#peter gardner

Long before the birth of Anthropology, Westerners who were exploring new lands encountered quiet tribal peoples as they went, peoples who did not produce food, they lived simply by foraging for it in nature. Their social groups were necessarily small and they subsisted by hunting, fishing, and collecting vegetable foods. In many cases they lacked leaders. One such people were the Micmac in southeastern Quebec. After living with Micmac for 12 years, the Franciscan, Chrétien Le Clercq, wrote in 1691, “they hold it as a maxim that each one is free: that one can do whatever he wishes: and that it is not sensible to put constraint upon men.” What is more, they “do not dare correct their children.” From a structural point of view, he appears to have been describing an anarchic system in the strictest sense—a pure or extreme anarchy. Eventually, and quite reasonably, 20th century anthropologists began using the term anarchists for those foraging peoples they encountered who had weak, if any, formal leadership. This was done fully in keeping with Greek usage [of the word anarchy]. Thus, Kaj Birket-Smith in 1929 said Caribou Eskimo society “is entirely built upon that voluntary agreement of which Kropotkin dreamt.”