Going “Tribal”

Few anthropologists today would consider using the term “tribe” as an analytical category, or even as a concept for practical application. Years ago, Morton Fried observed that “many anthropologists have attempted to avoid the word, or deliberately isolate it in inverted commas” because of its persistent ambiguities. ¹ In common usage, it has tended to acquire two interrelated meanings. Historians, political scientists, and the public have used “tribe” to describe archaic, “savage,” or non-literate peoples; for example, ancient Germanic tribes. At the same time, government officials have frequently adopted it as an administrative category for classifying colonized groups across Africa, Asia, and North America. In the United States, the concept of tribe was employed during the nineteenth century to refer to Native American groups in both senses: as uncivilized savages and as subjects to be relocated and administered by the War Department’s Office of Indian Affairs—an early example of American cultural militarization that suggests a pattern of continuity spanning much of our country’s history. Often, the “tribe” was not so much a model of reality as it was a model for reality—for an imagined future that was eventually realized by military means.