upon divorce, death, or subsequent infertility.
|
|
Exchange
|
Usually dentalia
could be used to purchase a wide variety of treasures, useful goods,
fishing rights, hunting rights,
incorporeal rights (e.g. rights to say prayers and cast spells), etc.
at either customary or negotiated exchange rates
|
Dentalia, unlike treasure, was fungible and divisible. In consequence the values of individual
pieces of treasure, expressed as the Yurok did in terms of their customary or
most recent exchange rate into dentalia,
could in principle have been counted, summed, and subtracted to compute a net
settlement in satisfaction of two opposing obligations. In practice, the
indigenous Californians lacked calculating devices for accomplishing this –
they had neither any sort of abacus nor methods of algorithmic writing used in
Eurasia. Because of such difficulties in computing and thus comparing the
values of money and treasure, bilateral large payments (such as bridewealth and
dowry in a marriage, or bilateral damages incurred in a war) that included such
treasures, as they almost always did, were not net settled, but instead each
side paid in full. If two men married
each others’ sisters, each paid the full bridewealth to the other (Quiggin
p296).
Property
with concrete utility was also sometimes used as part of large wealth
transfers, albeit far less commonly than collectibles:
·
Fishing
rights
·
Hunting
rights
·
Canoes
(cross-river ferries, up-and-down-river polling-and-paddling, ocean-going
paddling)
·
Slaves
About five
percent of the population were slaves. They “entered into this condition solely
through debt, never through violence” –
adult male prisoners of war were killed, with women and children returned upon
settlement or adopted. The debt was
almost always incurred in a dispute settlement – if the adjudged party could
not pay the amount in question, whether through dentalia or other treasures or property, they became the slave of the
adjudged victim.
Fishing sites were
(and to a great extent still are) considered privately owned and
transferable. Fishing rights could be
loaned for a portion of the harvest. Owners of the best sites were envied
“aristocrats”. (Lufkin). “Prolific
eddies” were defined as discrete fishing spots by custom, which generally
forbade the establishment of new locations, since these would usually degrade
the fishing in current locations. A fishing spot could be individually owned,
but since it usually generated more food than a family could eat, the spot was
more often jointly owned in fractional shares by several men, who then used the
spot in rotation. The shares were
inheritable and sellable as individual property. (Kroeber p405)
 |
|
A Yurok man fishes for salmon
with a plunge net at pame-kya’-ra-m, a “usual and accustomed” fishing site on
the Klamath River, California, before 1898.
[Source]
|
If a piece
of land was less than a mile or so from rivers or coast (the main sources of
the Yuroks’ food) and good hunting, it was likely to be privately owned,
meaning one needed the permission of the owner to hunt on it; otherwise it was common
and permissionless. Deer and elk were the principle prey – smaller game were
scarce or otherwise not worth the trouble. Special rights pertained to taking sea lions
on the coast. The only punishable kind of trespassing was poaching, and
poachers could be shot without incurring a blood money liability. (Kroeber p406).
A case of
positive claim-rights to sea-lion flippers described by Hoebel illustrates a
cycle of broken-down negotiations and revenge, culminating in a property
settlement that satisfied principles and kin sufficiently to terminate the
vendetta. A certain M had a generally
acknowledged hereditary claim to have handed over to him the flippers of all
sea-lions taken on a certain 4-mile section of beach. (Apparently sea lion flippers can be made into
boots that grip slippery surfaces, fishing net floats, or glue, and at least
farther up the Pacific Coast flipper meat was widely considered to be great
delicacy: [Source]). A certain L allegedly killed sea-lions on the
beach but kept their flippers in violation of M’s claim. A series of attack,
claim, counter-attack, etc., including murder of L by M, eventually led to a settlement
with L’s next-of-kin receiving the sea lion flipper claim rights that started
the dispute. (Hoebel p54-55)
 |
|
Yurok
canoe on the Trinity River, c. 1923. [Source]
|
Conclusion
The ability
to transfer wealth was crucial during many events critical to the Darwinian
fitness of evolving humans, especially death (inheritance), dispute settlement,
and marriage. With the Yurok and their
neighboring tribes, this wealth typically took the form of collectibles that
lacked concrete use – either non-fungible treasure, which came in a variety of
forms, or fungible money in the form of dentalia
shells and strings of same. The use
of money and treasure in some transactions (e.g. for use mitigating violence)
made it available and encouraged its use in others (e.g. trade).
Collectibles
involved a unique interplay of supply and demand whereby demand was based in
large part on a predictable constraint in supply. A common way cultures met this constraint was
by using collectibles that originated in a very distant region and percolated
into the local region via a relatively constant stream of transfers (which
could be long-distance trade, but could also be a series of transfers
themselves as injury compensation or bridewealth). Collectibles flowed from
relatively plentiful at the origin to relatively scarce in the region they are used
as collectibles. For fungible and divisible collectibles such as dentalia shells, they worked best as
money where a geographical balance was struck between sufficient scarcity for
value density and sufficient abundance to allow for its divisibility and
fungibility. Such a collectible could be put to best use as money in a
“Goldilocks region” in between where it was overly scarce and where it was
overly abundant.
References
Lufkin,
Alan, editor. California's Salmon and Steelhead: The Struggle to
Restore an Imperiled Resource, chapter
2. Berkeley: University of California Press,
c1991. [Link]
E. Adamson
Hoebel, The Law of Primitive Man, Atheneum
/ Harvard University Press 1954
Kroeber,
A.L., Handbook of the Indians of
California, Chapter 2, as reprinted in R.F. Heizer and M.A. Whipple eds., The California Indians: A Sourcebook, University
of California Press 1971
Kroeber, A. L., Handbook
of the Indians of California , Bureau Amer. Ethn. Bull., 1925, as cited in
Quiggins op. cit.
Goddard,P.E., Life and Culture of the Hupa, The University Press, 1903. [Link]
A. Hingston
Quiggin, A Survey of Primitive Money, Methuen
& Co. Ltd. 1949
Paul Einzig,
Primtive Money, 2nd ed., Pergamon Press 1966.