namelesstavern.net

At the same time, you may be correct in so-far as the entire tribe participated in the act as observers at the very least.

That's more generally what I meant. That and everyone believed in the same way in the significance and meaning of the act. I don't dispute that it was a subset of the populace that performed the act, but everyone believed in it.

-Arlos

I think a key thing to remember is that cultures and subcultures are no longer limited by geography near as much as they were 25 years ago, let alone 100 years ago. This message board being an example of such. Looking back upon previous cultures and comparing them to modern contemporaries necessitates the removal of proximity from such definitions.

True, and those ceremonies were not features of, say, the tribes that lived up in the area of what is now Seattle.

Even so, though, the communities you're discussing due to the removal of distance limitations are brought together by personalities. The ones then were by family and relatives. While certainly geography mattered more, the bonds were nevertheless very different ones.

-Arlos

How do we know that? Maybe there were many people in those tribes that found the ceremonies to be stupid, unnatural, and only performed by outcasts. Interesting discussion none the less