[sethammons]

> Slavery among American Indians was a complex institution that existed within various Indigenous cultures long before European contact. Unlike the European model focused on labor, Indigenous slavery often stemmed from war captives and was seen as a means of asserting power and honor over others. (https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/slavery-american...)

It is absurd to claim "hunter-gatherers were fairly egalitarian" and "had no hierarchy." We know that tribes in north west of the Americas, pre European contact, did not practice agriculture and had slaves. What evidence exists counter to this that supports your view? I assert it is literally impossible to make your assertion. Just because burial perhaps didn't differentiate or demonstrate a hierarchy, that doesn't support that the living didn't.

[itsnowandnever]

indigenous Americans did practice agriculture and were not hunter-gatherers. there were settled cities all across the Americas: Cusco, Tenochtitlan, Tikal, Cahokia. like cereals were the catalyst for the Neolithic revolution in Mesopotamia, the "three sisters" of squash, corn, beans were the catalyst of the Neolithic revolution in the Americas.

sedentary life and agriculture developed in the Americas around the same time it developed everywhere else in the world outside of the Near East (3000 BC). and this roughly correlates to the beginning of the Meghalayan geological age that continues today - which is when the ~10,000 year old original civilizations collapsed and Neolithic cultures became ubiquitous around the world and not just in Mesopotamia and the Yangtze river

[sethammons]

Several Pacific Northwest Coast tribes, including the Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka’wakw, and Coast Salish were non-agricultural, complex hunter-gatherers who lived in permanent villages and maintained clear social hierarchies, including hereditary slavery. Their existence serves as a major counterpoint to the general claim that hunter-gatherer societies were universally egalitarian or lacked hierarchy.

While "sedentary life and agriculture developed in the Americas around the same time it developed everywhere else in the world," it was not the case for the coastal Salish and other tribes who lived on the resource abundant Pacific Northwest.