This class finishes chapter 5 of The Dawn of Everything, examining why Indigenous societies developed radically different approaches to slavery. The concept of “capture societies” reveals how Northwest Coast nobility raided for enslaved war captives while California societies built institutions specifically to prevent enslavement. For the introduction to schismogenesis and culture areas, see Part 1.
Capture Societies
Defining Capture Societies
The term “slavery” carries such heavy moral weight from plantation systems that it becomes difficult to understand slavery in other contexts. Graeber and Wengrow define enslavement as more than labor appropriation: enslaved people cannot make social obligations, are severed from their communities of origin, and exist in what West Indian sociologist Orlando Patterson termed “social death”—placed outside society itself.
Anthropologist Fernando Santos-Granero uses the term “capture societies” to describe many Indigenous American groups. These differed fundamentally from plantation slavery. The ideal enslaved person was a war captive, because raising a person to productive adulthood requires enormous investment of care and labor. Raiding for captives meant stealing that investment from other societies. Some capture societies maintained relatively high proportions of enslaved people—sometimes 25% of populations—but the logic remained war captivity rather than commercial agriculture.
The Ambivalence of Caring
Capture societies disrupt neat evolutionary classifications. Anthropologists traditionally categorized societies by subsistence mode: hunters and gatherers, herders, or farmers. But the Waikuru of Paraguay were hunters and gatherers who raided agricultural societies for corn and slaves, eventually ruling over the farmers themselves. Where does this fit in the progression from foraging to farming? Systematic raiding for people demolishes the idea that societies can be neatly classified by primary food production.
The ambivalence of caring further complicates this picture. In the Americas, most Indigenous societies used the same word for their own people and for “human beings”—they considered themselves the proper humans. Europeans often learned Indigenous names from enemies; “Eskimo,” for instance, derives from a term meaning despised non-people. Within capture societies, children might be incorporated as proper humans, but enslaved adults remained outside the social order, required to work without reciprocal obligations. Amazonian peoples apparently discussed enslaved people using language similar to how they talked about captured pets—a troubling parallel revealing the radical othering involved in enslavement.
Why Capture Societies Emerged: Beyond Ecological Determinism
Why did Northwest Coast societies practice slavery while California societies south of the Klamath River did not? Optimal foraging theory offered an ecological explanation: California peoples spent enormous effort gathering acorns and pine nuts despite having access to salmon runs with thousands of fish easily harvested. The theory claimed fish-based economies created concentrated stored wealth vulnerable to raids, incentivizing slavery, while acorn-based economies removed the incentive.
This explanation fails. People weren’t raiding each other for fish—there was no practical way to transport stolen dried fish in quantities justifying a raid. The real answer lies in social values, not ecology. Northwest Coast nobles refused to work because working would compromise their noble status. They also couldn’t coerce commoners to work. The solution: raid other societies for people outside the social order who could be forced to labor without challenging the nobles’ status or the commoners’ autonomy.
Anti-Capture Institutions: The Story of the Wogies
California societies told a cautionary tale about a people called the wogies who came from the north and were captured for labor. The enslavers grew fat and lazy, dependent on their captives’ work. One day the wogies simply left, and the enslavers were too sluggish to pursue them. When Europeans arrived, some California peoples initially thought they were the wogies returning. The story remained a morality tale about the dangers of relying on enslaved labor.
South of the Klamath River, California societies developed specific institutions to prevent capture societies from emerging. One remarkable example: if you captured someone, you were required to pay compensation as if you had murdered them. The cost effectively discouraged raiding for captives. These weren’t passive cultural differences—they were deliberate institutional barriers against enslavement, built by people who observed what was happening to the north and consciously chose otherwise.
Schismogenesis as Conscious Value Inversion
Graeber and Wengrow describe what happened as schismogenesis—neighboring peoples defining themselves against each other until their values consciously invert. In California, everyone chopped and carried their own wood; in the Northwest, nobles never would. California societies used sweat lodges to promote thinness and restraint; Northwest potlatches featured nobles pouring seal blubber over themselves and gorging on fatty foods. California clowns parodied gluttons, mocking northern indulgence.
These weren’t random cultural variations—they were deliberate choices about social order. Each society looked at its neighbors and chose the opposite path. The presence or absence of capture societies represents perhaps the starkest example: institutions consciously designed either to enable or prevent the enslavement of human beings.
Freedom, Agency, and Marx
This brings us to fundamental questions about why people are different. Environmental determinism suggests people are shaped by surroundings—those who gather acorns differ from those who fish because environments made them so. Cultural determinism says people differ because of culture, but this often becomes equally deterministic—differences are random products of historical particularism, offering no real explanation.
Graeber and Wengrow argue both factors matter—environment and economy constrain possibilities, cultural values don’t always have clear causes—but they insist on making space for human freedom and agency. Marx expressed this tension perfectly: “We make our own history, but not under conditions of our own choosing.” People make their own history, but under circumstances directly found, given, and transmitted from the past.
The authors want us to see past peoples not as robots of culture or environment, but as conscious agents making choices “with more or less open eyes.” The Northwest Coast featured an ambitious aristocracy unable to coerce free subjects, so they developed capture societies. California featured societies that watched violence spreading and deliberately built institutions to prevent it. This chapter reveals diverse social relationships emerging not mechanically from environmental pressures, but from people thinking about their societies, observing alternatives, and making deliberate choices about collective life.
Previous: Schismogenesis and Culture Areas (Chapter 5 Part 1)