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237 Notes introduction 1. Nichols, “Red Gentlemen and White Savages,” 34. 2. Anishinaabe (plural, Anishinaabeg) is the Indigenous name for the peoples of the Three Fires Confederacy of the western Great Lakes. This confederacy consisted of the Ojibwe (also known as Chippewa, Missisauga, Saulteurs, and Nipissings), the Bodewatomi (Potawatomi), and Odawa (Ottowa). Throughout this work I use Anishinaabe and Anishinaabeg to refer to customs, traditions, and practices common to all three of these groups, and Ojibwe to refer to those that are common only to that group within the confederacy. All Ojibwe language terms used in this text use the double-vowel orthography standard in Ojibwe scholarly literature. The western dialect is used as many of the historical examples are from Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Special thanks to Anton Treuer for his help to transition various spellings in the original sources to the doublevowel system. 3. For a discussion of the social (as opposed to economic) context of gifts, see Murray, Indian Giving, 33–39. Anthropologist Marcel Mauss recognized that exchanges converting the outsider from potential enemy to friend must be examined as part of a dynamic whole; Pierre Bourdieu expanded the concept of economy to include symbolic as well as material value; Johnathan Parry suggested that only with the market do economic relations become differentiated from other types of social relationship; and C. A. Gregory proposed that gift exchange in pre-capitalist societies establishes a relationship between the partners (not between the objects exchanged). In a gift-oriented economy the goal is to expand social relations, and social relationships affirmed represent the true value of the exchange. The world view of the Anishinaabeg made this concept manifest. 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 238 Notes to pages 3–4 4. John Tosh states that “the salient feature of the acephalous society can readily be defined. In societies of this kind, political authority is widely diffused; such authority positions as exist touch only a limited area of the lives of those subject to them; the unit within which disputes can peacefully be settled is small, and it tends to lack constant membership and fixed boundaries.” Tosh, Clan Leaders and Colonial Chiefs, 3. 5. Sahlins, “Poor Man, Rich Man,” 77; Tosh, Clan Leaders and Colonial Chiefs, 91–92. Junker, Raiding, Trading, and Feasting, 58–59. 6. Barnouw, Wisconsin Chippewa Myths; Grim, The Shaman; Hallowell , Culture and Experience; Landes, Ojibwe Sociology. 7. Grim, The Shaman, 94, 97–98; Schenck, Voice of the Crane, 106. 8. Although Ruth Landes and others have articulated atomism in detail, Victor Barnouw has provided perhaps the most concise definition of atomism as referring to “a loose form of social organization in which corporate organization and political authority are weak.” Further, he stated: “It is not difficult for the component units to break away from the larger society of which they are a part,” and “there are not many mechanisms for reinforcing larger-group social solidarity.” Barnouw’s research led him to believe that in Ojibwe society “there was no economic cooperation outside of the family unit . . . no communal hunting . . . no camp circle, no organized council of chiefs, no policing system, no regularly constituted military societies and no symbols of group integration.” The atomistic description of Ojibwe social organization so closely mirrors the social theories of such men as Sir Thomas More, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau concerning the postulated “state of nature” prevailing before governed societies emerged that it is dif- ficult not to interpret this theory as another incarnation of the “noble savage” trope. Locke suggested that while Native people enjoyed ownership of the meat they labored to procure, they had only a loose claim to land since Indian people did not improve it. In Locke’s view this meant that Indians never left the state of nature and therefore also had never developed any form of social organization or government. In fact he equated North America and the state of nature so closely that he was able to conclude: “In the beginning, [3.236.214.123] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:41 GMT) Notes to page 5 239 all the world was America” (Locke, Second Treatise, 17, 23, 26, 66). Like Locke, Barnouw and other atomist scholars perceived an Indian culture in which the individual is self-interested, separated from government, and in general, separated from society with little territorial...