The Formation of Tribes

I have told you in my previous letters how man was very much like an animal when he first appeared on the earth. Slowly, over thousands of years, he developed and became something better. At first he must have hunted all by himself, like some of the wild beasts today. Then he found that it was wiser and safer to go about in herds with other men. If many men kept together, they were stronger and could defend themselves better against the attacks of beasts and maybe of other men. Even the animals go about in herds in this way for their own safety. Sheep and goats and deer and even elephants move about in herds. When the herds sleep, some of them remain awake and watch over them. You must have read stories of packs of wolves also. In Russia, in winter, these wolves go about in packs and when they are hungry, as they often are in winter, they attack men. One wolf would seldom attack a man, but a crowd of them feel strong enough to attack a party of men. And the men have to fly for their lives, and often there is a race between the wolves and the men on sledges on the ice.

So also the first advance in civilization that early men made was to combine together in packs or, as these are called, tribes. They began to work together. There was what is called cooperation. Each man had to think of the tribe first and then about himself. If the tribe was in danger every member of it had to fight for it and defend it. And if any person in the tribe did not work for the tribe, he was kicked out.Now if people work together, they must act in an orderly way. If everyone were to do just what he pleased there would not be much of the tribe left. So someone has to become the leader. Even the herds of animals have leaders. The tribes of men also chose the strongest man amongst them as their leader. As there was a great deal of fighting to be done, the strongest man was chosen.

If the members of the tribes fought amongst themselves the tribe would soon break up. So the leader saw to it that fighting within the tribe was not allowed. Of course, one tribe could and did fight another. This was an improvement on the old method of each person fighting everybody else for himself.

The first tribes must really have been large families. All the members of them were related to each other. But the families grew and grew till the tribe became quite big.

It must have been a hard life to live for man in the early days, specially before tribes were formed. He had no house, no clothes except perhaps some skins, and he must have been continually fighting. To get his daily food he had to hunt and kill animals or gather nuts and fruits. He must have felt that he had enemies everywhere. Even nature must have seemed to him an enemy, sending hail and snow and earthquakes. Poor little slave he was, creeping about the earth, afraid of everything because he could understand nothing. If the hail came he thought that some god in the clouds was trying to hit him. And he became frightened and wanted to do something to please this person in the clouds who sent the hail and the rain and the snow. How could he please him? He was not very clear or brainy. He must have thought that the god in the clouds was like himself and liked food. So he would take some meat or kill an animal, sacrifice it as they say, and leave it somewhere for the god to eat! He imagined that he could stop the rain or the hail like this! This seems very silly to us as we know why rain comes or hail or snow. The killing of an animal has nothing to do with it. But silly as it is, there are many people even today who are ignorant enough to do such things.