Note 298 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

This may, at first sight, seem strange. If it is true, as Powell asserts, (and it does not seem to us improbable) that slavery originated from the adoption of captives298, we should expect to find an intermediate stage, in which the captives, though already enslaved instead of adopted, still shared in military operations, the differentiation of the “regulative part of society” from the “operative part” (to borrow Spencer’s words) not yet being complete. The existence of slavery, mainly for military purposes, among the hunting Abipones and some pastoral tribes, seems to indicate such a stage. But among agricultural tribes we find no trace of it. Some agricultural tribes (of which the Iroquois are the classical instance) adopt their captives; then there are many which keep slaves who are not allowed to fight; and, finally, in the higher stages of agriculture, we find a few tribes among which slaves share in military operations.