14 - Property in Primitive Society

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the property in primitive society. Property has not its root in the love of possession. All living beings like and desire certain things, and if nature has armed them with any weapons are prone to use them to get and keep what they want. At present, it seems inevitable or natural that expectations held before the 1860s were ethnocentrically standard and involved the assumption that productive property in primitive society was held in fee simple by individuals or households. The first important statements contrary to the usual opinion had been made by Sir Henry Maine in his Ancient Law (1861) and Village Communities in the East and West (1871). No important ethnological controversy seems to have been elicited by Maine's views on property. It was not until Lewis H. Morgan's day that any extended discussion took place. Morgan thought that primitive society—societas—and civilized society—civitas—differed greatly not only in their governmental institutions but also in their property relations. The increase in amount and kinds of property was proportionate to the progress of inventions and discoveries. Robert H. Lowie's Primitive Society (1920) is devoted entirely to property with particular emphasis on the question of primitive communism. According to Herskovits' general review of the status of theories of primitive communism, it was the ethnographic fieldwork of Frank Speck that provided the initial challenge to the doctrine of primitive communism among hunting-gathering peoples. In 1954, Eleanor Leacock published a thoroughly researched rebuttal of the widely accepted opinion of Speck's that the Algonkian family hunting territories were aboriginal.