posted
I always heard that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. I just finished reading a Japanese book and there were many examples of prostitution. In every culture I have read about or witnessed I have noticed a strong element of prostitution--except one. American Indians. I am not talking about Indians on the reservation; I mean pre-white-man settlement of the frontiers.
Has anyone ever heard of prostitution in the American Indian culture before it was influenced by the west?
posted
One of the problems with this is that it assumes a monolithic Native American culture, which is just not true. There was plenty of difference between a Ute and an Iroquois. You also have to be careful of those who wish to romanticize Native American culture as a way to condemn the U.S. Government's atrocious treatment of them.
Take, for example, the "We used every part of the bison" myth. The Amerindians in Canada used to run whole herds off cliffs, then leave the excess carcasses to rot. Generalizations just don't work. There is no one "Native American" culture.
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posted
i've been reading zinn lately, and he makes it sound like at least in what is not the US, most of the indigenous people didn't really have a monetary system, which would make it somewhat difficult to be a prostitute. i guess you could trade sex for food or goods, but still... the other thing is that a lot of the societies were maternalist: the women owned the property (to the extent that property as a concept existed) and kinship was inhereted through the mother. In such a system would it be the men who were prostitutes?
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posted
I wouldn't say the majority of native societies were matriarchal - some in the southwest were, but plains groups and mesoamerican cultures were predominantly patriarchal. (I'm not qualified to comment on eastern US tribes).
Among some plains tribes (and as Yank said, culture varied from tribe to tribe to the extent that language groups are sometimes confined to a 100 mile radius) polygamy was common and women were traded as goods - certainly this could be interpreted as a form of prostitution, though the fathers of the girls were the ones who received payment.
Among older cultures and mesoamerican civilizations money did exist and I would posit that those would be the cultures most likely to contain prostitution.
posted
Of course it depends on how you define prostitution. There has never been prostitution, per se, in a non-monetary based society. There probably has never been prostitution in a self contained non-agricultural society. Actually, very few "tribal" societies have been conducive to prostitution. What monies such people have generally are just part of the barter system. Also, the people of those societies tend to hold the view, correctly, that their women are a very valuable resource. Thus there is neither an inspiration for, nor a toleration of, prostitution. Worth noting is that among such people the percentage of un-mated adults, especially females, tends to be very small. Basically what you have to realize here is that people usually take mating a lot more seriously when it's a matter of life or death.
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quote:One of the problems with this is that it assumes a monolithic Native American culture, which is just not true.
I never assumed a monolithic Native American culture. I freely admitted there were aspects of Native Americans I didn't know about. An appeal for knowledge is more often a sign of an open mind and then a mind of assumptions.
quote: You also have to be careful of those who wish to romanticize Native American culture as a way to condemn the U.S. Government's atrocious treatment of them.
What in my post was romanticized? The relationship of pioneers and Native Americans would be a good discussion.
The lack of prostitutes seems to be because:
a monetary system
matriarchal societies
society taking mating more serious
I guess the worlds oldest profession is agriculture or hunting.
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posted
Except that when there is no monetary system, neither agriculture nor hunting can really be called professions. As soon as there is enough of a monetary system to call those professions, I'm sure that there were women receiving the same money for their services.
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posted
I have noticed the strong trend of romanticizing Native American culture. It is very "PC" to believe that the Native Americans were in all ways superior to the newcomers and that the evil white man was unworthy to set foot on the Americas. I would rather the effort be made to have their culture potrayed truthfully, accurately. The rosy-colored distortion gets old and does more to dishonor than honor, IMO.
Oh, and of course, goes without saying that I also get tired of the "Yay, Americans (WASPs), the noble heros of all the universe!" theme that was much more "in style" in the previous generation than it is now. (Though you certainly still see remnants of it.) ::barfy smiley::
posted
thank heaven for us our problems of racism and discrimination are significantly decreased since all the Red Men are either drunk or dead!
it would be more accurate to say native american cultureS to avoid lumping several vastly different peoples together. i also think it's safe to say there were/are as many patriachal n.a. societies as matriachal.
let's define prostitution as such: a man or woman exchanging sexual favors for most if not all of their living needs. it should also be a nearly exclusive means. i honestly do not know if these sorts of individuals were prevalent or not.
i am embarassed that i haven't studied enough to know.
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posted
i also had another thought. there is a lot of interdependency in most n.a. societies. a lot of intimacy, and usually relatively small numbers of people living together. i think this fact decreases a favorable environment for prostitution to thrive. i think prostitution requires a certain level of anonymity. in most n.a. societies everybody knows everybody else. so while i am sure affairs, etc, existed, i doubt someone could consistently make a living off of their body.
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So if Native Americans (pre-white-man) had no set monetary system and pretty much everyone provided for the well-being of the tribe in communal style, then would that have been considered a socialist system? Or because they had a leader, would it be considered more of a dictator system?
I can see in a situation where pretty much everything belongs to the tribe, that prostitution would not thrive well.
I hadn't ever thought about what kind of "structure" you would classify Native American tribes into politically.
posted
How do you define prostitution? Anonymous encounters? Strictly sex? Selling to more than one at a time?
Do you consider buying security with the promise of sex to be prostitution? If Julia Roberts had accepted the offer of an apartment in the city as a chippy on the side, at what point would she have stopped being a prostitute?
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posted
I agree that it all depends on the definition of Prostitution.
Yes, I read where Sitting Bull had to steal so many horses to "buy" his wife from her father. So if you consider a dowry as payment for services to be rendered, then it existed.
If not, in a no cash society based on trade, I believe there may have been more than a couple native maidens who offered a night of sex in exchange for a shiny amber necklace, or even enough food to feed their family.
However, such individual choices do not make a "profession" and unless this went against local beliefs, or was used to break up a family, it would not have been so abnormal as to be remarked upon and brought forth in oral histories.
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posted
I think we're also overlooking the fact that among native american cultures, the scattered North American tribes were a drop in the bucket of the population of the Americas.
If we're going to characterize indigenous American cultures, we'd be much more accurate to study mesoamerican civilizations who built cities as large as their European contemporaries. North Americans tend to forget that our present territory was the backwater of the New World and that the great bulk of civilization occured south of the border.
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quote:I think we're also overlooking the fact that among native american cultures, the scattered North American tribes were a drop in the bucket of the population of the Americas.
I've always found this fascinating. Why should the region presently held by the US have been so drastically less populated and less technologically advanced than the regions formerly held by the Aztec and Inca civilizations? If the land bridge theory is correct, then people would have had to cross over most of North America to get to Mexico and all of it to get to Peru, so you'd expect that people had been in North America for longer. And there was no lack of natural resources; I've heard it said that one of the main reasons that America is on top today is because of our abundant natural resources. So why should the North American tribes have remained so technologically undeveloped?
My first guess would be that food was easier to come by in what is now the US as compared to Mexico and South America, so people never needed to develop new technologies. I recently read Ambrose's Undaunted Courage, a biography of Meriwether Lewis and an account of his and Clark's expedition, and the description of the fertility of the land and abundance of game was pretty amazing. Still, I have to wonder at this off-the-cuff explanation, because you'd think that easy food would lead to rising population, which brings the same need for technology as a lack of food.
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posted
i remember hearing about some of the early sociologists (read apologists for racism) talking about how the less hospitable environment of europe forced the people there to advance technologically because harsh changes in season and scarcity of food forces more complex organizational patterns and cultural developments.
it seems like the reason it's so hard to define prostitution in this case is that we're taking something which is dependant upon a lot of assumptions which are fundamental to our own culture (monetary system, attitudes about sex, ideas of family structure and inheritance) and ignoring that these things may not apply to many native american cultures. the very concept of prostitution depends on a lot of cultural aspects of western civilization, and as such the very idea may not be possible in other cultures.
it also seems like part of the reason we're so inclined to either romanticise or look down upon native cultures is that we don't know very much about them: we were too busy trying to get rid of them to really study them objectively...
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posted
The definition of prostitution I had in my head while starting this thread was the exchange of goods (money, items, land), knowledge (schooling, information), or services STRICTLY for sex.
Since dowrys and/or marriage arrangements involve the propogation of a family unit, I would not clasify it in the same sense I would a hooker on 4th street. Trading away daughters was not strictly for sex for the soon to be husband.
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