What political system did Native Americans generally practice?

[Skyhilist]

It certainly seems less capitalistic than what we have now, but exactly what system did most practice?

There probably isn't a general answer to this question (i.e. they didn't all practice the same political system). In this case, what would you say were the most communistic, anarchistic, and capitalistic systems practiced by any Native American tribes. Moreover (if this is a reasonable question), what was about the average political system they questioned.

I understand that the answer to this question might require in depth knowledge about Natives, which may be somewhat uncommon. If this is the case, any advice on where I might look for answers to such a question besides here would also be appreciated.

Thank you as always.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Yeah, the answers vary pretty widely. Your best bet is to look at specific examples. The Six Nations Confederacy is an example that interests a lot of people because their Great Law of Peace supposedly had a great influence on European liberals.:lol:

[LOLseph Stalin]

I think within tribes there was likely some degree of communal ownership such as sharing of food and such. I'm no expert though. Also, there was obviously a chief who had the final authority over everything. I'm not sure if it was a hereditary or elected position though.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I'm not an expert on this subject at all, but my understanding is that there was a good deal of diversity both temporally and geographically, but we can generally consider most North American groups as "tribal societies" which would mean some rudimentary class features and a degree of social surplus (as opposed to egalitarian band societies, though I'm sure that was the case in some regions in some times).

But many groups, even while keeping their traditional culture, began to be incorporated into more production for trade and more interconnected to the north American colonial economy (as their tradditional ways of securing a living began to be disrupted by disease, displacement, increasing inter-tribal war, etc).

[DasFapital]

Some societies that were agrarian and had access to more resources had a caste system and an active slave trade. The hunter gatherer tribes in the interior part of the continent were far more egalitarian.

[Leftsolidarity]

I think it varied but I'm no expert. My impression was that it was mostly a form of primitive communism.

[homegrown terror]

i think most of them fell somewhere in the collective tribalism and proto-feudalist spectrum, although my understanding is that social strata within the systems were generally more egalitarian than their european counterparts. many (though not all) tribes saw women as far more equal than european society would have allowed, although there is a lot of evidence of tribal xenophobia in inter-group interactions.

[DasFapital]

There were actually a few instances of European women in New England defecting to the Iroquois because they were given a better social standing.

[Aurora]

As far as i know the central americans had a slave society or at least had a significant degree of slavery, the peoples in the central and western parts of what's now the USA had a tribal society also called primitive communism and those in the east and north had significant agriculture meaning slavery was practical so they were probably in transition from tribal society to some form of slavery either generalised as a slave society or as part of feudalism.

[Skyhilist]

So the ones on the western coast and central region of the modern day U.S. that were more egalitarian: what exactly about them could make them be considered as primitive communism?
Also, did these tribes lean more towards market or gift economics or something in between?

[Aurora]

So the ones on the western coast and central region of the modern day U.S. that were more egalitarian: what exactly about them could make them be considered as primitive communism?
Also, did these tribes lean more towards market or gift economics or something in between?
Honestly i don't know much about the native american tribes specifically but tribal society or primitive communism is so called because the productivity of labour is so low and the division of labour so small that society isn't able to split into classes so therefore it's classless and hence without a body to enforce the rule of a class: a state, primitive communist societies tend to recognise tools that are made and used in common as common property and means of subsistence, like an animal killed, as owned in common.

The vast majority of what is produced in primitive communism is consumed directly, again because of the low level of technology and so low level of productivity, if there was produced a surplus i remember reading that African tribes had a system of distributing what couldn't be eaten or stored to other tribes as a sort of insurance against war, this was probably as a sort of gift or barter but it was not the norm of tribal society it wasn't what defined it as a mode of production.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

I am going to use the liberal term: state of nature.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I am going to use the racist term: state of nature.

Corrected for historical accuracy.

[hatzel]

As others have said: it depends, though it's a little more complex than some of the other replies have suggested; remember, whilst it's true to say that we must consider differences across space, we also have to consider development across time, as Native Americans are/were precisely like other populations, in that they are not some timeless entity unchanging throughout the ages. It should go without saying that pre-Columbian populations living in cities like Cahokia cannot be compared to those living in the same area several centuries after European contact, and would presumably have radically different political structures. In fact I wouldn't be the first to suggest that our image of the Native Americans as some unambiguous tribal conglomerates living a simple 'natural' lifestyle actually relates to a distinctive post-contact society, one which had already been ravaged by European colonists. In fact the accounts of early European explorers as well as the archaeological record both attest to a society wholly unlike anything we would imagine as 'Native American,' not least because those societies were often destroyed long before Europeans built up a picture of them...