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Are the Ashlanders similar to Native Americans?

  • February 8, 2012

    I have just began brushing the surface of Ashlander history and noticed a similarity between the nomadic Dunmer and the Native American people who first inhabited N. America.  

    The primary points of comparison are religion, survival traditions, and outside relations.

    Religion: UESPWiki states that the Ashlanders do not believe what the Dunmer of the Great Houses believe.  Rather they think that the Dunmer are protected by some sort of magic.  "They do not acknowledge the power of the Tribunal."  Similarly, the natives of North America in the 16th century did not believe in God in the traditional Christian sense.  Furthermore, Luagar in A Pamphlet on Ashlanders finds that Ashlanders, when the Dunmer collaborated into tribes, refused to give up ancestor worship and settle down.  This too is something that natives share with the fictional Ashlanders.  When a family within an Indian clan loses a member, they experience a period of mourning in an attempt to recover from their loss.  This is because natives believe that each member of a family is strong and a loss of a member weakens the family and community around them hence the importance of ancestry.   

    Survival Traditions: When the Dunmer formed into Houses and the Great Houses came into existence, the Ashlanders preferred to remain nomadic.  Their method of survival is a hunter gatherer style using herding and hunting techniques.  Their material possessions are all made from the environment and they enjoyed the simpler things in life like catching and killing their prey.  "They accept that they will not become rich by the standards of the Great Houses" (Pamphlet on Ashlanders).  This relates to the Native Americans who were also hunter-gatherers with their men doing the hunting and fishing and the female population taking part in the agriculture aspect.  There are also stories of Indians trading with Europeans for more money for less furs.  Like the Ashlanders, the natives were not concerned with money in the sense that Europeans were.  Rather, they were concerned with kinship and community.

    Outside Relations: When Native Americans spoke to the English, they were often given gifts.  For Indians, gifts and exchanging of goods was a way to establish kinships and friendships between them and the people they traded with.  Sir William Johnson's Papers which are 14 volumes recalling his experiences trading and dealing with the various Indian nations contains a (roughly) 40 page list of all the transactions Sir William Johnson had with the natives.  These transactions were not in the modern sense nor were they trades.  Rather, they were gifts given to the Indians for various reasons.  For instance, giving 40 black blankets to natives was a sign that you supported their grieving process.  Similarly, Ashlanders expected gifts from outsiders when they visited.  Much like the Natives, they did not mind visitors into their tribes but oftentimes wanted either news or gifts (Pamphlet on Ashlanders).  However, the pamphlet contradicts itself later by stating that Ashlanders do not much like foreigners.

    Adoption is also important among both factions. In Ashlander culture, an outsider can be accepted as a Clanfriend by showing trust, courtesy, and worthiness to the gods and ancestors.  "Once an accepted as a Clanfriend of an Ashlander tribe, the accepted member may rest in any bed of that tribe (Pamphlet)." From this quote, i interpret it to mean that within a tribe, kinships and community are very close-knit to the point of sharing beds.  As these two nations share community ties, they also share adoption.  As mentioned above, a native who lost a family member went through a period of heavy mourning after the  and believed the family and clan to be weaker because of it.  If the mourning was not enough to ease the loss, the clan would go to war in search for a replacement.  These wars, known as mourning wars, would end with the capture of however many prisoners necessary to fill the empty positions in the clan and the adoption of these prisoners who would accept their new role.  The prisoners were only accepted if they survived a rigorous trial testing their worth to the new clan.  

    As you can see, the Ashlanders (and in some cases, the Dunmer as a whole) draw many comparisons to the Native Americans of the 17th and 18th centuries.  Through a study of religion, survival tactics, and relations with outsiders, one can find many similarities between these people and perhaps an influence when creating the history of the Ashlanders.  

    Note: I only used the Pamplet on Ashlanders for this particular study.  Perhaps studying the other documents could produce other results but this is what I found doing a brief and initial study.  Also, because of the time i was writing this, I did not have the time to go back and proofread so please forgive any grammatical/spelling errors