Definition of "tribelet" in Englisch

noun

1. A small tribe of Native Americans, especially a small independent group of Native California people who shared a language and usually comprised one principal village, or several in close proximity, plus smaller resource-gathering camps and territories.

   • Kroeber’s emphasis on the small scale of indigenous California social organizations led him to attach the diminutive "-let" to the anthropologically normative term "tribe".
   • The second feature, dialectic separateness, of course is an old story for California, but elsewhere in the state each idiom is usually common to a considerable number of tribelets or "village communities."
   • Tribelet […] defined a political and geographical unit comprising several units, usually including a principal and most powerful central village, tied by relations of kinship.

2. A small tribal society in another part of the world.