That's Not How I Remember It

Here I go again, working from memory but, if I take the time to look it up, I won't have time to write about it tonight. If you want, I'll see what I can find on Wiki about it this weekend.

Tribal people generally have three phases in their lives: The first phase is childhood, which usually lasts till about age 12. The second phase is usually called something like "warrior, hunter, or brave". That's just for the boys, the girls' equivalent is "wife and mother". The third phase is called "elder" or, for the women, "grandmother". Each transition to the next phase is accompanied by certain rites of passage, which may vary from tribe to tribe, but there are some commonalities among cultures. I have never heard of a tribe that allows their kids to just hang out with their friends until they think they are ready to become adults......except ours.

When boys are ready to become braves, they are taken out of the village in groups under adult supervision. I have never heard of boys being allowed to raise themselves. They may camp out for months, but I don't think it's ever more than a year. During this time they are instructed in the ways of the tribe, and the new role they will be playing in it when they return. There are also certain physical trials that they have to endure. These trials generally involve some form of pain, deprivation, and/or mutilation, not enough to cause serious damage to the body, just enough to toughen the kid up and mark him as a warrior. It is believed that the Jewish custom of circumcision may have originated this way. The Egyptians practiced it before the Jews, and I understand there are African tribes that still do it. Often the kids are sent individually on a vision quest. This involves staying out in the wilderness alone, often without eating, until you have a dream or vision. They called it a "medicine dream", although modern non-believers might call it a "hallucination". The vision often takes the form of an animal, in which case it will become the brave's totem animal or spirit guide.

The transition from brave to elder has its own rites of passage, but I'm not all that familiar with them. I'm not sure what the females do either, except that it involves marriage and childbearing. A few African tribes still practice something called "female circumcision", which is a cruel procedure that is nothing like regular male circumcision, but let's not go there tonight.

Tribal leaders are usually chosen by consensus. There may be some kind of formal election process but, more often than not, people just drift away from one leader and start following another. I think leaders are judged by their results. A shaman might be able to influence people with his hocus pocus but, if he can't lead them to good hunting and gathering grounds and protect them from illness, famine, and their avaricious neighbors, he will lose whatever influence he has gained and the people will find somebody else to follow. I don't think many primitive leaders could hold onto their jobs by brute force, that came along much later, about the time people started building city-states. If a hunter-gatherer didn't like what was going on in his tribe, he could move a couple miles down the river and start his own tribe. The trouble began when there started being more tribes than there was river.