Okay so the title of this post doesn't exactly convey what I'm trying to get at, and I'm not sure what I have is a question really but more of a curiosity.
Native American society is often portrayed as heavily communal, everything shared, etc. etc. I've seen it used as a sort of bastion of socialism (I don't have any specific source for this, might even be made up in my own head, who knows?). But, as I was re-reading Zinn's A People's History, I came across some quotes that were interesting to me, such as:
"The foundation principle of Indian government had always been the rejection of government. The freedom of the individual was regarded by practically all Indians north of Mexico as a canon infinitely more precious than the individual's duty to his community or nation. This anarchistic attitude ruled all behavior, beginning with the smallest social unit, the family..."
To me, the principles of communalism and individualism have always been presented as two fundamentally opposed ideologies. Communist societies have relied on such strong governments (I'm aware of anarcho-socialists, just thinking in terms of Russia, China, etc), and purporters of individualism have a seemingly strong distaste for sharing anything on a societal level. How were the
My question is, I guess, how were Native Americans able to achieve a balance of these two principles? Was it because of their small units where values were able to be more strongly upheld, also allowing for a closer connection to their peers and thus making easier to share? Did I just answer my own question? Is the sheer size of their groups, units, tribes, etc the only reason for this to have worked/existed in the first place?
Thanks for any help, I'd also really like some texts to further my knowledge on this.
The claim that all Native societies north of Mexico are fundamentally "communal" is a pretty indefensible position. While there certainly are societies that could be construed as "communal" or "egalitarian", there many other societies where that isn't an appropriate description. Generally in archaeology we don't talk about "communalism" and "individualism" as characteristics of societies or as opposed characteristics.
More often we talk about societies on a sliding scale from egalitarian societies to hierarchical societies. The primary distinction here being whether your role in society is dictated by the circumstances of your birth or other characteristics such as gender. While there aren't any truly egalitarian societies (there are always different social roles based on some factors), there is a difference between an egalitarian hunter-gatherer group where everyone participates more or less equally in all activities and a state or chiefdom where you have kings or other elites and specialized roles in society.
While it is arguable that any Native societies north of Mexico developed true state societies (though one could make the argument for Cahokia) there are certainly a great many hierarchical societies that are anything but egalitarian.
A lot of the idea that Native societies are extremely egalitarian has its roots in the "noble savage" myth of the 18th century that Native peoples were closer to nature and more egalitarian than the swiftly industrializing and very hierarchical European societies the inventors of the myth were living in. You can find echoes of this in the ethnographic work of Ruth Benedict, an anthropologist working among the Hopi Pueblos of Arizona at the beginning of the 20th century. She is largely responsible for popularizing the portrayal of the Pueblos as an egalitarian, peaceful society. More modern scholarship has demonstrated that Pueblo societies documented historically (and presumably pre-contact Pueblo societies) do have hierarchies and are certainly not egalitarian. A huge number of different roles in society are assigned to different individuals, often due to their particular lineage and there are certainly individuals with more power or prestige in society than others.
All that said, most Pueblo societies do have a very strong cultural taboo against overt expression of power and status. Think of this much the same way most US citizens would take a very dim view of a president who went around plating everything in gold and wearing ermine capes. Certainly, the president is vastly more powerful than most people in US society, but we frown on ostentatious displays of that power. The president, at least nominally, needs to make overtures that he is a servant of the people and holds his position as a way to better society and not for personal aggrandizement. A very similar ethic is in play in most Pueblo societies. This serves to mask some of the more obvious power differences in Pueblo societies and so to the casual outside observer these societies appear very egalitarian.
Additionally, a lot of Pueblo societies attempt to diffuse social roles and power between a large number of people. Different individuals have access to specialized religious knowledge (different rituals and songs, etc...) that are all necessary for the continuance of the society. If one religious society doesn't perform their rituals correctly or appropriately the entire society suffers. Political power is likewise diffused in many Pueblo groups by having alternating positions of leadership where leaders are drawn from different religious societies or switch on a seasonal basis. All this serves to diffuse how much authority and power are centralized in Pueblo societies, again giving the appearance of a largely egalitarian society, even though there are positions of power within these societies.
In summary, there is a huge variety in the social organization of Native groups north of Mexico and so there is no merit in saying that all Native societies are characterized by any one trait in particular. Additionally, a lot of the perception of what Native society is like is really a fiction based on the "noble savage" myth of the 18th century that was more a reflection on what Europeans wanted Natives to be than what they really were. Likewise, a misunderstanding of the ways in which some Native societies (like the Pueblo) are organized has given the perception that they are more egalitarian than they really are.
To answer your question a little more generally, there does seem to be some merit to saying that group size does influence the kind of social structure. Smaller, hunter-gatherer bands tend to be (and I emphasize the "tend to" - this isn't an absolute) be more egalitarian than larger, sedentary agricultural groups. Some of the most hierarchical, non-egalitarian groups (like Cahokia) also had some of the largest populations.
Edit: You asked for reading, and unfortunately I don't know any good books or articles that cover this topic generally. That said, you might be interested in this article which discusses the issue of whether 14th century Pueblo societies were either hierarchical or egalitarian. The conclusion, which I largely agree with, is that presenting those two as dichotomous social organizations is a very Western view (e.g., the dichotomy between communalism and individualism that you present) and that Pueblo society is simultaneously hierarchical and egalitarian. The tension between these two is balanced in some way by some of the social institutions I described above, but this tension is also a major driving factor in social change.
1996 McGuire, Randall H. and Dean J. Saitta
Although They Have Petty Captains, They Obey Them Badly: The Dialectics of Prehispanic Western Pueblo Social Organization. American Antiquity, 61(2): 197-216.
I can't help you specifically but you seem to be approaching this question under the assumption that the Native Americans were one monolithic society, they were not one society, there were hundreds of different native groups. For a specific answer you should narrow down your parameters.