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Clans & Totemism |
Clans as Exogomous Marital Units, Economic function of Clans, Cutlural Functions, Women and the Female Clans , Clan Impersonation, Destruction of the Clans in Colonial times |
In Pre-Columbian times, reverence for animals existed alongside the all-pervasive totemism, which made Bergonia unique among the world's cultures. Generally totemism divides society into co-equal divisions, each one marked by its mystical relationship or kinship with a particular plant or animal.
Many tribal cultures around the world have totemistic clan systems, where every member belongs to a clan, often represented by an animal totem. But in Bergonia the clans not only survived the Neolithic transition into the agriculture era, but even survived the transition into urban culture. The caste system makes India unique among the world's cultures; likewise the clan system was unique to classical Bergonian culture.
Hunting and gathering cultures throughout the world think totemistically. For these small cultures totemism provided a system of horizontal stratification-- a society divided into multiple groups all equal to one another. Just as the natural world (to them) consisted of equal animal brothers, so did the human world consist of equal clans.
Totemism in Eurasia withered and died after these societies took up agriculture in the great Neolithic Revolution. Farming allowed the population to grow, and the societies transmuted. Kings replaced tribal chiefs, and professional priests replaced the shaman. With kings (with attending armies and bureaucracies) and priests, work became specialized. The population stratified into unequal vertical layers-- in other words, unequal social classes.
Perhaps the transmutation from hunting-gathering to agriculture necessarily entailed the replacement of clans with social classes. The Roman "tribes" in the early days of the Republic dissolved as differences between Patricians and Plebeians classes crystallized. However, in Bergonia the totemistic clans persisted into the agricultural era. Rather than dissolving as social classes crystallized, the clans became the organizing principle for all society. This happened in some part because the banda warrior class that came to dominate society remained strictly organized along clan lines. This also happened because the Prophet Ierecina explicitly sanctified the clan system and insisted on its observances. Bu the clan system remained strongest among the peasants-- each village was populated by people of the same clan.
Only the hunter walked the bridge of action between clan animals and men, and in Bergonia the hunter in legendary and anthropological history became the banda warrior. Hunting rituals, at least for the warrior class, remained essential to the initiation of boys into manhood. All (male) initiation rites were administered by the Clan brotherhood in clan lodges. Over time tribal warriors organized into bands, and then into permanent associations, then militias, and finally standing armies. regiments, according to clan affiliation. at every stage of this development, the warriors steadfastly grouped and sorted themselves according to clan affiliation. Generally, and certainly preferably, Bear warriors fought and bivouacked only with Bear warriors, and fight with a Bear commander. An army might have a Bear regiment, a Hawk regiment and a Rattlesnake regiment, who all fought bravely together but still segregated.
Tradition has recognized 31 clans, each carrying the image and name of a wild animal-- some birds (e.g. eagle, hawk, heron), two insects (spider, mantis), a reptile (snapping turtle), no fish, the rest mammals. None are domesticated animals. One clan bears the image of the Wild-Sheep (the Ram) of the mountains, while Bergonians domesticated a smaller cousin three millennia ago. All canine species, according to the clan-logic, are domesticated, but there is no Vishget clan, and the vishgret is a wild dog.
The clans never functioned as occupation-defining caste, but in many instances functioned as "negative-caste." For example, tradition insured that Wild-Sheep clansmen never became shepherds, Deer clansmen never kept deerskins, and Spider clansmen never worked in rope or textiles. More inexplicably, Bear clansmen never work as metallurgists, and Rattlesnake clansmen never work as porters. Neither of the two Monkey clans ever worked in timbering or wood working.
Marriage: The device that thoroughly guaranteed the persistence of the clan system into agricultural and urban times was the ironclad Rule of Clan Exogamy, which prohibited two people of the same clan from marrying. This is the rule that the Prophet Ierecina sanctified. Time carved this rule deep into the bedrock of the Bergonian psyche. People of the same clan who married committed incest and suffered banishment. Poems and "laments" (an ever-popular genre of song) repeat this theme again and again: a young man and a maid spy one another and become smitten with each other's beauty, but then sadly learn that they belong to the same clan. But in the three thousand years of Bergonian literature, not a single poem or story survives which portrays two lovers of the same clan sympathetically. There are stories about heroes and stalwarts who suddenly fall into illicit love-- but the stories portray them as madmen, craven, as having voluntarily departed the pale of Gods and men--self-banishment. To the Bergonian mind, the tragedy is that even good people can fall into madness and corruption.
* * *
June 1997
The Clans in
Detail
The clan system
stands out as the most distinctive feature of Pre-Columbian Bergonian culture. just as the Caste system is the most prominent feature of Hindu society.
In Pre-Columbian times the clan system was the mortar
that held together the brick, much as the caste system gave sociological
cohesion to Hindu society. Apparently
most--but not all-- the Neolithic cultures in prehistoric Bergonia
incorporated stringent clan systems.
In Kuan culture the bonds of the clan system loosened, but in
Ancita and other Nacateca cultures, the clan system engendered a number of
mandatory rules. These rules
passed into the body of Ierecina's teaching, so that when Ancita
warriors swept eastward they carried with them these rules, so
Shufranti religion buttressed the clan system.
Tribal totem and clan
systems in other parts of the world have not survived the advent of
Neolithic civilization. Tribes
and clans persisted into the early days of Roman civilization. But because Bergonia’s prophet explicitly endorsed
totemistic clans, his religion made clans a part of the new social order
it formed. Thus, as Shufrantei civilization coalesced and took hold from
west to east, the clan system became integral.
As Bergonian
civilization matured over the centuries, with waves of social, cultural
and religious transmutations, the clan system persisted
as its durable bedrock and did not suffer significant diminishment
until the European onslaught. The disastrous waves of epidemic disease nearly
destroyed all Bergonian institutions, including the clan system.
After disease killed off most of the native population, the Christian priests and
missionaries inveighed against the clan system, which they saw as a
feature of native religion. Nevertheless,
the clan system survived the disastrous 1500's in truncated
form, loosing its mandatory characteristic and hence many of its
powerful features. But,
though modified, it has managed to survive to the present.
Similar clan
systems existed in many tribal societies throughout the world. Clan systems also
existed in archaic
pre-industrial cultures, such as Aztec, ancient Egyptian, and Arabic.
However, none of these systems dominated their societies
to the same degree as the Bergonian, and none proved as durable, with
strength sufficient to survive the Industrial Revolution and the attendant
urbanization to the present day. It
is a peculiar example of how a prehistoric cultural trait has been
adaptable to many social changes, in perhaps a way similar to Hindu castes.
The
clans took their names from wild animal totems.
The ten most common names were: Preba, Boar, Bear,
Hawk, Spider, Deer, Fox, Eagle, Rattlesnake, and Raccoon.
The clans adopted mostly carnivorous animals, but some distinctly
herbivorous. No clan has ever
adopted a tame animal as its totem, and none adopted fish, save among the Pasan and Svegon, peoples marginal to Shufrantei culture.
Among the Svegon, who lived on the islands of the Sargaso Sea, the
most common clan names were: shark, dolphin, hawk, preba, and gull.
Among the Minidun and Nacateca people, who comprised Shufrantei
civilization, 32 clans existed. 32
holds significance in Bergonian numerology, because of the significance of
the numbers 4 and 8.
Individuals, both men
and women, inherited their clan membership from their fathers, as
well as their surnames. They
perceived their clan as their extended families, and all the
members of a single clan regarded each other as "cousins."
From this fundamental perception came the ironclad rule that
one must marry outside the clan. To
marry someone of the same clan amounted to incest.
While clan incest did not produce the same degree of anathema
as brother-sister or parent-child incest, it sufficed to
evoke outrage, scandal and criminal sanctions.
The
clan as also served important economic and cultural functions, both in
terms of mutual aid, training youth and collectively maintaining the
rituals of the life cycle.
1.
The Marital Unit
In Pre-Columbian Bergonia
the Clans operated to determine who may marry whom.
This rule applied strictly all throughout Bergonian
history until the plagues scrambled
everything. Their violation incurred an anathema, since everyone
universally regarded as incestuous any union between two members of the
same clan. The rule laid down
a simple bar: one could not marry one who belongs to the same clan, but
one could marry any person of any other clan.
The strictness of the rule declared that one could not even
sleep with one of the same clan. All persons, whether male or female, of the same clan recognize
each other as "cousins." Any
woman whom a man accosted or who needed protection could expect
help from any nearby clan brother, no matter that they had never seen each
other before.
If a man and
woman engaged in flirtation with one another, the most basic Bergonian
common sense required that the man swiftly proclaim his clan identity.
Etiquette required that the man directly proclaim his clan
affiliation when he introduces himself, and etiquette also
forbade him from directly inquiring as to her clan.
If the woman found that the man belonged to her clan, she had to
acknowledge him as a clan brother immediately after he identified himself,
in order to prevent any further development of mutual interest.
However, this etiquette produced an interesting devise which
could promote flirtation as well as halt it in appropriate instances.
After the man casually mentioned his clan, the woman could remain
a discrete silence, which signaled to him that she belonged to a
different-- hence eligible--clan, but simply had no
immediate interest in him. If
she declared her clan identity, then the man could infer that
she might have some interest in pursing him.
If she remained silent, the man could ply his charms
until she finally disclosed her clan.
If, after a while, she still resolutely refused to disclose her
clan, etiquette required the man prudently back off.
A bold man might continue the pressure, expecting the woman
to disclose her clan if she were of the same clan as he, since woman
often would not want a man of the same clan to invest of himself
emotionally or make a fool of himself.
In any event even a marginally polite man would refrain from asking
the woman for her clan identity, and if he did, the woman could write him
off as an uncouth bore.
The clan system
placed women in a quandary. Since
the clan system required exogamy, a woman when she married left
the village or neighborhood of her birth clan to take up residence with
her husband and his fellow clansmen.
From time to time she would return to her father's home and
join in the clan rites, but for the most part she was expected to support
her husband and his family in all its endeavors, including expression of
clan affiliation. Indeed in
every neighborhood and every village, of the married woman had come from
somewhere else. Thus, it was often said that a woman had two
clans, and people occasionally asked the identity of
her "married clan" and her "real clan."
A married woman raised her daughters with the
foreknowledge that men from other villages or neighborhood in the town
would come and woo her daughters away.
She might contrive to introduce a daughter to a young man from her
home village, since the daughter was of her husband's-- and not
her-- clan. An old proverb
said that "a happy crone returns to the hearth of her father to visit
her daughter." A
corollary provided that "a happy crone prepares her granddaughter's
wedding," referring to the possibility that a woman could send her
daughter back to her home village to marry a man, but that her very own mother
would organize the wedding. If
this practice persisted over the course of several
generations, then generations of women might forge a social bridge between
two particular villages.
Sometimes the
clan system imposed an intolerable burden on a woman.
One of the most enduring Ancita myths tells of a
war between two bands of feticinai. All
the warriors of a feticinai were invariably of the same clan, and
they derived their esprit de corps from their common clan
identity. A feud between two
feticinai then largely became a battle between two clans.
Before the outbreak of hostilities the woman had been raised
in one clan and married a man from the other.
Now her husband's people fought against her father's. Tradition required her to stand with her husband, but
she was heartbroken as her husband's brothers boasted of killing
men whom she had known as children-- men of her birth clan.
Her husband treated her cruelly.
So, having overheard a plan for a new attack, she fled her village
in the dead of night and alerted her father's village.
But they refused to receive her, believing that she served her
husband, and hounded her until she left.
Her father shouted at her, "If a woman could act
as you have, then no man could sleep soundly next to his wife."
When she returned, her husband did what she feared most-- he
divorced her and cast her out. "Repudiated
by both husband and father, she became a woman without a clan.
While this tale-- and
all the hundreds of variants spun over the centuries-- illustrates the
worst aspect of the clan system for women, women also derived a measure of
protection from it. In
many traditional societies, a husband virtually owned his wife and could
do with her as he pleased, and her family would provide no aid.
In Bergonia the clan system discouraged any man from battering his
wife. If a woman fled her
abusive husband and sought refuge with her fellow clansmen, they might
seek redress. A woman's
brothers in particular would be quick in protecting her. Many
times the husband's fellow clansmen defended him, and a whole scale feud
might commence, but more often the men of the two clans met, traded
accusations and threats, and then agreed to the termination of the
marriage. In extreme
cases, however, a battering husband's clansmen would
recognize a limit to their obligation of mutual aid and
refuse to help him. The saying went, "No man incurs honor in defending a
coward who fights a woman."
The clan system
placed a woman at a distinct disadvantage in the realm of divorce.
If either party sought a
divorce, the logic of the system required the woman to return to her clan.
But the logic of the system also dictated that the father raised
his children--since they inherited his clan affiliation.
Only by remaining with their father could children grow up with the necessary rites of passage.
In typical peasant
society the farmers lived in small villages.
In many of the villages all the residents were all of the same
clan, but in most cases a villages might consist of residents
belonging to two or even three or four different clans.
In such cases, the clans were nearly always had their own sections
or neighborhoods. Ownership
of land was communal, not held communally by the entire
village or by smaller family units, but by the clans of the villages.
Men of the same clan and the same village worked the same land,
shoulder to shoulder, usually under the leadership of a single elder whom
the married men of the group elected from among their own number.
In more urban
settings the clans usually dominated in small neighborhoods, or even
in single apartment buildings.
The married men of a neighborhood in a town
or city usually collected together and formed
a "local", called a -- or a --.
This was a "lodge" or a "local" which operated
as a monthly or twice monthly meeting.
Sometimes they obtained a common room where they could meet
and play cards, gamble, smoke, and entertain.
If any of them were unemployed or in trouble, or if any
of their families had difficulties, the solution could often
be found in the room. A
clan brother who had lost his house, his savings or his
job might received money, an offer of work or a place to stay.
One of more
troublesome points of clan influence in modern times concern employment.
Small businesses in Bergonia have always tended to employ only
members of the clan to which the owners belonged.
This form of discrimination has been nettlesome, but only to a
minor degree. Men will take sides in a random brawl according
to clan lines, but for the most part people of different clans can
and do work together, shoulder to shoulder.
Discrimination on the basis of sex, race,
religion and age are in varying degrees held to be
illegal in present day Bergonia, discrimination on the basis of clan
affiliation is not, although some people who fancy themselves as
"progressives" believe such discrimination is bad.
In the 1700's and 1800's local officer holders and political bosses
often surrounded themselves with advisors and appointees of the same
clan. Crime gangs often
accept only persons of the same clan as members.
Such forms of clan-based patronage permeated ancient and medieval Bergonian
history. In those times
people often referred to a particular city or town as a
"hawk place" or a "bear place" according to the
affiliation of the local leadership. Fortunately, this tendency has faded in the past century.
3.
The Cultural Unit
In ancient and medieval times one could always find
clan "lodge" facilities in a city or
town where the men and women of the same clan affiliation met for social
gatherings, performance of the rituals and just to pass the time. The lodges in peasant villages might amount to nothing more
than simple sheds or one room houses.
In the cities the lodges might be what we would regard as
storefronts. Sometimes two or three
clans would unit to acquire a shared lodge facility. Cliques of
rich city-dwellers of the same clan built grand halls, like private clubs.
A wandering Bergonian knew that when he arrived in a strange
locality he could seek out the lodge of his clan and seek help, direction
and rest. Clan affinity made hospitality mandatory.
Weddings provided an
occasion where two clans could come together to jointly perform
Each clan had its own
unique cultural markers, including its own rites for initiation, its
animal totem, its songs, chants, tattoos, and hand signals. Each clan used standardized representation of the animal totem. For
example, the bear clan always portrayed the bear with one front paw
upraised or with a fish in the bear's mouth, while the boar clan always shows the boar as red.
The cat clan showed the cat sitting or reclining, while
the preba clan showed the great wild feline leaping or
bringing down a deer. The
clans sometimes used secondary symbols.
The preba clan used a triangular symbol denoting a mountain.
The boar clan used a some curving crescent reminiscent of the
boar’s tusks. The spider
used a simple grid pattern suggestive of the woven web.
Each clan has it own set of songs which every member generally
knew. Some of these songs
they sang only in initiation ceremonies, while more common ones the clan members
used to open or close clan lodge meetings.
Every clan employed simple cheers and drinking ditties for fun.
The songs and
other cultural markers provided great utility in dealing with strangers.
Two people who meet would inquire about one another's
affiliation and, if they found they belonged to the
same clan, they most likely demonstrated the fact to each other by
singing a song together or reciting a short verse
typical of the clan. This
cemented the natural bond between them and then they
could truly act as brothers.
The men of a clan had
their own drinking songs and they often formed
athletic teams to engage teams
of other clans in contests, such are running, wrestling, gambling, and
mock warfare. Occasionally,
as happens with men, these contests escalated into bad temper, and feuds
and fights resulted.
Finally, when a man or a woman died the clansmen attended to the cremation of the body. Each clan had its own rite for the cremation, of course consistent with Shufrantei or Miradi norms, and after the local priest or priestess performed the standard religious rite, the clansmen stepped forward and performed their rite just before lighting thepyre. As an example, if a man died in the presence of three strangers, and one of the surviving three learned that he and the newly deceased belonged to the same clan, he immediately understood that the responsibilities of disposing of the body, notifying the relatives and safeguarding the deceased's belongings all fell to him, while the other two could freely walk away. This obligation attached, even if the deceased and the survivor were complete strangers.
4.
The Life Ceremonies
In traditional
Bergonian life both boys and girls underwent certain initiation
rites at various times in their lives.
The girls underwent certain rites determined by the traditions of
the female clans. Boys had
their initiation rites at the hands of the "lodge" of the clan.
To this day, a boy's father paid for the rites which were held at
the lodge or at least at a place to which all the
lodge members were invited to attend and participate.
Males underwent
several ritual rites of passage as they grew to manhood. While
universal custom dictated that all the youth experienced
the same rites with the same basic purpose and
schedule, each clan had its own ritual forms, with songs, intonations and
dramas unique to the clan. The
close male relatives of the boy performed the rites along with a priest,
and only in the presence of other relatives.
For example, a family belonging to the bear clan would
for their boys perform several rites during the childhood of a male
child prescribed by bear clan tradition.
Every clan
had
for their boys a "Naming Rite" which occurred on the boy's
seventh birthday. Women
celebrated this rite with the men. It
usually involved a happy early dinner where gifts were given to
the boy, he was crowned with a garland, and usually a verse of
prayer was chanted by the men and then a dance was done, with the boy put
in middle of the room while
the women joined hands and danced around the boy with all the men standing
in a larger ring outside clapping their hands, everyone singing.
At the age of
fourteen the boys had a "Wisdom Rite", where, in essence, the
community celebrated the fourteen year olds.
The rite was held one time a year on Summer Day for all the boys
turning fourteen in the year. The
men and the older boys celebrated this rite with the fourteen year olds
without any females present. In
the afternoon, the women in the boy's family attended him in a special
dinner and dressed him for the night's events. They
teased him as they saw him off.
They took him to the clan lodge house where all the men
were waiting. All the
boys who turned fourteen in the current year were brought there on this
one tumultuous night of the year. the women and the girls left, while the
men and the boys engaged in the rite.
It was the first day that the boys could be allowed to attend a
ceremony of the adult clansmen. The
main focus of the rite is the performance of the mythological epic of the
clan, usually performed by boys between the ages of fifteen and
twenty, in which the myths of the clan are imparted.
Finally,
at the age of twenty-one, the boy on his birthday
attended another lodge ceremony where the members confirmed
him as a full adult member of the clan lodge.
This rite the Bergonians called the Blossoming.
Some men called it the "First Kill," drawing an
analogy to the carnivorous character of their clan totem. He thereafter could vote and speak fully in the lodge
proceedings. The ceremony
began with prayer. Then the
initiate took an oath of loyalty to and love of the clan, and then
elders together chanted a stylized standard describing the virtuous
and strong qualities of the totemic animal.
The chanting provoked dancing.
Then everyone ate dinner.
The seven year old girls participated in a naming ceremony as well. But at the age of fourteen the girls were taken off by the women of their female clan identification for their own rite celebrating puberty.
The Crime of Can Impersonation
Bergonians
uniformly regarded impersonating a false affiliation a grave offense
deserving severe punishment. History
and literature have no shortage of tales of such fraud, usually
employed in order to obtain information or further a crime of theft or
deception. One great criminal
of the medieval age, Dhalitoc Nsutre, supposedly memorized every bit of
clan lore for twenty-eight clans, and he used it to
perpetrate great frauds. Once,
some Cat clan members uncovered him after he had cheated one of their
brothers out of some gems. They
tracked him down and found him staying with some Boar clan members who
believed he was one of them. The
Cat people challenged him in front of the Boar people, and a great
argument ensued that threatened to escalate into a bloody fight.
But then arrived some Spider people who had also been
tracking him for a similar offense. The
Boar people were so abashed that they turned on Nsutre and agreed
among themselves that he probably had deceived them as well.
So they allowed the Cat and Spider people kill him.
In his last minutes Nsutre pleaded with the Boar people,
but they no longer believed him and allowed him to go to his end.
The great irony sprang out of the fact that, by virtue
of birth, he really belonged to the Boar Clan.
But the Boar people involved felt little remorse, because he had forfeited his Boar affiliation
when he imitated the other
clans.
Such fraud produced grave insult to the offender's own
clan-- by means of the fraud he showed a desire to abandon.
This crime merited punishment by death or life slavery.
A peculiar form of torture sometimes attended a conviction for this
offense.
If the offender had a clan tattoo on his arm or shoulder, the judge
might order the tattoo removed, which meant either burning the tattoo
off or cutting the skin away. This the judge would leave either to men of the
offended clan or to the offender's own clan brothers.
The judge might order this torture to precede death.
In this symbolic fashion society rewarded the deceit by stripping
the offender of his own clan affiliation, thus making him less than a whole man.
5. Women in the Clan System and the Female Clans:
As members of
the male-based clans, women had every right to expect support there
from in every matter.
A man was duty bound to fight for the honor and protection of a
woman of his clan, even one who had long ago married and moved
away. Indeed, whenever a
married woman found her honor affronted or, more serious,
suffered from the crime of rape or insult, or whenever
she suffered intolerable abuse at the hands of her husband or his family,
she had the clan as her chief resource.
Whenever she faced trouble she would attempt
to return to her paternal home and call upon the male folk to
avenge or protect her. In
making the appeal she did not speak of familial bonds.
She stirred the men to her aid by evoking the name of
the clan.
If the woman could
not get back to her original home, where her brothers and blood cousins
lived, she could seek out clan brothers-- men she did not know, men she
had probably never seen before-- and demand their aid.
As custom demanded, the men felt the obligation to help. As a practical matter, men rarely desired to shed
blood on behalf of a clan sister they had never met before and held in no particular affection, but they would at
least stand as her advocates in negotiation or litigation even
if they refused to unsheathe their swords for her.
As a last resort, if she demanded shelter from them, they
would not dream of refusing her.
And then they had to defend her from any violent attempt by
her husband's family to take her back.
However, women had their own separate
clans, membership in which passed through the
matrilineal line.
Though women belonged
to the animal clans every bit as much as the men, their role within
the system produced a higher degree of tension and estrangement. Traditionally when a couple married, the wife followed her
new husband home to live with him and his people.
There she found a village, a manor or a neighborhood where all the
men belonged to the same clan, along with all the children, and
where all the women had disparate clan affiliations.
Thus they lived removed from their "father" clans
and lost the solace of clan rites which men enjoyed all their lives.
Therefore marriage loosened the bonds of a woman's clan identity.
Prevailing theory
holds that historically the women devised the "lunar" or
"little" clans as a way to ameliorate this estrangement. Only women could belong to the "little clans"
or "lunar clans," which formed an auxiliary clan
structure. The men had no
role to play in these "little" clans and they had at bets
only nominal membership in them which depended on their mother's
membership.
The "lunar"
or "little" clans took their names from flowers and
trees, all named for plants, in contrast to the big clans which are
all named for animals. They
included lily, sage, yarrow, lavender, jute, willow, oak, mistletoe and
juniper. Anthropologists have
made much of the fact that few of the main clans have herbivorous clans,
meaning that they do not have a food relationship with the totems of
the "little" clans. They
have also commented on the connection of clan totems based on
plants with functional utility for humans living in archaic
culture and the women's gathering role in archaic society.
In the same manner, they link the animal totems of the patrilineal
clans with the masculine hunting role prevailing in the same archaic
society.
Bergonians
called these the "little" clans, not because of any
belittling sense of diminished stature, but because they included among
their ranks only half of all the people.
People also called them "night" or
"shadow" clans, partly because night forms the feminine
counterpart to the masculine solar day, and partly because the women often
held their gatherings at night.
These organizations functioned as social clubs for women, where
women, their sisters, and daughters and daughter's daughters all
came together. They had no
trouble gathering in the cities, but in the countryside these women
had to come together from different villages, making the
gatherings difficult. The
women derived great value from these meetings, where men could not attend.
The women traded amongst themselves things they have made, such as
embroidered goods, quilts, linens, and wreathes made from feathers and
dried flowers. They
sang and danced, trading ribald jokes at the expense of the absent men.
These get-togethers occurred generally twice a year, usually
on a date timed to a full moon, e.g. the first full moon after the first
of the year, in other words the first full moon after the Festival of
Lights.
Once a year, often
around the festival of Tlemase, "Hearth Mother", all the
families go to the homes of their matriarch.
All the granddaughters and daughters go visit the home of
their oldest female relative for dinner.
They take with them their husbands and their children.
The husbands must obey a certain etiquette of subdued
behavior and deference. This
means that while the women celebrate their reunion the men mill around
with the husbands of the other women, forming a group of men with
disparate clan memberships, thus mirroring the alienated polyglot of the
women in their own villages, manors and neighborhoods.
The men drink and gamble on the fringes of the group, and
though often drinking and gamble produce a rather combustible
combination, the occasion demands subdued behavior and the men nearly
always abide.
Modern feminists and
sociologists have made much of the existence
of the "little" clans, postulating that in an era of patriarchal
domination and oppression, these clans provided women with the
only way in which they could manifest their activities. However,
these modern theoreticians overstate their cases to such an extent
that they seem to suggest that the female clans were
subversive that grew as a rebellious reaction to the male clans.
In fact, all the available research shows that the
"little" clans co-existed with the male clans since the very
earliest times. They
existed as a complimentary structure to the more public male clans and, in
archaic society, they gave organization to the education of girls and
young women by older women and for midwifery.
The traditional Bergonian man did not oppose the "little"
clans. Any suggestion
that they were vehicles of rebellion would have struck him as strange.
He supported them and, when asked by the women, he would get his
tools and repair the shed or the house in which they met.
Then he would accept a small cake as thanks and go off fishing.
6.
Destruction of the Clans:
The great
destruction of native institutions occasioned by the waves of
plague and
the onslaught of Europeans almost destroyed the clan system.
In fact, many natives ceased paying any attention
to their clan affiliations. Once
they ceased caring, they neglected the initiation ceremonies
and then failed to impart the clan identity to their children.
The Catholic missionaries adamantly fought to suppress clan
affiliations since they perceived the links between clan and
native faith. Europeans
who married natives refused to allow their children to have clan
identities.
When the plagues struck Bergonia in the late 1500's the rule of exogamy began to collapse. Of course the European settlers had no clans and they often wanted to take native women for consorts, mistresses and wives. Their lack of clans confused the Bergonian natives, but then the Bergonians perceived of the possibility of life without clan exogamy. Disease then caused the native population to contract from 60,000,000 in 1560 to 18,000,000 in 1640. Though a profound depression afflicted several generations of survivors, a great urge for procreation finally infused throughout the natives once the terror of the plagues became less immediate in their collective consciousness and absent from their individual memories. They found that more sexual partners became available when they ignored the clan rules. In time, therefore, the natives discarded the rule that their ancestors would have found impossible to live without. Many, perhaps form guilt, certainly from lack of faith, many quit attending clan rites and meetings, and abandoned clan practice altogether, especially those exposed to Christianity for Christian missionaries were determined to stamp out the clan system and the practice cremation.
However, when the ravages of disease ended and both the numbers and cultural assertiveness of the natives had begun to increase, many natives loudly lamented the loss of clan. Those who retained clan identities won the envy of their neighbors and asserted their clan activity as a signet of pride. Beginning in middle of the 1700's, natives developed a folk rite in which seers divined a person's lost clan identity. Thus, natives whose ancestors had forgotten or repudiated their clans managed to reclaim them. By the 1800's clan identity became a sign of native pride, and a quick way to boast of opposition to European mores. Still, to this day, a large number of natives live their lives without a clan identity. The refusal of a large percentage of the population to participate in the clan system has crippled one of its basic features, that of mandatory exogamy. How can one assert clan exogamy in a society where as many as half the population has no clan? Thus, in the 1900's the clan system persists in truncated form, with its ceremonial, fraternal and mutual aid functions surviving, but with the marital function effectively dead.
Nevertheless, a taint
still attaches, and many native Bergonians find themselves observing
the bar, at least on a gut level.
If challenged on the point, all modern Bergonians will
freely concede that no really rational basis ever existed for
the clan exogamy rule, and that nothing exists to logically prohibit an intra-clan relationship.
Even so, a large number of people will admit it
makes them feel uncomfortable. A
man will say, "when I meet a woman of the same clan I know she
should be able to ask me for help and every other member of the clan
will look down on me if I don't help her.
If I try to court her or get her into bed, I take that
relationship down to a regular level and she would no longer feel like she
could ask me for help. That
wouldn't do." A
woman will say, "A clan brother may not be any kind of a blood
relative, but we are taught to look to them as if
they are, and it just adds a little too much
confusion to things if you meet a guy and allow yourself to look at
him as a potential lover or husband at the same time you recognize
all the clan links between you."
Anthropologist
Claude Levi-Strauss
wrote about clans and historical societies:
"There is... a sort of
fundamental antipathy between history and systems of classification.
This perhaps explains what one is tempted to call the 'totemic
void', for in the bounds of the great civilizations of Europe
and Asia there is a remarkable absence of anything which might have reference to totemism, even in the form of remains.
The reason is surely that the latter have elected to explain
themselves by history and that this undertaking is incompatible with that
of classifying things and beings (natural and social) by means of
finite groups." p.232, The Savage Mind.
Levi-Strauss went on
to postulate that "when a society sides with history" it loses
the ability to classify into finite groups because
the groups evolve, apparently by means of history.
He apparently misses the point.
In tribal and other archaic societies, whether or not they perceive
history as a force, historical change still afflicts their societies.
Anthropological study has produced a number of proofs
that clan systems experience change and mutation.
Levi-Strauss himself provides examples of this in the
discussion contained in Totemism of Australian moieties and quadruple
classifications, as well as new Ojibway clans forming over time. Indeed,
a major point of his structuralism is apparently to describe how mythic
forms transform as they are diffused between cultures.
Levi-Strauss proposes
that societies with clan structures try to deny the effects of historical
change and use "dexterity" in fashioning social structures
that provide synchronous classification.
He points out time and time again how Australian aborigines
and other archaic people function within beliefs systems that
presume the actual totemic presence.
Certainly a culture such as the Bergonian, which developed
mathematics, technology, a universal religion
and a cosmopolitan outlook, would have divorced itself
from the archaic totemic myths. In
fact, after the advent of Shufrantei, the totemic myths undergirding the
Bergonian clans became the stuff of emblemic metaphor, with little more
claim on the popular world-view than folktales.
Nevertheless, the clans persisted because they perfected highly useful social functions, primarily as a satisfactory method of distributing and rationing social "goods." The mutual aid may have actually abetted the development of cosmopolitan culture by sustaining a solid system of social security. Certainly they remained important in historical time for the active support they gave religion, the tradition of mutual aid and the duty of hospitality, education, and the military.
This strict functionalism, however, does little to explain the strength of the Bergonian clans, since other social structures (e.g. guilds, religious-based groups, class-based patronage relationships) have served the same function in other societies. Many have looked at the rule of exogamy as the core, largely because of its sexual nature. Anthropologists in the 1800s stressed how it allocated women among competitive males. Atrei defenders of the clan tradition have always answered by pointing out how the clan system gave refuge, succor and the right of revenge to women, thus resulting in their protection, security and protected legal status. Freudians have speculated about how it repressed sexuality, or is the result of repressed sexuality, and how the Oedipus complex might explain it. Indeed everyone agrees that violation of the exogamy rule produces the most visceral responses from those pre-modern Bergonians who lived submersed in clans. Yet, with no apparent sociological, economic or other functional role for the rule of exogamy, it still persists. One anthropologist has quipped that the function of the Bergonian Clan System is to debunk all functionalist theories in anthropology. The question of the clans will probably always perplex the historian and the anthropologist.
rev 12 June 06
The 31 ancient clans:
(1) preba-cat,
(2) pretla-cat,
(3) pule-cat,
(4) boar,
(5) raccoon,
(6) monkey, gray
(7) monkey. red/pygmy
(8) otter,
(9) fisher,
(10) wild-sheep/ram,
(11) tuashe,
(12) deer/stag,
(13) antelope.
(14) bear,
(15) fox,
(16) weasel
(17) white owl
(18) field owl
(19) bald eagle,
(20) golden eagle,
(21) hawk,
(22) kestrel,
(23) heron,
(24) raven,
(25) osprey,
(26) alligator
(27) spider,
(28) mantis,
(29) cobra-snake,
(30) copperhead snake, and
(31) rattlesnake.
In mythological history, there were 32 clans, a number that fir in beautifully in the ancient symbolism surrounding the number Eight.
But legend tells that the 32nd clan, the Dog (Vishget) clan committed dishonor upon itself, and was shunned by the other clans. No one would marry a Dog clan, so some Dog clan people committed the unforgivable sin of mating with clan-mates. The Dog clan expired.