Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

GAMES WITH SEX AND DEAT H 13 5
a fight to break out, because the ' offense is never forgiven and the score
must finally be paid with a life."17
So it's much the same as with bridewealth. Money does not wipe
out the debt. One life can only be paid for with another. At best those
paying bloodwealth, by admitting the existence of the debt and insisting
that they wish they could pay it, even though they know this is
impossible, can allow the matter to be placed permanently on hold.
Halfway around the world, one finds Lewis Henry Morgan describing
the elaborate mechanisms set up by the Six Nations of the
Iroquois to avoid precisely this state of affairs. In the event one man
killed another,
Immediately on the comm1sswn of a murder, the affair was
taken up by the tribes to which the parties belonged, and strenuous
efforts were made to effect a reconciliation, lest private
retaliation should lead to disastrous consequences.
The first council ascertained whether the offender was willing
to confess his crime, and to make atonement. If he was,
the council immediately sent a belt of white wampum, in his
name, to the other council, which contained a message to that
effect. The latter then endeavored to pacify the family of the
deceased, to quiet their excitement, and to induce them to accept
the wampum as condonation.18
Much as in the case of the Nuer, there were complicated schedules
of exactly how many fathoms of wampum were paid over, depending
on the status of the victim and the nature of the crime. As with the
Nuer, too, everyone insisted that this was not payment. The value of
the wampum in no sense represented the value of the dead man's life:
The present of white wampum was not in the nature of a
compensation for the life of the deceased, but of a regretful
confession of the crime, with a petition for forgiveness. It was a
peace-offering, the acceptance of which was pressed by mutual
friends . . . 19
Actually, in many cases there was also some way to manipulate
the system to turn payments meant to assuage one's rage and grief into
ways of creating a new life that would in some sense substitute for the
one that was lost. Among the Nuer, forty cattle were set as the standard
fee for bloodwealth . But it was also the standard rate of bridewealth.
The logic was this: if a man had been murdered before he was