The political organization of the native Australians, low as they were in the social scale, seems to have been based chiefly on the claim of each wretched wandering tribe to a definite territory.[88] In north central Australia, where even a very sparse population has sufficed to saturate the sterile soil, tribal boundaries have become fixed and inviolable, so that even war brings no transfer of territory.  Land and people are identified.  The bond is cemented by their primitive religion, for the tribe’s spirit ancestors occupied this special territory.[89] In a like manner a very definite conception of tribal ownership of land prevails among the Bushmen and Bechuanas of South Africa; and to the pastoral Hereros the alienation of their land is inconceivable.[90] [See map page 105.]

A tribe of hunters can never be more than a small horde, because the simple, monotonous savage economy permits no concentration of population, no division of labor except that between the sexes, and hence no evolution of classes.  The common economic level of all is reflected in the simple social organization,[91] which necessarily has little cohesion, because the group must be prepared to break up and scatter in smaller divisions, when its members increase or its savage supplies decrease even a little.  Such primitive groups cannot grow into larger units, because these would demand more roots sent down into the sustaining soil; but they multiply by fission, like the infusorial monads, and thereafter lead independent existences remote from each other.  This is the explanation of multiplication of dialects among savage tribes.

[Sidenote:  Land bond in fisher tribes.]

Fishing tribes have their chief occupation determined by their habitats, which are found along well stocked rivers, lakes, or coastal fishing grounds.  Conditions here encourage an early adoption of sedentary life, discourage wandering except for short periods, and facilitate the introduction of agriculture wherever conditions of climate and soil permit.  Hence these fisher folk develop relatively large and permanent social groups, as testified by the ancient lake-villages of Switzerland, based upon a concentrated food-supply resulting from a systematic and often varied exploitation of the local resources.  The cooeperation and submission to a leader necessary in pelagic fishing often gives the preliminary training for higher political organization.[92] All the primitive stocks of the Brazilian Indians, except the mountain Ges, are fishermen and agriculturists; hence their annual migrations are kept within narrow limits.  Each linguistic group occupies a fixed and relatively well defined district.[93] Stanley found along the Congo large permanent villages of the natives, who were engaged in fishing and tilling the fruitful soil, but knew little about the country ten miles back from the river.  These two generous means of subsistence are everywhere combined in Polynesia,