tribe

Lakota Sioux, Rosebud Reservation, 2007

A tribe is a people with a common language, religion, culture and bloodline who are seen as being uncivilized (not living in cities) or newly civilized. The civilized counterpart is called an ethnic group. Both lack their own standing army. “Tribal” is the adjective, a loaded, Eurocentric way of saying non-white and backward at the same time.

Tribes are found in Africa, Arabia, Siberia, India, South East Asia, Australia, the Pacific and the Americas.

The word comes from Latin. The “tri” probably means three because the word was first applied to the three tribes of the Roman state: the Latins, Sabines and Etruscans. Thus the idea of tribes being less than a country, nation or state.

Tribe comes to English by way of French by way of the Latin Bible, which speaks of the 12 tribes of Israel. Each tribe came from one of the 12 sons of Jacob. Thus the idea of tribes having a common bloodline or ancestor.

The idea of tribes being backward comes from the Romans. In the days of the Empire they fought against the Germans, whom they saw as being made up of barbarian tribes led by chiefs. But they were not as backward as commonly supposed in imperial propaganda: some of these “chiefs” lived in palaces, like they were kings or something.

When the “Germanic tribes” took over the western part of the Empire, the chiefs and tribes became, suddenly, kings and kingdoms. They were no longer seen as ranging about like wild animals beyond the outer reaches of the Empire. Some of these kingdoms became what we call England.

The change, though, seems to be not so much one of social evolution but of power, particularly the power of writing one’s own history. When they appear in Roman history they are tribes. In their own history they are kingdoms. The Germanic “tribes” had had kings for at least a thousand years before the fall of Rome.

In the 1600s and 1700s Anglos saw Native Americans mainly as  “nations”, not “tribes”. “Nation” is the term the Bible uses for a foreign people, it is where the word “ethnic” comes from by way of Greek. You still see this use in the “First Nations” of Canada and the “Five Nations” of the Iroquois.

Anglos at first saw Native Americans as having governments and kings. Thus Pocahontas is a “princess”. Nor was it merely a “primitive” form of government: Iroquois government was a model for American government.

In the 1800s, as Anglos took over most of North America, “nation” gave way to the “tribe” and “chief” of Roman imperialism, downgrading Native Americans. The trouble with “nations” and “governments” is that they have fixed lands and sovereign power that you are bound to respect short of war. Tribes and chiefs do not suffer from that inconvenience.

Special parallel vocabulary: 

• hut, not house
• chief, not leader, king, etc
• medicine man or healer, not doctor
• warrior, not soldier
• tribal lands, not land or country
• tribal knowledge, not science
• village, not town

See also:

• ethnic group
• race
• style guide: Eurocentric words
• tribal nudity – National Geographic style
• human zoos
• Native Americans
  • The term “Indian”
  • Iroquois
  • Notes on how not to write about Native Americans
  • The lies you were taught about Native Americans
• A Guide to Germanics