Note 1 — Chapter II · HUNTERS AND FISHERS.

We have to explain now, why most hunters and fishers do not keep slaves. In a few cases the fact that they are inclosed between superior peoples and reduced to a dependent, powerless state, might afford sufficient explanation. So the Wandorobo, according to Thomson, are considered by the Massai as a kind of serfs; and Johnston calls them a helot race1. But with most of our hunters and fishers, who do not keep slaves, this is not the case, as is proved by their being often at war with their neighbours. It has been shown that the Ojibways and Sioux in North America, the Charruas, Minuanes and Puelches in South America either killed or adopted their prisoners, that the Andamanese also sometimes adopt captive children, that the Montagnais generally tortured their prisoners to death, that warfare is also known among the Botocudos2. And the most striking evidence is afforded by the Australians, an isolated group consisting entirely of hunters, in which slavery is altogether unknown. So the non-existence of slavery among the great majority of the hunters and fishers must be due on the whole to more general causes; and only if the latter fail to account for the absence of slavery among the Wandorobo or any other tribe in a similar subjected state, may we have recourse to an explanation by this state.