Early American Indian society had a hierarchy of dumping methods as well. Some methods were honorable, largely sparing the feelings of the dumpee. Others, however, were less personal more public and therefore designed to heap shame and ridicule on top of the rejection. The common methods, in order from most preferred to least, are listed below with brief explanations.

You could be dumped via:
1. Private Conversation by the river

(Obviously preferred as the dumper offers the dumpee a physical presence and the dumpee has no immediate public humiliation.)

2. Messenger

(While still fairly private, this is akin to the e-mail break up of today. Also, gossip can be a killer in small to medium sized villages.)

3. Smoke Signal

(The most public so far, this drips with text message breakup brutality. It is a short, visual message designed to avoid any real contact. To add injury to insult it is publicly displayed high in the air for all to see. However, not everyone walks around surveying the sky for signs of smoke. The blind are also not privy to such messages. So only a portion of your village would see it.)

4. Forest Drumming

(I’m going to assume that Native Americans used a technique similar to the amazonian “jungle drumming” that I’ve seen on more than one 1940′s cartoon. A particularly vindictive person could slip the local messenger-drumming-circle a few quality pelts on the side to deliver a personal message. They would light up the forest with a thunderous message of shame and social degradation. Babies would cry, the sleeping would awake, the working would pause, even the blind would be aware of this message! It was the most dreaded of all breakup techniques.)

As you can see, the progression moves from personal to impersonal and from private to public with number four being the most dreaded.

All this to say:

Mike, be glad you weren’t an Indian.

AV
http://netherregionoftheearthii.blogspot.com/
http://tomusarcanum.blogspot.com/
http://thingsthatfizz.blogspot.com/

Let’s get a community ruling on this…