Social Stratification among the Arikara

Abstract

An examination of social stratification can be useful in reconstructing the history or development of relatively simple societies. To illustrate this point I will confine myself to the northern Caddoan-speaking village peoples, the Arikara, of the Great Plains area of North America.1 For contrast, I will refer briefly to the idealized picture of the mounted nomads of the 19th-century Plains as exemplified by the Dakota Sioux groups. The social ordering of the groups of nomadic hunters and gatherers of the Great Plains in its classical outlines appears to be a simple egalitarianism verging on anarchy. Existence was precarious and marginal. Population units were small and unstable. Such formal socio-political and religious groupings as did appear were evanescent and weak at best. In the absence of a strong development of private property such surpluses as existed were shared by the entire community. Status differentiations were simple, being primarily those of age and sex, with women in a decidedly inferior position. Technology was mainly confined to skin-working and related activities. To those who like to think in the crude terms of simple stages of development, these peoples would seem analogous to the