carneiro - the nature of the chiefdom as revealed by evidence from the cauca valley

CHAPTER 5 The Nature of the Chiefdom as Revealed by Evidence from the Cauca Valley of Colombia ROBERT L. CARNEIRO

Elman Service, whom we honor with these essays, has been one of the principal architects of modern cultural evolutionism. And he has helped build the structure at every level, from the microevolutionary, as in his brilliant analysis of the section system of aboriginal Australia (Service 1960), to the macroevolutionary, as in his work on the rise of the state and civilization (Service 1975).

But of all he has written on cultural evolution, nothing has been so influential as the sequence of stages of political development he pro-posed in Primitive Social Organization. This sequence of band, tribe, chiefdom, and state, unremarkable as it may seem to us today, came at a critical time in the history of anthropology. When it was first proposed in 1962, the Procrustean bed of anti-evolutionism had just been broken and a new willingnessindeed, an eagernessto find and apply valid evolutionary schemes existed among many anthropologists.

Of Service's four stages of political evolution, the most novel and intriguing was that of chiefdom. Service himself did not invent this stagethat had been done 7 years earlier by Kalervo Oberg (1955) but it was he who seized upon the concept of chiefdom and gave it wide currency.

Shortly thereafter, William Sanders and Barbara Price, utilizing Ser-vice's sequence of stages as their theoretical framework, published their well-known Mesoamerica: The Evolution of a Civilization (1968). In their reconstruction of the prehistory of this region, the chiefdom, as the stage that immediately preceded every Mesoamerican state, figured prominently.

Sanders and Price's book was itself influential, especially among younger archeologists. Through it, the concept of the chiefdom as an

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168 PROFILES IN CULTURAL EVOLUTION

essential step in political development became more widely recognized, and concern with the chiefdom as a major evolutionary stage has in-creased steadily ever since. Thus today there is great theoretical interest in the nature and basis of the chiefdom; yet, theoretical interest in the chiefdom has far outrun an empirical knowledge of i t . 1

The purpose of theory is, of course, to explain fact, and the most successful theories are those that derive from an acquaintance with the facts. Indeed, there is nothing like a thorough mastery of the facts to help generate robust theory. Consequently, if we are to develop ade-quate theories about the origin and evolution of chiefdoms, we must acquaint ourselves more fully with examples of their structure and be-havior.

Fortunately, though widely scattered in the anthropological literature, facts about chiefdoms exist. Furthermore, they exist in greater numbers than is generally supposed. The problem lies in ferreting them out. The time has come, though, to examine the literature on chiefdoms more systematically to see what it can tell us about them. Indeed this is being done to an increasing degree, for example, Helms (1979), Kirch (1984), Marquardt (1987), and Rountree (1989). To see what we can add to the growing body of current literature on chiefdoms and what light we can shed on the question of their origin, let us turn to a group of chiefdoms that once filled the Cauca Valley of Colombia and have until now been ignored by theorists.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

First, though, we should have in mind a clear definition of both a chiefdom and a state. Only then can we tell when we are dealing with an unequivocal chiefdom and when we are approaching, or have passed, the threshold signaling a state.

A chiefdom is an autonomous political unit comprising a number of communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief (Carneiro 1981:45).

A state is an autonomous political unit, encompassing many commu-nities within its territory, and having a centralized government tvith the power to draft men for war or work, levy and collect taxes, and decree and enforce laws (Carneiro 1981:69; 1970:733).

This definition of a chiefdom is more stringent than most. It pre-cludes, for example, the societies of the Northwest Coast, although they

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are commonly referred to as chiefdoms by anthropologists (e .g . , Service 1962:150, 153, 169-170; Sanders and Price 1968:49, 81; Flannery 1972:403). By the definition proposed, these societies were not chiefdoms, because although within a Northwest Coast tribe all chiefs were strictly ranked, from highest to lowest, in relation to one another, each villageeven that of the lowest-ranking chiefremained politi-cally autonomous (Carneiro 1981:48).

THE CAUCA VALLEY

During the early sixteenth century, when the Spaniards began arriv-ing in America, the Circum-Caribbean region contained probably the largest aggregation of chiefdoms anywhere in the world. And one of the most important concentrations of them was in the Cauca Valley of Co-lombia.

When they entered this valley in 1535, the Spaniards found it filled with chiefdoms, and only after a long and bitter struggle were they able to subdue them. During the years of this struggle, and those that imme-diately followed, a number of Spanish soldiers, priests, and others who journeyed among these chiefdoms recorded what they to learned about the chiefdoms, and much of this written testimony was later published. Chroniclers who wrote about the Cauca Valley included Pascual de Andagoya, Cieza de Len, Juan de Castellanos, Sebastin de Ben-alczar, Jorge Robledo, Pedro Sarmiento, and Pedro Simn.

During the 1940s, the German ethnologist Hermann Trimborn stud-ied these early sources and, based on the information they contained, prepared a 500-page volume entitled Seoro y Barbarie en el Valle del Cauca (1949). (Seoro and cacicazgo were the two terms applied by the Spaniards to a chiefdom. Nowadays, jefatura is also used in Spanish in this sense.) Trimborn's objective was to give as full an account of these chiefdoms as possible, and he succeeded admirably in doing so.

Not only was Trimborn a meticulous scholar, but his work has the added merit of having no theoretical axe to grind. Our confidence in the fidelity of his compilation is thus enhanced. The reliability of Trim-born's book, as well as its wealth of detail, makes it a useful source in assessing the nature of the chiefdoms that flourished in this region of Colombia. Since Trimborn's volume is relatively obscure and not readily available, however, I will extract its essence and present it here so that the general outlines of these chiefdoms are clearly visible. Let us look, then, at what the Spaniards found in the Cauca Valley 450 years ago.


DISTRIBUTION AND POPULATION OF CAUCA VALLEY CHIEFDOMS

The Cauca Valley is a long, relatively narrow valley running some 300 miles from south to north between the Cordillera Central and the Cordillera Occidental, two of the three great mountain ranges into which the northern Andes are divided (see Figure 5.1).

Today, the Cauca Valley contains important cities such as Popayan, Cali, Armenia, Manizales, and Medelln, and is the leading coffee-growing region of Colombia.

For most of its length, the Cauca River is bounded on both sides by mountains that rise from 5,000 to 10,000 feet. Here and there, though, the valley widens out to some 30 miles or so. Thus, although the Cauca Valley is not as sharply delimited as are many Peruvian coastal valleys, it does show a considerable degree of environmental circumscription. This, as I shall argue later, played a significant role in giving rise to chiefdoms in this region (see Carneiro 1970).

Besides the main valley, which runs south to north, a number of smaller, lateral valleys feed into the Cauca from east and west. Some of the chiefdoms mentioned in this paper were located in these lateral valleys rather than in the main valley itself (Trimborn, 1949:208). Some groups, such as the Gorrones, lived on the flanks of the mountains, rather than on the valley bottom, and came down to the Cauca River only to fish (ibid., 64). At one location, a paved road led eastward out of the Cauca Valley, and at various places in the valley irrigation sys-tems had been built (ibid., 255).

The names of nearly 50 Cauca Valley peoples were recorded by the Spaniards, the best known being the Quimbaya, whose name is associ-ated with elaborate goldwork (ibid., 6 5 ) , 2 the Anserma, Lile , Pozo, Guaca, and Popayan (see Figure 5.1). These names designated what Trimborn calls "tribes," which were originally linguistic and cultural groupings. The names thus did not always apply to discrete political entities. A particular chiefdom might or might not be coextensive with a "tribe." Sometimes a "tribe" comprised several formerly independent chiefdoms that had been conquered by the strongest one among them and thus had become politically unified (ibid., 247). For example, a Lile chief named Petecuy had defeated five other Lile chiefs and unified all the Lile into a large chiefdom (ibid., 247). Likewise, the entire Jamundi "tribe" had been unified by the chief whose name they then bore (ibid., 247).

The Quimbaya, who seemed to be on the decline politically when the Spaniards arrived (ibid., 258), were apparently divided into five sepa-rate chiefdoms, each under a paramount chief independent of the others

Figure 5.1. Some of the major chiefdoms of the Cauca Valley of Colombia during the sixteenth century.

(ibid., 241, 245246).3 Among the Anserma there were two chiefdoms, each under the rule of a strong, independent paramount chief. Even together, though, these two chiefs do not seem to have ruled over the entire group of people called Anserma (ibid., 246).



Different levels of political development existed in and around the Cauca Valley (ibid., 61-62 , 207, 250). At the lower end of the scale were the Catio, who, though included in Trimborn's study for compara-tive purposes, actually lived just outside the valley. The Catio consisted of autonomous villages which, in time of war, united temporarily under a single war chief selected to lead them in battle (ibid., 247). At the highest level of development were Guaca and Popayn, which were larger and stronger than the rest of Cauca Valley polities and were, according to the Spaniards, well on their way to becoming states. In between these two levels were some 80 typical chiefdoms.

Estimates of the total population of the Cauca Valley at contact times are not available. However, based on individual tribal estimates by Trimborn (ibid., 142), the valley's population was probably between 500,000 and 750,000. Based mostly on estimates of the number of warriors each group could assemble, we can present the following popu-lation figures for individual chiefdoms:

Arma 17,000 (ibid., 128) Carrapa 16,000-20,000 (ibid., 336) Pozo 16,000-30,000 (ibid., 336-337) Guaca 48,000-60,000 (ibid., 335)

Figures for the Quimbaya give some idea of the number of villages in a chiefdom. In all, the Quimbaya were reported to have slightly more than 80 villages distributed among 5 separate chiefdoms, yielding an average of some 16 villages per chiefdom (ibid., 241246). Given their large total populations, Cauca Valley chiefdoms appear to have had relatively few villages per chiefdom; however, these villages were gener-ally of large size. Since great military advantage was conveyed by living in large settlements, many Cauca Valley villages had probably aggre-gated with others some time in the past to attain their substantial size. The Arma, with a total population of some 17,000, lived in 26 villages, thus averaging 654 persons per village (ibid., 128). According to Las Casas, villages of 1,000 to 2,000 persons were not rare in the Cauca Valley (ibid., 126).

For the Jamund, villages with as many as 500 to 800 houses are reported, indicating a population of 2,000 to 3,000 persons per village (ibid., 126).

POLITICAL LEADERSHIP Each village had a chief, but this chief had relatively little power

(ibid., 241). Above village chiefs stood the paramount chief (called


seor or cacique by the Spaniards), a political leader of considerable authority who was generally feared and respected.

Cauca Valley chiefs, many of whose names were recorded by the Spaniards (ibid., 209), were, without question, very powerful. Trim-born, in fact, speaks of their power as "absolute" (ibid., 242). No council of elders or any other similar body existed to dilute or mitigate the paramount chief's decisions or commands. War councils involving lesser chiefs and military captains did exist, but their role was to decide matters of strategy and tactics, not political policy. The crucial decision of whether or not to go to war was in the hands of the supreme chief alone (ibid., 244).

Paramount chiefs were wealthy. They owned many luxury goods, es-pecially gold jewelry (ibid., 214), and they controlled important strate-gic resources. For instance, they either owned or had prior claim to salt springs, stretches of river where gold was panned, and gold mines (ibid., 214). Chiefs had symbols of office, such as a gold crown or a scepter (ibid., 217). Furthermore, because of their high status, they were carried in litters, hammocks, or on the shoulders of their retainers (ibid., 217-218).

A Cauca Valley chief had a rudimentary court. His retinue included principales, as the Spaniards called nobles, and capitanes, or war cap-tains. A chief also had numerous domestic servants and retainers (some slave, some free), litter-bearers, messengers, and interpreters. Some-times a majordomo oversaw the operation of his household (ibid., 220 222). Younger brothers of a chief might also form part of his court, often carrying out administrative functions (ibid., 226). When the chief moved from place to place, his court traveled with him. In addition to domestic slaves, a paramount chief also had slaves who helped till his fields.4

The chief occupied the largest house in the village and often had several houses (ibid., 213). The chief's house was the place where war trophies were usually stored. Indeed, a chief often kept the skulls or dried heads of enemy warriors impaled on bamboo poles outside his house. This grim display served to acquaint visitors with his military prowess, thus helping to awe and intimidate them (ibid., 369, 370, 372, 400). Stone construction was not practiced in the Cauca Valley, so that the chief's, house, like other houses, was made of wood and thatch (ibid., 213).

RELIGIOUS FUNCTIONS

The chief's religious role was quite limited. Trimborn writes: "The existence of priestly functions among Cauca Valley chiefs cannot be


demonstrated" (ibid., 237), and he concludes that "It does not appear that chieftainship arose from a priestly base" (ibid., 237). This does not mean, however, that the chief was not involved with the supernatural. Although there were no temples as such among Cauca Valley chiefdoms, certain cult objectstrophy heads, mummified bodies of former chiefs, and idolswere often arrayed inside the chief's house (ibid., 237238). These objects certainly suggest that some religious power accrued to him.

Priests existed in the Cauca Valley, but their political functions and influence were negligible. In their religious role they mediated between members of the society and certain supernatural beings, but they also cured, revealing their shamanistic roots (ibid., 193). Feeding the corpses of executed war captives to the gods seems to have been an important religious function, and priests may well have been the ones to do it (ibid., 238).

While priests had higher status than commoners, they did not form a separate class or caste (ibid., 194). Trimborn summarizes their role as follows: "Although priests exercised a notable influence on public life, they did not involve themselves directly in political matters" (ibid., 242) . 5

At their death, the bodies of paramount chiefs were disposed of in a manner that reflected their high status. Elaborate shaft and cyst graves were often dug for their interment (ibid., 228), and they were buried with rich grave goods (ibid., 216). Moreover, a number of their retainers were generally killed and buried with them (ibid., 203, 222).

Funerary practices differed, though. Not all chiefs were interred. In some chiefdoms, the body of a dead chief was mummified, stuffed with ashes, and kept, propped upright, in the house of his successor (ibid., 231). At death, a chief was usually succeeded by his son. If he had no sons, his sister's son inherited the office (ibid., 224). Thus, matrilineal succession to office, which was the rule among the Muisca (Chibcha) of the adjacent Magdalena Valley (Kroeber 1946:903; Broadbent 1964:19), was not the practice here.

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

Four main social classes existed among Cauca Valley chiefdoms: paramount chiefs, nobles (principales), free commoners, and slaves (ibid., 196). Nobles, in turn, were distinguished according to the fol-lowing criteria: nobility by blood (nobleza de sangre); nobility of com-mand (nobleza de cargo), such as war captains; and nobility based on wealth (nobleza de riqueza) (ibid., 194197). These three categories,


however, were not absolutely distinct. Thus, nobles by blood were ap-parently descendants of successful war captains (ibid., 338). Speaking of the noble class among the nearby Cueva of Darien in Panama, who apparently reflected Cauca Valley practice, Trimborn noted that nobil-ity "rested on inheritance, but more immediately on war deeds" (ibid., 196). Nobles were wealthier than commoners. They had bigger houses and more land (ibid., 211212), and their wealth was based on owning slaves and controlling their labor.

Slavery was widespread in the Cauca Valley. Indeed, a slave trade flourished here, and even slave markets existed (ibid., 200, 204). Slaves played a prominent role in the entire economy of the chiefdoms of the region (ibid., 204). They were used to till the fields of the chiefs and the nobles, and also served as personal servants to the paramount chief. And how was this slave class formed? By far the greatest number of slaves were prisoners of war (ibid., 201), and we shall have more to say about war captives later in the paper.

Slaves were not, however, the only source of labor harnessed by Cauca Valley chiefdoms. Among the Arma, for instance, Cieza de Leon tells us that a chief's subjects were all expected to build his houses and till his fields (ibid., 212, 240). Corve labor was also required of the general populace in panning gold in the rivers and in extracting it from mines (ibid., 271).

TAXATION AND TRADE

Among the Guaca, one of the most highly developed chiefdoms of the region, there was taxation in kind as well as the requisitioning of labor. The paramount chief of the Guaca exacted tribute in gold jewelry, cot-ton mantles, and certain of foodstuffs (ibid., 214, 272).

Cauca Valley chiefdoms carried on a lively trade. The principal items exchanged were gold (in grains or nuggets), gold jewelry, salt, woven cotton cloth, raw cotton, foodstuffs (especially fish and peccaries), slaves, and human flesh (ibid., 174, 179, 188). Specialized merchants probably existed (ibid., 192), but they appear to have been private entrepreneurs rather than agents of the chief (ibid., 197). However, at least one paramount chief, that of the Arma, used gold mined in his territory to trade with other chiefdoms in an exchange system that he seemed to control (ibid., 240). A famous market existed in the chiefdom of Taham, which 200 to 300 Indians might attend on a given day. Salt, mantles, cotton, and slaves were all traded in this market (ibid., 179, 188). Trading was done entirely by barter; no currency was known (ibid., 179, 188).


LEGAL SYSTEM

Customary rather than codified law prevailed throughout the Cauca Valley (ibid., 264). For certain types of crime, private redress was permitted. Thus, a government monopoly on the use of force in meting out criminal justice did not exist (ibid., 61). In fact, little or nothing is reported for Cauca Valley chiefdoms regarding what steps, if any, politi-cal officials took when crimes were committed. However, among the well described Cueva of Darien, "magistrates" assisted chiefs in settling offenses by "arresting" criminals and carrying out punishment (ibid., 262). Despite the absence of direct testimony on this score, it seems likely that something analogous occurred in the Cauca Valley. We do know that when thieves were caught among the Anserma, they were enslaved and sold out of the district (ibid., 201, 266).

Sumptuary laws were clearly absent in the Cauca Valley; however, they were found among the more highly evolved Muisca of the Magdalena Valley (ibid., 216). Evidently, among Cauca Valley chiefdoms, anyone could buy and wear all the gold jewelry and other finery he could afford.

WARFARE

What most impressed the Spaniards when they first entered the Cauca Valley was the prevalence of warfare (ibid., 258) . 6 It was, the sources tell us, universal, unending, and intense (ibid., 280). Trimborn frequently speaks of it as "total war" (ibid., 284285) and as "the war of all against all" (e .g . , ibid., 288). To show the warlikeness of the Pozo, for instance, Cieza de Leon wrote that "when they are planting or working the fields, in one hand they hold a club to slash the fallow and in the other a lance to fight" (ibid., 281).

What led Cauca Valley chiefdoms to go to war? The principal motive seems to have been the taking of captives. Cannibalism, human sacri-fice, retainer burial, and forced labor in the mines depleted a chiefdom's supply of slaves, and warfare was the primary means of making good this loss (ibid., 203, 204-205, 283).

For some Cauca Valley chiefdoms, then, the capture of prisoners was apparently a more important reason for going to war than the taking of land. But not for all. The desire to expand a chiefdom's territory and to gain control of areas of gold mining, salt deposits, and trade routes was also a major cause (ibid., 283). Territorial conquest was a special in-centive for war among the Guaca and Popayan, who were actively ex-panding their domains when the Spaniards arrived (ibid., 280).


Armies of considerable size were mobilized by Cauca Valley chiefdoms. Although for relatively minor engagements the average num-ber of warriors on each side might be about 200 to 400 (ibid., 335 337), for a major battle armies were often much larger. The early Span-ish chroniclers reported that the Carrapa could mount 4,000 warriors, the Pozo 4,000 to 6,000, and the Guaca 12,000 (ibid., 335-337).

Military alliances were concluded among a number of chiefdoms in the valley as each sought to gain an advantage over its enemies (ibid., 331334). However, the hostility commonly felt toward most neighbors limited the extent and duration of these alliances (ibid., 66, 277, 281).

Regardless of the reason for going to war, it was the chiefthe para-mount chiefwho alone decided the issue of war or peace (ibid., 241) and who led his armies into battle. "Fundamentally," wrote Trimborn, "it can be said that military commandas long as not prevented by illness or agegenerally belonged to the chief (ibid., 337). The only exceptions to this rule were provided by Guaca and Popayn, among whom the army was commanded by the chief's younger brother (ibid., 256, 337).

Councils of war involving capitanes and lesser chiefs were held, but, as already noted, they apparently determined matters of military strat-egy and tactics only, not whether or not to initiate a war (ibid., 244).

Warfare was all-out, bloody, and destructive. Even the Indians them-selves thought it was carried to excess. People repeatedly told the Span-iards, "We want peace with you, but our chief wants war" (ibid., 241). No quarter was given. Women and children were killed along with warriors (ibid., 284285). Enemy villages were burned and their gar-dens destroyed (ibid., 291, 295). War prisoners were always taken, though, since the taking of captives was generally the principal reason for going to war.

The fate awaiting prisoners varied. Some were killed and eaten out-right, sometimes even on the battlefield (ibid., 398). Indeed, Cauca Valley warriors often marched off to war carrying special ropes to tie up prisoners and flint knives to decapitate them (ibid., 389). The skulls and other body parts of slain enemies were made into trophies (ibid., 201). Most captives were probably kept aliveat least for a time. But they too might later be killed for cannibalistic rituals or in sacrifices to the gods (ibid., 203, 369). Yet, a substantial number were allowed to

survive to be used as slaves by their captors (ibid., 200). Taking prisoners in war was a very important way for a man to rise in

social status. The braver the warrior and the more prisoners he took, the higher the status he could reach (ibid., 202). Killing enemies in battle also brought prestige, and a warrior could become a war captain in this way. War captains had collections of drums whose heads were made of


human skin taken from enemies they had killed (ibid., 235). In three Lile houses he once entered, the Spanish captain Sebastian de Ben-alcazar counted a total of 680 drums made from the skin of war captives (ibid., 376).

Prisoners of war taken by a successful warrior but not killed by him served him as slaves. By tilling the soil for him, slaves permitted their owner to farm more land and thus improve his economic status (ibid., 204).

GROWTH OF POLITICAL POWER

Success in war redounded most of all to the credit of the paramount chief, since it was he who decided on going to war and led his warriors to victory. The political effect of military success was unmistakable. Over and over, Trimborn affirms that in the Cauca Valley the roots of chiefly power lay in war (ibid., 237, 338). The head trophies and skulls frequently exhibited inside or outside a chief's house clearly attested to this (ibid., 234). Wrote Trimborn: "As a result of the continuous state of war, the power of the chief increased until it became unlimited" (ibid., 241). Trimborn also noted that "Only after becoming consoli-dated did the chief attract (although slowly) other matters, including juridical ones, into the sphere of his authority" (ibid., 270).

With the increase in a chief's political power through successful military campaigns went a corresponding enhancement of his economic condition. This was a direct consequence of his receiving the lion's share of war booty. With this accumulated wealth, the chief could buy luxury goods, slaves, indeed anything he could not otherwise comman-deer or requisition.

How this helped build up his retinue of supporters and retainers has already been described.

TRANSITIONS

The Cauca Valley shows us scores of societies that had undergone the transition from simple, autonomous villages to the more advanced level of chiefdoms. Among a few of these chiefdoms, we can observe a further evolution of political structure in the direction of the state. Let us look at some of the evidence marking these developments.

Despite the burial of a certain amount of personal belongings as grave goods among Cauca Valley chiefdoms, there was also some inheritance of property (ibid., 224). This departs from the destruction or interment


of all property at the death of the owner, so characteristic of simpler societies, and suggests the growth of economic motives at the expense of religious ones.

War prisoners, who, if taken at all, are almost invariably killed in simpler societies, were, in the Cauca Valley, often kept alive to be exploited economically as slaves (ibid., 201, 205). This too was a major evolutionary step. Furthermore, the institution of slavery, which began with the taking of captives in war, was later extended so that certain criminals, such as thieves, were commonly made slaves as well (ibid., 205).

We can also see the chief's role in war undergoing a discernible development. In the case of the Catio, who lacked chiefdoms, war chiefs were elected ad hoc in times of war. While election as a war chief bestowed on a Catio warrior far more power than he ordinarily enjoyed, this power was of short duration, lapsing once hostilities ceased (ibid., 208).

Among virtually all Cauca Valley chiefdoms, though, the permanent political leader was, as we have seen, also the war chief. However, the polities of Guaca and Popayan had evolved beyond this stage. In both of them, the political leader no longer risked his life in combat, but assigned to his younger brother the role of leading the army into battle. For Guaca and Popayan chiefs, this was apparently a step toward to becoming kings, playing more of an administrative role and undertaking more priestly functions. In this respect, they were becoming more like Muisca rulers (ibid., 236).

INTERPRETATION AND IMPLICATIONS

What light do Cauca Valley chiefdoms shed on the nature and evolu-tion of chiefdoms generally? The answer is that they shed a great deal. To begin with, they show us the profound and ramifying effects of inten-sive warfare on society. One such effect had to do with settlement size. The Cauca Valley had clearly passed the stage where villages typically number 100 or 150 persons, as is often true of autonomous villages in Amazonia and elsewhere (ibid., 125). The great military advantage that large villages have over small ones seems to have led small Cauca Valley villages to coalesce into larger ones. By the early 1500s, village sizes of 500 to 1,000 persons appear to have been the norm.

The stimulating effect of environmental circumscription on political evolution, which has been found to operate elsewhere in the world (Carneiro 1970), is strikingly exemplified in the Cauca Valley too. As one might expect from the circumscription theory, the Catio, who lived


near but outside the Cauca Valley in a region less mountainous and thus less circumscribed, still existed as autonomous villages and had not developed chiefdoms. Only in time of war did Catio villages submerge their individual sovereignties and unite under the authority of an elected war chief. But in the Cauca Valley itself, where, according to Trimborn, "a series of extremely warlike tribes . . . were wedged into a very limited space" (ibid., 281), all polities had advanced to the level of chiefdoms.

Most chiefdoms of the Cauca Valley encompassed only peoples of their own "tribe." Only Guaca and Popayan had conquered other peo-ples outside their "tribe," thereby incorporating "foreign lands" into their polity. Popayan, for example, is said to have included under its suzerainty more than a dozen formerly independent chiefdoms (ibid., 248249). Guaca and Popayan, then, were at least on their way toward becoming states (ibid., 211).

Did they make it? That, of course, depends in part on one's definition of a state. If we go by the definition proposed above, it seems unlikely. Of the three criteria previously laid down for a state, decreeing and enforcing laws is the most stringent.7 And while the chroniclers do not seem to say if this criterion was met, my guess, based on what we know about law enforcement in other Cauca Valley polities, is that it was not. Guaca and Popayn, then, probably stood on the verge of statehood but had not actually crossed the threshold. However, had the Spaniards not arrived on the scene, they might in time have gone on to make the transition.

Too much, though, may be made over the precise criteria to be used in deciding whether a large and complex polity was or was not a state. Perhaps it would be useful here to introduce the term "protostate" to label any society poised on the brink of statehood, and not be overly concerned with whether it met every single requisite for that stage.

SOURCES OF POLITICAL POWER

Again, it must be stated that what emerges most clearly from the Cauca Valley regarding the motive force of political evolution is the overriding importance of warfare. Here as elsewhere, war provided the impetus for the rise of chiefdoms in the first place, and, under favorable circumstances, for their continued evolution into states (see Carneiro 1970). War is, after all, the foremostindeed, probably the only mechanism for overcoming the autonomy of smaller political units and leading to the formation of successively larger ones.

A commonly held view among anthropologists is that chiefdoms arose


by peaceful means (see Carneiro 1981:63). The Cauca Valley, however, challenges this view. Indeed, the evidence it presents strongly suggests just the opposite. It points to the fact that chiefdoms were born out of war, were powerfully shaped by war, and continued to be heavily in-volved in war as they evolved. Furthermore, the evidence marshaled by Trimborn supports the view that states, in turn, arise as the culmination of a process in which stronger chiefdoms, continuing their successful military careers, defeat, incorporate, and assimilate weaker ones.

Let us turn now to other questions that are often raised about chiefdoms and see what answers the Cauca Valley affords.

CHIEFDOMS AND REDISTRIBUTION

What role did redistribution play in the rise of the chiefdom? The answer seems to be, virtually none. 8 The political leader of an

incipient chiefdom must reward his followers, but this reward is strictly limited to those most instrumental to the chief's rise to power and to his continued maintenance of his position. And that means, first and fore-most, his most redoubtable warriors.

Rewarding men for their exploits in war is, of course, a far cry from redistribution in the usual sense. It is certainly not the careful collecting of food items or goods from the entire populace and then dutifully reap-portioning them back to everyone, making sure that each gets an equal share. Indeed, rather than a redistributor, a Cauca Valley chief was much more of an appropriator, or even an expropriator. To the extent that he "redistributed" wealth at all, it was done solely to a favored few, and only for the purpose of strengthening his political position.

But a broader question than redistribution is involved here. The question is this: What are the relative roles of economic and military factors in giving rise to the chiefdom? Early writers on chiefdoms, espe-cially Sahlins (1958:xi; 1968:24-25) and Service (1962:143-144), saw chiefdoms as essentially economic structures, arising through a chief's ability, through essentially peaceful means, to mobilize and allocate economic resources. In this way, they thought, the chief managed to accumulate wealth and prestige, attributes which somehow were trans-lated into the power required to operate a chiefdom. Warfare, in their view, played a negligible role in the process.

But the facts of the matter run against this view. The wealth, prestige, and power that paramount chiefs undoubtedly possess and display do not spring from the shrewdness of their economic manipulations. In chiefdom after chiefdomand not only those of the Cauca Valleywe see wealth, prestige, and power flowing to the man who most effectively


organizes and directs the military efforts of his group against his ene-mies. Of course, once entrenched in office, a paramount chief may well play an active and dominant role in controlling the flow of goods in his society. That was certainly true in the Cauca Valley. But the ability to do so ultimately rests on military prowess rather than economic skill.

CHIEFDOMS AND RANKING

Next, let us look at ranking. Should we consider ranking the defining characteristic of a chiefdom? Moreover, what is the basis of ranking? And when does it turn into social stratification?

More than anyone else, it was Morton Fried who focused on the phenomenon of ranking in characterizing chiefdoms. Indeed, he pre-ferred the term "rank society" to "chiefdom" when referring to societies that had taken the next step beyond the tribe. For him, ranking was not only the touchstone of a chiefdom, but its essence. And in this view he has been followed ever since. Indeed, one can say that today "rank society" and "chiefdom" are used as virtually synonymous by anthro-pologists (e .g. , Cohen 1989:16).

This equation, however, is quite misleading. To be sure, at the point in human history where social distinctions begin to supplant egalitarian-ism, these distinctions tend to be merely a graded series of statuses.9

And small gradations remain the essence of ranking. Only with the passage of time do they begin to coalesce and crystallize into a few distinct social classes.

What is commonly overlooked, however, is that the transition from ranking to social stratification does not await the coming of the state. It begins while societies are still at the level of chiefdoms. The societies of the Cauca Valley clearly attest to this. The same was true, for exam-ple, among the chiefdoms of Fiji (Carneiro 1990:200201). It seems inappropriate, therefore, to continue using "rank society" as equivalent to "chiefdom." The two may overlap, certainly, but they are far from being coextensive.

Now, let us turn to another question. How does ranking arise in the first place? Fried (1967:186) saw it stemming from "differential access to the resources of nature." Yet , he never satisfactorily explained how this "differential access" came to be. And the reason for his failure was simple. He consistently denied to warfare any significant role in the emergence of chiefdoms or "rank societies." 1 0 But by doing so he de-prived himself of the one mechanism capable of explaining how these resources of nature, heretofore freely available to all members of a society, began to be monopolized by just a few.


Admittedly, Cauca Valley chiefdoms show us only an advanced stage in the process by which the control over natural resources became more and more limited. But it takes no daring leap to assert that the means used to appropriate and monopolize the resources of nature by Cauca Valley chiefs in 1535 were also the means by which this differential access had arisen in the first place.

No doubt, the appropriation of such resources by a political leader did not happen all at once. It began modestly and proceeded gradually. As a result, those who benefited most by it at first showed only the small gradations typical of ranking. But during the evolution of chiefdomsin the Cauca Valley and elsewherethe process of monopolizing resources accelerated, with the chief taking a progressively bigger bite of the society's wealth. Those close to the chief, who benefited by his near-monopoly, saw their positions become more sharply separated from those of their less favored fellows until these positions became distinct social classes. 1 1

RELIGION AND THE CHIEFDOM

Since priests, temples, idols, and religious cults often play a promi-nent role in the life of a chiefdom, is it possible, one might ask, that the power that initially created chiefdoms was, at bottom, a religious one?

At least since the time of Julian Steward, we have had the concept of a "theocratic chiefdom" (Steward and Faron 1959:177). Indeed, Stew-ard proposed the theocratic chiefdom as an alternate form, parallel to, but distinguishable from, a militaristic chiefdom. He thus regarded at least one type of chiefdom as having sprung from religious roots.

This notion of a theocratically based chiefdom has been found most congenial by those anthropologists who dislike a military cause for any-thing. Some of them have gone so far as to question whether any chiefdom could arise by military means. Morton Fried, as we have seen, rejected this possibility. In arguing the point, he noted, first of all, that in some rank societies the chief and the head priest are one and the same. Since he was convinced that "the chiefly figures bring little in the way of power to their priestly roles," only one possibility was left. And so, Fried held, "It seems more accurate to believe that such small power as . . . [the chiefs] control is likely to stem from their ritual status" (Fried 1967:141). It was, then, the priestly side of the chief that invigo-rated his role of priest-chief rather than the other way around.

But Fried was mistaken in this, and he was mistaken in two ways. First of all, he seriously underestimated the secular power of a para-


mount chief. And secondly, he mistook the source of even that small amount of power he was willing to grant him.

To be sure, the picture is complicated by the fact that advanced chiefdoms may appear to be theocracies. Their paramount chiefs not only may have important religious functions, they may, as in Fiji (Wi l -liams 1870:19) and among the Powhatan (Rountree 1989:100), actually be regarded as demigods. But a trait that comes to characterize a phe-nomenon in the full flower of its maturity need not have been present at its inception. Certainly this is what the Cauca Valley suggests. What-ever religious powers paramount chiefs there came to acquire (and these are not well understood), there is little doubt that the source of these powers was secular and not sacred.

One can expect, I think, that in the course of generations a succes-sion of strong war leaders will take on more and more religious attri-butes, seeking by this means to extend and solidify their control of their society. If this process runs its course, a paramount chief could become, first, a priest, then, head priest, and finally, a god. Moreover, if a society were observed only during the final stage of this process, who could tell that this god-on-earth was actually a creation of the sword?

CAUCA VALLEY CHIEFDOMS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Although the prehistory of the Cauca Valley lies outside the scope of this paper, certain aspects of it raise questions that seem worth pursuing here. In a recent article, Donald Lathrap argued that "Classic" Quim-baya goldwork, generally thought to date between A . D . 400 and 800, is actually much older. In fact, he placed its beginnings before 600 B.C. (Lathrap, Isaacson, and McEwan 1984:13, 17).

Furthermore, Lathrap believed that the era of Classic Quimbaya goldwork was brought to an end by a series of volcanic eruptions be-tween 600 B.C. and A . D . 1. As a result of this vulcanism, he said, "the people responsible for this civilization were wiped out or driven away, and the Quimbaya area, as well as other parts of the Cauca Valley "was rendered uninhabitable for a period of 500 to 1,000 years" (Lathrap et al. 1984:17, 19).

implications. First of all, Classic Quimbaya goldwork is so finely wrought that it must have been the work of highly skilled professional craftsmen. And since autonomous villages could hardly have supported such specialists, their existence implies the existence of chiefdoms. If Lathrap is correct in his dating of early Quimbaya goldwork, then


chiefdoms were already flourishing in the Cauca Valley more than 2,000 years before the coming of the Spaniards.

Even if Lathrap's surmise about the antiquity of the Classic Quim-baya is challengedas it has been (Warwick Bray, Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, pers. com.)the generally accepted antiquity of Cauca Val-ley chiefdomsmore than 1,000 yearsstill poses an interesting prob-lem. If chiefdoms were established here by A . D . 400, why had they not evolved into states in more than a millennium?

Lathrap's answer would be that political evolution in the valley was truncated by severe vulcanism. But since this interpretation is ques-tioned by Colombian specialists, let us set it aside. What are we left with, then? The answer may simply be that in the normal course of their development it takes millennia rather than centuries for chiefdoms to evolve into states. But if this is so, we face another question: Why should the process of state formation be so slow, even in a region where environmental circumscription favored it? Two answers suggest them-selves.

First of all, we may have to reconsider the notionwhich I myself previously heldthat the desire to conquer territory is the most fre-quent cause of war among chiefdoms. The fact that conquest warfare arises at the chiefdom level, and remains common throughout, does not mean that all chiefdom wars were fought for this reason. Indeed, as we have seen, most Cauca Valley wars were not. Most of them were fought to capture prisoners, either to use as slaves or for the purpose of canni-balism. Still other wars were waged with the undisguised motive of annihilating the enemy. This involved destroying his property as well as his person, including burning his villages and laying waste his fields (Trimborn 1984:184, 280-281, 290-292, 295). Although winning such a war might increase a chief's power, it did little to augment the size of his domain.

Yet another reason may be put forward for the seemingly slow evolu-tion of chiefdoms into states. Had the process of political development contained some kind of "ratchet-and-pawl" mechanism, so that every gain, once made, would be retained, states would have come into being much sooner. Had there been only advances and no regressions, each increase in the size of a political unit would have been a permanent gain. But, of course, such was not the case. Large polities, built up slowly and painfully, could and often did fragment back into their com-ponent units. And if they did not lapse all the way back to autonomous villages, they regressed at least to the level of smaller and simpler chiefdoms. Political evolution, then, is not rectilinear but sawtoothed. The gains of decades, or even centuries, can be quickly undone, leav-


ing the process of growth, amalgamation, and consolidation to begin all over again.

To be sure, viewed from a broad enough perspective, not only has the general trend of political development been upward, its pace has been accelerating. It took more than 3 million years for human societies to transcend band and village autonomy, but once this advance was achieved, political evolution proceeded with remarkable swiftness. In a trice, relatively speaking, we see chiefdoms succeeding autonomous villages, states succeeding chiefdoms, and, in a few favored instances, empires succeeding states.

Of course, from the narrower perspective of a few decades, or even of a few generations, the picture is much different, with stasis, oscilla-tion, and even regression appearing about as frequently as advance.

SUMMARY

The Cauca Valley of Colombia was one of the regions of the world with the highest concentration of chiefdoms. When the Spaniards en-tered the valley in the sixteenth century, they found no fewer than 80 chiefdoms flourishing here. And so impressed were they by these chiefdoms that they left detailed accounts of what they were like. In terms of political development, the Cauca Valley can be said to have been at mid-course. The threshold from autonomous villages to chiefdoms had long since been crossed, and evolution had proceeded well beyond that. Thus the chiefdoms encountered by the Spaniards were not incipient but mature. For students of the chiefdom, this proved to be a happy circumstance, for it enabled the Spaniards to observe and record what such chiefdoms were like while they still existed in great number and in full vigor.

While no single area of the world can be taken as representing a final and definitive picture of all chiefdoms, the evidence from the Cauca Valley is so rich, so vivid, and probably so typical of chiefdoms gener-ally, that no one interested in understanding and portraying this level of political organization can safely ignore it.

Anthropologists agree that chiefdoms represent the least-known stage in political development. Thus, the ample data on Cauca Valley chiefdoms, heretofore scarcely known, should help us take measurable steps in fleshing out the skeleton of this key phase of social evolution.


NOTES

1. For a history of the concept of chiefdom and an examination of various aspects of it, see Carneiro (1981). For a recent comprehensive survey of the published literature on chiefdoms, see Earle (1987).

2. However, the Classic Quimbaya goldwork, so much admired by archeologists and collectors, dates from a period long before the sixteenth century. Speaking of Colombian goldwork generally, Reichel-Dolmatoff (1988:12, 15) observed that "'ar-eas' or 'styles' of goldwork [are] named after certain tribes that at the time of the Spanish Conquest inhabited the regions from which the gold pieces are said to have come. This zonification is not, of course, wholly tenable. The Quimbaya, for exam-ple, were a tribe which in the sixteenth century occupied only a small part of the Central Cordillera of the [Colombian] Andes, yet the so-called 'Quimbaya style' of goldwork is attributed to a much wider area."

3. Reichel-Dolmatoff (pers. com.) believes Quimbaya territory was not large enough to accommodate five chiefdoms.

4. For details on Cauca Valley agriculture at contact times, especially the crops grown, see Reichel-Dolmatoff (1961:90-92, 95-98).

5. Reichel-Dolmatoff (pers. com.) believes that priests and shamans played a larger role in Cauca Valley societies than indicated here. That may well have been true. In matters of politics and warfare, however, the role of priests probably centered around such things as deciding on a propitious time to launch an attack and solicit-ing the gods' intercession to secure a favorable outcome. These activities must certainly have been regarded as important. Still, the evidence indicates that priests acted in the religious sphere rather than in the political arena.

6. For a fuller treatment of Cauca Valley warfare than is possible here, along with a comparison of this level of warfare and that of Fijian chiefdoms, see Carneiro (1990).

7. Tahiti, for example, met the first two criteria for statehooddrafting men and collecting taxesbut failed on the third countdecreeing and enforcing laws (see Carneiro 1981:70).

8. The evidence against the redistribution theory is steadily mounting. Thus, in her recent book on the Powhatan chiefdom of Tidewater Virginia, Rountree (1989:111) writes as follows: "It is inaccurate to call Powhatan's organization a redistributive chiefdom. That term implies regular and fairly frequent collection and distribution of food and valuables by a chief, with all members of his organization participating. Powhatan culture does not fit that model . . . . There is little evidence of Powhatan or any other weroance [sub-chief] collecting foodstuffs for later distribution, even in times when their subjects were in want."

9. This is not to deny that these gradations may sometimes become sharply demar-cated and exquisitely minute. In the Northwest Coast, for example, where such distinctions were carried further than perhaps anywhere else on earth, "A record has survived of one Kwakiud feast in which each of the 658 guests from thirteen subdivisions of the chiefdom knew whether he was, say, number 437 or number 438" (Farb 1978:145).

10. This view he expressed forcefully and repeatedly. Thus he once wrote that "the evolution of ranking and stratification from an undifferentiated egalitarian base . . . [is] not . . . related to any prior evolution of military organization or command" (Fried 1967:105). And again: "I would like . . . to take a deliberately extreme stand and assert that military considerations serve to institutionalize rank differences only when these are already implicit or manifest in the economy. I do not believe that


pristine developments in the formalization of rank can be attributed to even grave military necessity" (Fried 1960:721). Finally, he asked, "Where is the evidence that there has been an intertribal struggle for existence in cultural evolution?" (Fried 1976:596). To which I would answer, "Wherever one looks for."

11. In this process of crystallization, heredity no doubt played a major role, as those who had achieved a high position by their own efforts sought to have this high status, with all its privileges, pass automatically to their descendants.

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