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In anthropology, a pantribal sodality is a social grouping which is not determined by family membership (non-kin), and which extends across an entire
tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to conflic ...
. Pantribal
sodalities In Christian theology, a sodality, also known as a syndiakonia, is a form of the "Universal Church" expressed in specialized, task-oriented form as opposed to the Christian church in its local, diocesan form (which is termed ''modality''). In En ...
sometimes arise in areas where two or more different cultures overlap and are in regular contact. Such sodalities are especially likely to develop in the presence of warfare between tribes. Drawing their membership from different villages of the same tribe, such groups could mobilize men in many local groups for attack or retaliation against another tribe. The best examples come from the
Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and ...
of North America and from tropical
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Native American societies of the Great Plains of the United States and Canada experienced a rapid growth of pantribal sodalities. This development reflected an economic change that followed the spread of horses, which had been reintroduced to the Americas by the Spanish, to the states between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River. Many Plains Indian societies changed their adaptive strategies because of the horse.


References

* Cultural concepts Anthropological categories of peoples Political anthropology {{ethno-stub