Re: Re: tribes

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_...>
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 12:41:18 +1300


John Hughes:

>Me> I don't buy this. The Tarshites are Heortling Orlanthi (even if
> > they are overlaid with Alakoring traditions) and so would retain
> > the Heortling clan traditions. Hence Tarshite clans are Sartarite
> > clans.

>QED. And red is blue. Is this an example of goring the sacred oxen? :)

>I've been given an indication that Tarsh *is* based on family and tribe
>rather than clan, so I'm trying to imagine reasons why it might be so.

If so, I really would expect such a thing to have been noted in the Glorantha: Intro Tarsh (and Orlanthi) writeups, which despite being largely me own scrawlings, has been 'got at' or otherwise improved. If the Tarshites did not have clans but only families, then that is something that I expect to have been altered.

You would might be better off in saying that Tarshite clans do not have bloodlines but families and these have more importance in the running of the clan, than does the equivalent sartarite bloodline.

As for the importance of the tribes, the Lunar replacement of the tribal kings with nobility complicates the picture immensely. One could say that the tribe is really the Kingdom as a whole as is the case in Lankst and Aggar, and was in Tarsh before Yarandros's time.

>I think you're downplaying the Alakoring ancestry way too much.

I'm only parroting what Jeff Richard corrected me upon a week or so ago. Even if Alakoring was the greatest hero since the inventor of sliced bread, I doubt that he would have tampered with the clan to the same degree as he did with the tribes without it being somewhere noted, Thunder Rebels notwithstanding.

>Now would that be the traditional Heortling patrilineal clan, the
>traditional Heortling matrilineal clan, or the traditional Heortling
>cognatic descent clan?

John, the philosophy on clans that I am using comes from the report on the Orlanthi.

         "Orlanth had the first clan.  We will have clans, like Orlanth".
         -Heort's Laws.

         The clan is the basic operative social unit.  Smaller units,
         whether bloodlines or households, and larger units, whether
         tribes or Kingdoms, all come and go.  But the clan is
         steadfast.  It may prosper or diminish, but it does not change
         its requirements or definition.
                         King of Sartar p250.

Guided by this, I wrote up the "Who should I trust? Who should I distrust?" section (Glorantha: Intro p147) as being a statement applicable to Orlanthi in general. Had I known that (or somebody had told me) that clans were not universal among the Orlanthi, then I would not described the clan as prominently as I did.

>The traditional direct exchange marriage clan, the
>traditional preferred partner marriage clan, or the traditional open exogamy
>marriage clan? Perhaps the traditional Heortling 'clanless' clans of
>Garhound and Pavis County? If there's *one* lesson we can draw from
>Heortling social structures, its that they're extremely flexible in adapting
>themselves to an incredible variety of different circumstances.

You've shown that there's an incredible variation about clan structure among the Heortlings. That doesn't show anything about the Orlanthi not considering the clans as essential within their social cosmos.

>And of course, in Tarsh we have traditional Heortling Orlanthi clans that
>don't happen to worship Orlanth. Whoops.

Did I say anything about whether those clans were patrilineal, matrilineal, traditional, modern etc? No. All I just said was they had clans and quoted _references_ for the Tarshite clans for the benefit of somebody who thought they didn't have any.

So what if the Tarshites don't worship Orlanth? They do worship Ernalda and she is just as strong a patron of the clans as is Orlanth. Even in Esrolia, clans are the basic social unit and the clans with Orlanth as Esrolia's husband are almost identical to matrilineal Sartarite clans (others less so depending on their choice of Husband).

>The other big factor is trade and the wide circulation of coinage. If Tarsh
>is the richest kingdom in the Empire, and has long-established trade routes,
>then it's a society that is quite comfortable with the use of money and
>abstract wealth, and with relationships of trust and mutual profit that are
>*not* based on kinship.

Which contradicts the examples of the Lunar Empire and many real world nations that do organize themselves by clans based on kinship (fictive or otherwise)? Although the love of money may be the root of all evil, its mere presence is hardly the exterminator of all kinship relations. The dominance of the nuclear family within the west is merely something that tagged along with its technological dominance, rather than being intrinsic to its success. IMO. Or maybe not.

As an example, where I live, many Maoris are still organized into iwi (tribes) and hapu (clans), with membership determined by genealogy. Their land, fisheries and other 'treasures' are run along the lines of modern western corporations. The profits from these corporations are spent on behalf of the members of the iwis and hapus, who in western eyes would be beneficiaries of a trust or shareholders. Thus, a kinship corporation that makes a place for itself in the modern world of big bad corporations.

As for money, Tarsh's wealth may just merely mean the Tarshites in the cities are adept with money. What about the Tarshites in the fields? Do they labor at the direction of their clan chief who deals with the Lunar Nobility on their behalf and disperses any largess on their behalf? More than enough to maintain the kinship relations. So what if some people sponge off? The Varmandi clan have similar problems with the no-good rotroot brothers yet their clan organization does not wither away and die.

>Money kills clans, as I noted in an earlier post.

If it kills clans, then why not families, tribes or cities? Also the very nature of the wereguild implies understanding of money and value in Sartar.

>Out of interest, whence your figure of Tarsh population as 90% rural?

Standard pre-industrial demographics. Look at KoS p234 for a gloranthan document quoting this fact.

--Peter Metcalfe

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