Peter Farb quotes

A human being cannot survive alone and be entirely human. It is through the nature of their social and political institutions that the differences and similarities among cultures are to be accounted for. (Peter Farb)
Sharing is a kinsman's or a friend's obligation, and it is not in the category of a gift.
Peter Farb
An isolated human in a simple society is usually a dead human...
Peter Farb
A central assumption of this book has been that to examine the experience of humans throughout their 25,000 years on this continent is to hold up a mirror to the culture of Modern America.
Peter Farb
The environment does not determine the character of human culture; it merely sets the outer limits.
Peter Farb
No sooner did the first Whites arrive in North America than a disproportionate number of them showed that they preferred Indian society to their own.... Throughout American history, thousands of Whites exchanged breeches for breechcloths.
Peter Farb
At the time of the Europeans discovery of North America, the American Indians already cultivated a wider variety of plants than did the Europeans.
Peter Farb
The more simple the society, the more leisured its way of life.
Peter Farb
Culture is all the things and ideas ever devised by humans working and living together.
Peter Farb
Perhaps we, who for so long regarded ourselves as bringers of light to the shadowy recesses of North America, will finally admit that there is much about which the Indians can illuminate us.
Peter Farb
The Shoshone did not wage war, because it served no purpose. (Peter Farb)
The Puritans failed miserably in their dealings with the Indians of New England, with scarcely a glimmer of kindness to illuminate black page after black page of cruelty and humiliation. ...conversion of the heathen was not one of the compelling motives-or justifications-for the Puritan settling of New England...
Peter Farb
To do nothing now is to let our children lament that they never knew the magnificent diversity of humankind because our generation let disappear those cultures that might have taught it to them.
Peter Farb
Each language encourages its speakers to tell certain things and to ignore other things.
Peter Farb
The Sioux had been forced to submit to a series of land grabs and to indignities that are almost unbelievable when read about today. ...they were being systematically starved into submission-by the White Bureaucracy-on the little that was left of their reservation in South Dakota. ...From Rosebud, the Ghost Dance spread like prairie fire to the Pine Ridge Sioux and finally to Sitting Bull's people at Standing Rock. The Sioux rebelled; the result was the death of Sitting Bull and the massacre of the Indians (despite their ghost shirts) at Wounded Knee in 1890.
Peter Farb
Inspired by the teachings of Smohalla, Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé in Idaho rebelled in 1877. Before he was trapped only thirty miles short of refuge in Canada, he had consistently outwitted and outfought a superior United States Army... although he forbade his warriors to scalp or to torture, the Whites massacred his women and children.
Peter Farb
Wilhelm von Humboldt... stated that the structure of language expresses the inner life of its speakers: "Man lives with the world about him, principally, indeed exclusively, as language presents it."
Peter Farb
Invariably the prophet emerges from his hallucinatory vision bearing a message from the supernatural that makes certain promises: the return of the bison herds, a happy hunting ground, or peace on earth and good will to men. Whatever the specific promises, the prophet offers a new power, a revitalization of the whole society.
Peter Farb
An incestuous marriage establishes no new bonds between unrelated groups; it is an absurd denial to the right to increase the number of people whom one can trust. Marriages in simple societies are... usually alliances between families rather than romantic arrangements between individuals.
Peter Farb
The astonishing cluster of them [geniuses] that appeared in Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. ...what changed was the culture, which allowed exceptional minds to flourish.
Peter Farb
When today's remnants of Indian societies are examined closely, it is seen how well some have worked out a compromise with their White conquerors-acculturation without assimilation. (Peter Farb)
The Shoshone, as well as those peoples around the world who still survive at the least complex levels of social organization, know that romantic love exists. But they also recognize it for what it is-in their case, a form of madness. ...they regard the participants with tolerance and patience, for they know that the illness will soon go away. ...To them, only someone mentally backward would base an institution so important to survival as marriage on romantic love. ...it is a life and death business.
Peter Farb
After the Spaniards settled the Southwest, the Navajo began another burst of cultural borrowing-or, more actually, stealing. Spanish ranches and villages were so depleted of horses-not to mention sheep-that by 1775 the Spaniards had to send to Europe for 1,500 additional horses. After the Pueblo Rebellion against the Spaniards was put down in 1692, many Pueblo took refuge with their Navajo neighbors-and taught them how to weave blankets, a skill for which the Navajo are still noted, and to make pottery. During this time the Navajo probably absorbed many Pueblo religious and social ideas and customs as well, such as ceremonial paraphernalia and possibly the Pueblo class system.
Peter Farb
The League [of the Hodenosaunee] favorably impressed the White settlers, and some historians believe it to have been one of the models on which the Constitution of the new United States of America was based.
Peter Farb
The victory... was complete except for one final indignity. That was to Americanize the Indian... to exterminate the cultures along with the Indians. ...Orders went out from Washington that all male Indians must cut their hair short, even though many Indians believed that long hair had supernatural significance. ...Army reinforcements were sent to the reservations to carry out the order, and in some cases Indians had to be shackled before they submitted. ...attention of the Americanizers was concentrated on the Indian children, who were snatched from their families and shipped to boarding schools far from their homes... usually ... for eight years, during which time they were not permitted to see their parents, relatives, or friends. Anything Indian-dress, language, religious practices, even outlook on life... was uncompromisingly prohibited. ...They had suffered psychological death at an early age.
Peter Farb