Use Your Words; OR Against the Tribals

10 Dec, 2024

Tribe.

When you read that word, what do you imagine? Chances are, probably something in Africa or indigenous peoples from somewhere, either the Australian Aboriginals, the North American tribes, or the Sentinelese.

But what is a tribe, anyway? The term crops up so often in RPGs, you'd think there would be a very obvious answer. Just with a quick Ctrl + F on the books I have saved on my HDD to use in my Pendragon campaign, things that are referred to as "tribes" include:

• Pre-Roman British tribes

• Post-Roman British tribes

• The Irish, Welsh, and Scots, pre and post Christian or Roman

• The "English" as in the Anglo-Saxons, as well as other Germanic peoples; except when they're Christians, whereupon they're "kingdoms" (sometimes "petty" kingdoms)

• Orcs, ogres, goblins, troglodytes, nomads, and apparently anyone else who lives "on the hills"

• The dudes from Caverns of Thracia

I think you get my point. It's an extremely used term, particularly for "barbarians" (another very loaded word). This question came up in my head when I was reading the Guide to Glorantha, where the main people of the setting, the Orlanthi, are described as "tribal barbarians". But most interestingly, it features this:

Not literally this exact chart, but the classification derived from it.

I've seen charts like this in old Anthropology and History 101 textbooks before. They're based on the typology found in Elman R. Service's Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective (1962), and has wormed its way into elfgames ever since.

The issue, then, is a very obvious one: what the fuck was the Roman Empire then? Both the original and the Holy version. Because it had a massive population but you couldn't really say it was centralized throughout most of its history, descent was definitely not lineal since the average descent method after a while was "murdered the previous emperor" (or was elected, for the Germans), and it had clearly defined classes. You could make the case that it was a really big chiefdom, a collection of tribes, or a State under this typology.

Glorantha changes this typology a bit (based on actual changes that happened to it over time) to "Primitive, Nomad, Chiefdom / Barbarian, and Civilized", and says it's just 4 different kinds of civilization, not really graded or progressing from one to the other historically at all, trust me bro. But the issue persists: what is that 'Chiefdom' there? What are those 'barbarians'? What are we TALKING about here?

The definition of "chiefdom" is infamously vague and it's fruitless to try and keep rehashing definitions - usually it's "less organized than a State but more than a tribe", both of those words are also incredibly vague. Instead, let's look at two real examples that fantasy often takes as inspiration, consciously or not.

The case of the Irish

You cannot throw a stone without hitting tropes of the "brave and wild celts" with their blue woad paint, red hair, quick to anger and to make friends and merry, led by charismatic big men that have about as much wealth as a peasant from more civilized lands. Oh and they're very pagan too, quite egalitarian (they only have "poor farmers" and "big men" after all), their womenfolk are just as proud and fiery as the menfolk, and can absolutely fight and rip out your tongue if you badmouth them or whatever.

Am I describing the Irish, the Scots, or your local enlightened orc tribe (the ones that aren't meant to be valid genocide targets)?

Historically, this has very little to do with the Irish. They had extensive legal codes that were applied such as the Brehon laws, hereditary kings who called themselves as such, weren't particularly enlightened with regards to women, and built in stone too. And they were very Christian. Ireland in the Medieval period had been Christian for longer than England! Very very little is known about the pre-Christian Irish religion, most of it is taken from literary sources written hundreds of years later, by Christians, and without the intention of being religious texts.¹

What happens is that, whenever people regurgitate unthinkingly these stereotypes, they're repeating medieval propaganda. In this case, they're repeating Gerald of Wales'² propaganda from his work "The Topography of Ireland", where he describes the Irish as:

(Pretentious British voice) The Irish are a rude people, subsisting on the produce of their cattle only, and living themselves like beasts – a people that has not yet departed from the primitive habits of pastoral life. In the common course of things, mankind progresses from the forest to the field, from the field to the town and to the social conditions of citizens; but this nation, holding agricultural labour in contempt, and little coveting the wealth of towns, as well as being exceedingly averse to civil institutions – lead the same life their fathers did in the woods and open pastures, neither willing to abandon their old habits or learn anything new.

_{^{Oooh we worship da tree we're so much purer and free. Don't even get me started on how all of this is the fault of the Hippies.}}

Gerald of Wales was part of the FitzGeralds, who were some of the first Normans to colonize Ireland. What Gerald is doing is literal, honest-to-God propaganda for his own family's actions, and justification for future invasions. In it, he pitches the Irish as backwards, primitive, and egalitarian. Modern people, incensed by Enlightenment and (primarily) New Age sensibilities, end up thinking these are actually pretty cool. Who wouldn't want to be frolicking semi-nude in the forest, worshiping the deities of your forefathers in a state of bliss? But the Medievals would have understood these to be traits ascribed to a "state of innocence" such as Adam and Eve, and understood that these people are living neck-deep in sin. They need to be inserted in the bounds of society.

And you may be thinking "ah, typical Christian ignorance, unable to understand the freedom of the Pagan" (something that some Irish nationalists actually did say), but you'd be buying into Gerald's propaganda by accepting the premise that they were somehow essentially more primitive than the English. It's very insidious. More importantly though, remember what I said: the Irish were Christians. Had been for centuries at that point. That's what was so novel about Gerald's book, he had found a way to do to other Christians what people were doing to the Muslims, and thus making the Irish the perfect target for colonization. The Northern Europe Reconquista, if you will.

This all might sound eerily familiar to the myth-making that was done to justify the colonization of the Native Americans, and that's because it is. A lot of the Irish tropes were subsequently applied to the Native Americans when the Americas were "discovered", and found their way to RPGs via the Western. I don't talk about them here both because WW's post is better, but also because many people like to distance themselves from it and try to justify these tropes as "simply being inspired by the real history of the Irish and the Welsh", which is just not true.

This is also why I didn't want to mention how the term ties back to Africa, because that would be a very short post with just the word "racism" written on it. It's that simple.

The case of the Germans

If we see Irish tropes when those tribals are all egalitarian and foul-tempered, yet also musical and knavish (since their state of sin engenders a proclivity towards music that cannot be denied), there is also another kind of tribal: the Northern Barbarian.

Even among some very smart people I've heard repeat Roman stereotypes about the Germans. The Northern Barbarian is tall, stoic, blonde, dressed in furs, maybe also tattooed, possessed of a certain sense of martial honour where everyone in the society is either a warrior or a woman. Similarly to the Irish, they're organized by Big Men who control land and smaller homesteaders, and that's it.

Brett Devereaux wrote on ACOUP about the 'Fremen Mirage' with regards to how these bestial tribals relate to civilized folk. So, much like the Irish, let's pretend we don't know about all that and think in historical terms, because that's how people obscure this kind of conversation.

People usually think about the Norse in these situations, but I think this conversation is more interesting if we look into a case where "tribe" actually is still used in modern historiography, and that's the northern barbarians to the Romans.

To the Romans, the various peoples (Jutes, Batavians, wtv) were "natios", and 'Germanic' was their "gens". When the Romans showed up, they turned a "natio" into a "civitas". And these tribes were organized in very different ways than we assume today.

For instance, if we take the average Norse-inspired orc band, you'd imagine that each tribe would have a single leader and acts as a single political actor, but that's not quite what the Romans were saying³. Instead, what you have are confederations with a whole class of kings, apparently aristocrats, but it's not actually clear what was their role in society. Vercingetorix, as a non-German example, led a confederation of peoples against the Romans, not just a tribe.

You'd also think that tribes are just another way to say "cultures" organized in a sort of proto-ethnostate, which also makes little sense under the slightest scrutiny, because that's not how humans organize. They're also not just "the people who live in this area confined by these natural borders", because some areas are contiguous - Germany was extensively settled and there were no real "empty areas" between tribes. And Gaiseric's Vandal Kingdom in North Africa also had a bunch of Alans in there, and those dudes came from Central Asia!

Instead, it seems like infrastructure was the big determinator. That is to say, each tribe would build their own fortification - either an oppidum or a straight up wall - to guard against "the other people". The Anglo-Saxon Offa built Offa's Dyke to clearly mark what was Wales and what was not-Wales; Hadrian built a wall to clearly mark what was the Roman Empire and what wasn't.

What's left of the "tribe" under that prism? Fucking nothing, is what. A tribe is a bunch of guys around a leader, usually talking specifically about armies, and could have just as well be invoked periodically in times of turmoil or whatever. Go read Guy Halsall or Chris Wickham for more details. What's important to understand is that, historically speaking, even in the original context in which the word "tribe" was used (by the Romans), it's mostly as a way to otherize their neighbours and distinguish themselves as more civilized and bigger dicked. The actual utility of the term for historians is there, but very far from what RPG nerds usually imagine.

_{^{Nah man my orcs aren't racist, they just conform very neatly to every single stereotype about the vikings or huns, written by traumatized people trying to paint them as the scourge of the earth. As a joke.}}

So should I stop using the word "tribe"? What should I do then?

This is the part where other posts might tell you "Noooo hahahaa I'm not saying thaaat it's a part of fantasy literatureee it's all fictioon it doesn't matter dude". I'm not gonna do that. You really should stop calling everyone and their dog "tribes" or "tribals".

Yes it's a term with a racist history, but plenty of things are racist in fantasy. The pernicious underlying problem is that "a tribe" means basically squat. So what should you do instead?

As anyone who has taught children who are still learning how to express themselves knows, sometimes you have to stop them and say "Use your words". "Express yourself with the tools given to you", so that they can stop thinking in labels and start thinking in proper concepts like a grown-up. You're an adult, this is what you should do: use your words.

If by "tribal" you mean "primitive", then use "primitive". Don't pussyfoot around it with pseudo-historical bullshit, just own the fact that you're drawing a direct parallel between that Orc "tribe" and the African or Native American tribes, and subtly implying them to be less developed and more backwards or "purer" than the other civilizations. Play straight into the noble savage trope. If you're gonna be a racist, just be a racist.

If by "tribal" you mean "a small village led by a headman without much in the way of institutions or social sophistication", then call it a village. Use your words. If you refuse to call that orc chieftain a "king" because he doesn't have the money to pay for a crown and lives in a wooden hall rather than a stone one, you've already taken the side of their enemies.

If by "tribal" you mean "an extensive land of peoples who are more agrarian and pagan than their Christian-coded neighbours", just be more creative and stop playing into Medieval Irish stereotypes. Be for real.

And what if you don't want to use "tribe"? Then call them what they call themselves. "Peoples", "Nations", or just the proper noun they use. The Xavantes here in Brasil don't really reckon themselves a "tribe", they're Xavantes, that's the word they use for themselves as a people. Resist the incessant pedant in your brain telling you to categorize everything and embrace a world that is full of beautiful nigh-infinite variety. You damn nerd.