Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines | Page 6

its equivalent, the city
ward), with its fixed property, and the inhabitants it contained,
organized as a body politic, became the unit and the basis of a new and
radically different system of government. After political society was
instituted this ancient and time-honored organization, with the phratry
and tribe developed from it, gradually yielded up their existence. It was
under gentile institutions that barbarism was won by some of the tribes
of mankind while in savagery, and that civilization was won by the
descendants of some of the same tribes while in barbarism. Gentile
institutions carried a portion of mankind from savagery to civilization.
This organization may be successfully studied both in its living and in
its historical forms in a large number of tribes and races. In such an
investigation it is preferable to commence with the gens in its archaic
form I shall commence, therefore, with the gens as it now exists among
the American aborigines, where it is found in its archaic form, and
among whom its theoretical constitution and practical workings can be
investigated more successfully than in the historical gentes of the
Greeks and Romans. In fact, to understand fully the gentes of the latter
nations a knowledge of the functions and of the rights, privileges, and
obligations of the members of the American Indian gens is imperatively
necessary.
In American ethnography tribe and clan have been used in the place of
gens as equivalent terms from not perceiving the universality of the
latter. In previous works, and following my predecessors, I have so
used them. A comparison of the Indian clan with the gens of the Greeks
and Romans reveals at once their identity in structure and functions. It
also extends to the phratry and tribe. If the identity of these several
organizations can be shown, of which there can be no doubt, there is a
manifest propriety in returning to the Latin and Grecian terminologies,
which are full and precise as well as historical.
The plan of government of the American aborigines commenced with
the gens and ended with the confederacy, the latter being the highest
point to which their governmental institutions attained. It gave for the
organic series: first, the gens, a body of consanguinei having a common

gentile name; second, the phratry, an assemblage of related gentes
united in a higher association for certain common objects; third, the
tribe, an assemblage of gentes, usually organized in phratries, all the
members of which spoke the same dialect; and fourth, a confederacy of
tribes, the members of which respectively spoke dialects of the same
stock language. It resulted in a gentile society (societas) as
distinguished from a political society or state (civitas). The difference
between the two is wide and fundamental. There was neither a political
society, nor a citizen, nor a state, nor any civilization in America when
it was discovered. One entire ethnical period intervened between the
highest American Indian tribes and the beginning of civilization, as that
term is properly understood.
The gens, though a very ancient social organization founded upon kin,
does not include all the descendants of a common ancestor. It was for
the reason that when the gens came in marriage between single pairs
was unknown, and descent through males could not be traced with
certainty. Kindred were linked together chiefly through the bond of
their maternity In the ancient gens descent was limited to the female
line. It embraced all such persons as traced their descent from a
supposed common female ancestor, through females, the evidence of
the fact being the possession of a common gentile name. It would
include this ancestor and her children, the children of her daughters,
and the children of her female descendants, through females, in
perpetuity, while the children of her sons and the children of her male
descendants, through males, would belong to other gentes, namely,
those of their respective mothers. Such was the gens in its archaic form,
when the paternity of children was not certainly ascertainable, and
when their maternity afforded the only certain criterion of descents.
This state of descents which can be traced back to the Middle Status of
savagery, as among the Australians, remained among the American
aborigines through the Upper Status of savagery, and into and through
the Lower Status of barbarism, with occasional exceptions. In the
Middle Status of barbarism the Indian tribes began to change descent
from the female line to the male, as die syndyasmian family of the
period began to assume monogamian characteristics. In the Upper
Status of barbarism descent had become changed to the male line
among the Grecian tribes, with the exception of the Lycians, and

among the Italian tribes, with the exception of the Etruscans. Between
the two extremes, represented by the two rules of descent, three entire
ethnical