Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines | Page 8

gens
These functions and attributes gave vitality as well as individuality to
the organization and protected the personal rights of its members. Such
were the rights, privileges, and obligations of the members of an
Iroquois gens; and such were those of the members of the gentes of the
Indian tribes generally, as far as the investigation has been carried.
For a detailed exposition of these characteristics the reader is referred
to Ancient Society, pp. 72-85.
All the members of an Iroquois gens were personally free, and they
were bound to defend each other's freedom; they were equal in
privileges and in personal rights, the sachem and chiefs claiming no
superiority; and they were a brotherhood bound together by the ties of
kin. Liberty, equality, and fraternity, though never formulated, were
cardinal principles of the gens. These facts are material, because the
gens was the unit of a social and governmental system, the foundation
upon which Indian society was organized. A structure composed of
such units would of necessity bear the impress of their character, for as
the unit so the compound. It serves to explain that sense of
independence and personal dignity universally an attribute of Indian
character.
Thus substantial and important in the social system was the gens as it
anciently existed among the American aborigines, and as it still exists
in full vitality in many Indian tribes. It was the basis of the phratry, of
the tribe, and of the confederacy of tribes.
At the epoch of European discovery the American Indian tribes
generally were organized in gentes, with descent in the female line. In
some tribes, as among the Dakotas, the gentes had fallen out; in others,
as among the Ojibwas, the Omahas, and the Mayas of Yucatan, descent
had been changed from the female to the male line. Throughout
aboriginal America the gens took its name from some animal or
inanimate object and never from a person. In this early condition of
society the individuality of persons was lost in the gens. It is at least
presumable that the gentes of the Grecian and Latin tribes were so

named at some anterior period; but when they first came under
historical notice they were named after persons. In some of the tribes,
as the Moki Village Indians of Arizona, the members of the gens
claimed their descent from the animal whose name they bore--their
remote ancestors having been transformed by the Great Spirit from the
animal into the human form. The Crane gens of the Ojibwas have a
similar legend. In some tribes the members of a gens will not eat the
animal whose name they bear, in which they are doubtless influenced
by this consideration.
With respect to the number of persons in a gens, it varied with the
number of the gentes, and with the prosperity or decadence of the tribe.
Three thousand Senecas divided equally among eight gentes would
give an average of three hundred and seventy-five persons to a gens.
Fifteen thousand Ojibwas divided equally among twenty-three gentes
would give six hundred and fifty persons to a gens. The Cherokees
would average more than a thousand to a gens. In the present condition
of the principal Indian tribes the number of persons in each gens would
range from one hundred to a thousand.
One of the oldest and most widely prevalent institutions of mankind,
the gentes have been closely identified with human progress upon
which they have exercised a powerful influence. They have been found
in tribes in the Status of savagery, in the Lower, in the Middle, and in
the Upper Status of barbarism on different continents, and in full
vitality in the Grecian and Latin tribes after civilization had
commenced. Every family of mankind, except the Polynesian, seems to
have come under the gentile organization, and to have been indebted to
it for preservation and for the means of progress. It finds its only
parallel in length of duration in systems of consanguinity, which,
springing up at a still earlier period, have remained to the present time,
although the marriage usages in which they originated have long since
disappeared.
From its early institution, and from its maintenance through such
immense stretches of time, the peculiar adaptation of the gentile
organization to mankind, while in a savage and in a barbarous state,
must be regarded as abundantly demonstrated.

THE PHRATRY.

The phratry (phratria) is a brotherhood, as the term imports, and a
natural growth from the organization into gentes. It is an organic union
or association of two or more gentes of the same tribe for certain
common objects. These gentes were usually such as had been formed
by the segmentation of an original gens.
The phratry existed in a large number of the tribes of the American
aborigines, where it is seen