French Pathfinders in North America | Page 5

which European society gradually
unfolded itself long ago.
Indian society grew up in the most natural way out of the crude
beginnings of all society. Let us consider this point for a moment.
Suppose human beings of the lowest grade to be living together in a
herd, only a little better than beasts, what influence would first begin to
elevate them? Undoubtedly, parental affection. Indeed, mother-love is
the foundation-stone of all our civilization. On that steadfast rock the
rude beginnings of all social life are built. Young animals attain their
growth and the ability to provide for themselves very early. The
parents' watchful care does not need to be long exercised. The offspring,
so soon as it is weaned, is quickly {18} forgotten. Not so the young
human being. Its brain requires a long time for its slow maturing. Thus,

for years, without its parents' care it would perish. The mother's love is
strengthened by the constant attention which she must so long give to
her child, and this is shared, in a degree, by the father. At the same time,
their common interest in the same object draws them closer together.
Before the first-born is able to find its own food and shelter other
children come, and so the process is continually extended. Thus arises
the family, the corner-stone of all life that is above that of brutes.
But the little household, living in a cave and fighting hand to hand with
wild beasts and equally wild men, has a hard struggle to maintain itself.
In time, however, through the marriage of the daughters--for in savage
life the young men usually roam off and take wives elsewhere, while
the young women stay at home--instead of the original single family,
we have the grown daughters, with their husbands, living still with their
parents and rearing children, thus forming a group of families, closely
united by kinship. In the next generation, by the same process
continued, we have a dozen, perhaps twenty, families, {19} all closely
related, and living, it may be, under one shelter, the men hunting and
providing food for the whole group, and the women working together
and preparing the food in common.
Moreover, they all trace their relationship through their mothers,
because the women are the home-staying element. In our group of
families, for instance, all the women are descendants of the original
single woman with whom we began; but the husbands have come from
elsewhere. This is no doubt the reason why among savages it seems the
universal practice to trace kinship through the mother. Again, in such a
little community as we have supposed, the women, being all united by
close ties of blood, are the ruling element. The men may beat their
wives, but, after all, the women, if they join together against any one
man, can put him out and remain in possession.
These points it is important to bear in mind, because they explain what
would otherwise appear very singular features of Indian life. For
instance, we understand now why a son does not inherit anything, not
so much as a tobacco-pipe, at his father's death. He is counted as the
mother's child. For the same reason, if the {20} mother has had more

than one husband, and children by each marriage, these are all counted
as full brothers and sisters, because they have the same mother.
Such a group of families as has been supposed is called a clan, or in
Roman history a gens. It may be small, or it may be very numerous.
The essential feature is that it is a body of people united by the tie of
common blood. It may have existed for hundreds of years and have
grown to thousands of persons. Some of the clans of the Scotch
Highlands were quite large, and it would often have been a hopeless
puzzle to trace a relationship running back through many generations.
Still, every Cameron knew that he was related to all the other
Camerons, every Campbell to all the other Campbells, and he
recognized a clear duty of standing by every clansman as a brother in
peace and in war. We see thus that the clan organization grows
naturally out of the drawing together of men to strengthen themselves
in the fierce struggle of savage life. The clan is simply an extension of
the family. The family idea still runs through it, and kinship is the bond
that holds together all the members.
{21}
Now, this was just the stage of social progress that the Indians had
reached at the Discovery. Their society was organized on the basis of
the clan, and it bore all the marks of its origin.
Indians, however, have not any family names. Something, therefore,
was needed to supply the lack of a