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

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 to arise by natural growth, and to stand as the second member of the organic series, as among the Grecian and Latin tribes. It did not possess original governmental functions, as the gens tribe and confederacy possessed them but it was endowed with certain useful powers in the social system, from the necessity for some organization larger than a gens and smaller than a tribe and especially when the tribe was large. The same institution in essential features and in character, it presents the organization in its archaic form and with its archaic functions. A knowledge of the Indian phratry is necessary to an intelligent understanding of the Grecian and the Roman.
The eight gentes of the Seneca Iroquois tribe were reintegrated in two phratries as follows:
First Phratry Gentes--1 Bear 2 Wolf 3 Beaver 4 Turtle Second Phratry Gentes--5 Deer 6 Snipe 7 Heron 8 Hawk
Each phratry (De da non da a yoh) is a brotherhood as this term also imports. The gentes in the same phratry are brother gentes to each other and cousin gentes to those of the other