 
CHAPTER I. - ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY UPON THE BASIS OF SEX.Australian Classes.—Organized upon Sex.—Archaic Character of the Organization.—Australian Gentes.—The Eight Classes.—Rule of Marriage.—Descent in the Female Line.—Stupendous Conjugal System.—Two Male and Two Female Classes in each Gens.—Innovations upon the Classes.—Gens still Rudimentary. In treating the subject of the growth of the idea of government, the organization into gentes on the basis of kin naturally suggests itself as the archaic frame-work of ancient society; but there is a still older and more archaic organization, that into classes on the basis of sex, which first demands attention. It will not be taken up because of its novelty in human experience, but for the higher reason that it seems to contain the germinal principle of the gens. If this inference is warranted by the facts it will give to this organization into male and female classes, now found in full vitality among the Australian aborigines, an ancient prevalence as wide spread, in the tribes of mankind, as the original organization into gentes. It will soon be perceived that low down in savagery community of husbands and wives, within prescribed limits, was the central principle of the social system. The marital rights and privileges, (jura conjugialia, The organization into classes on the basis of sex, and the inchoate organization into gentes on the basis of kin, now prevail among that portion of the Australian aborigines who speak the Kamilaroi language. They inhabit the Darling River district north of Sydney. Both organizations are also found in other Australian tribes, and so wide spread as to render probable their ancient universal prevalence among them. It is evident from internal considerations that the male and female classes are older than the gentes: firstly, because the gentile organization is higher than that into classes; and secondly, because the former, among the Kamilaroi, are in process of overthrowing the latter. The class in its male and female branches is the unit of their social system, which place rightfully belongs to the gens when in full development. A remarkable combination of facts is thus presented; namely, a sexual and a gentile organization, both in existence at the same time, the former holding the central position, and the latter inchoate but advancing to completeness through encroachments upon the former. This organization upon sex has not been found, as yet, in any tribes of savages out of Australia, but the slow development of these islanders in their secluded habitat, and the more archaic character of the organization upon sex than that into gentes, suggests the conjecture, that the former may have been universal in such branches of the human family as afterwards possessed the gentile organization. Although the class system, when traced out fully, involves some bewildering complications, it will reward the attention necessary for its mastery. As a curious social organization among savages it possesses but little interest; but as the most primitive form of society hitherto discovered, and more especially with the contingent probability that the remote progenitors of our own Aryan family were once similarly organized, it becomes important, and may prove instructive. The Australians rank below the Polynesians, and far below the American aborigines. They stand below the African negro and near the bottom of the scale. Their social institutions, therefore, must approach the primitive type as nearly as those of any existing people. Inasmuch as the gens is made the subject of the next succeeding chapter, it will be introduced in this without discussion, and only for the necessary explanation of the classes. The Kamilaroi are divided into six gentes, standing with reference to the right of marriage, in two divisions, as follows: I. 1. Iguana, (Duli).2. Kangaroo, (Murriira). II. 4. Emu, (Dinoun).5. Bandicoot, (Bilba).6. Black-snake, (Nurai). Originally the first three gentes were not allowed to intermarry with each other, because they were subdivisions of an original gens; but they were permitted to marry into either of the other gentes, and vice versÂ. This ancient rule is now modified, among the Kamilaroi, in certain definite particulars, but not carried to the full extent of permitting marriage into any gens but that of the individual. Neither males nor females can marry into their own gens, the prohibition being absolute. Descent is in the female line, which assigns the children to the gens of their mother. These are among the essential characteristics of the gens, wherever this institution is found in its archaic form. In its external features, therefore, it is perfect and complete among the Kamilaroi. But there is a further and older division of the people into eight classes, four of which are composed exclusively of males, and four exclusively of females. It is accompanied with a regulation in respect to marriage and descent which obstructs the gens, and demonstrates that the latter organization is in process of development into its true logical form. One only of the four classes of males can marry into one only of the four classes of females. In the sequel it will be found that all the males of one class are, theoretically, the husbands of all the females of the class into which they are allowed to marry. Moreover, if the male belongs to one of the first three gentes the female must belong to one of the opposite three. Marriage is thus restricted to a portion of the males of one gens, with a portion of the females of another gens, which is opposed to the true theory of the gentile institution, for all the members of each gens should be allowed to marry persons of the opposite sex in all the gentes except their own. The classes are the following:
All the Ippais, of whatever gens, are brothers to each other. Theoretically, they are descended from a supposed common The classes embody the germ of the gens, but fall short of its realization. In reality the Ippais and Ippatas form a single class in two branches, and since they cannot intermarry they would form the basis of a gens but for the reason that they fall under two names, each of which is integral for certain purposes, and for the further reason that their children take different names from their own. The division into classes is upon sex instead of kin, and has its primary relation to a rule of marriage as remarkable as it is original. Since brothers and sisters are not allowed to intermarry, the classes stand to each other in a different order with respect to the right of marriage, or rather, of cohabitation, which better expresses the relation. Such was the original law, thus:
This exclusive scheme has been modified in one particular, as will hereafter be shown: namely, in giving to each class of males the right of intermarriage with one additional class of It is thus seen that each male in the selection of a wife, is limited to one-fourth part of all the Kamilaroi females. This, however, is not the remarkable part of the system. Theoretically every Kapota is the wife of every Ippai; every Mata is the wife of every Kumbo; every Buta is the wife of every Murri; and every Ippata of every Kubbi. Upon this material point the information is specific. Mr. Fison, before mentioned, after observing that Mr. Lance had “had much intercourse with the natives, having lived among them many years on frontier cattle-stations on the Darling River, and in the trans-Darling country,” quotes from his letter as follows: “If a Kubbi meets a stranger Ippata, they address each other as Goleer = Spouse.... A Kubbi thus meeting an Ippata, even though she were of another tribe, would treat her as his wife, and his right to do so would be recognized by her tribe.” Every Ippata within the immediate circle of his acquaintance would consequently be his wife as well. Here we find, in a direct and definite form, punaluan marriage in a group of unusual extent; but broken up into lesser groups, each a miniature representation of the whole, united for habitation and subsistence. Under the conjugal system thus brought to light, one-quarter of all the males are united in marriage with one-quarter of all the females of the Kamilaroi tribes. This picture of savage life need not revolt the mind, because to them it was a form of the marriage relation, and therefore devoid of impropriety. It is but an extended form of polygyny and polyandry, which, within narrower limits, have prevailed universally among savage tribes. The evidence of the fact still exists, in unmistakable form, in their systems of consanguinity and affinity, which have outlived the customs and usages in which they originated. It will be noticed that this scheme of intermarriage is but a step from promiscuity, because it is tantamount to that with the addition of a method. Still, as it is made a subject of organic regulation, it is far removed from general promiscuity. Moreover, it reveals an ex Whilst the children remained in the gens of their mother, they passed into another class, in the same gens, different from that of either parent. This will be made apparent by the following table:
If these descents are followed out it will be found that, in the female line, Kapota is the mother of Mata, and Mata in turn is the mother of Kapota; so Ippata is the mother of Buta, and the latter in turn is the mother of Ippata. It is the same with the male classes; but since descent is in the female line, the Kamilaroi tribes derive themselves from two supposed female ancestors, which laid the foundation for two original gentes. By tracing these descents still further it will be found that the blood of each class passes through all the classes. Although each individual bears one of the class names above given, it will be understood that each has in addition the single personal name, which is common among savage as well as barbarous tribes. The more closely this organization upon sex is scrutinized, the more remarkable it seems as the work of savages. When once established, and after that transmitted through a few generations, it would hold society with such power as to become difficult of displacement. It would require a similar and higher system, and centuries of time, to accomplish this result; particularly if the range of the conjugal system would thereby be abridged. The gentile organization supervened naturally upon the classes as a higher organization, by simply enfolding them unchanged. From the preceding statements the composition of the gentes will be understood when placed in their relations to the classes. The latter are in pairs of brothers and sisters derived from each other; and the gentes themselves, through the classes, are in pairs, as follows:
The connection of children with a particular gens is proven by the law of marriage. Thus, Iguana-Mata must marry Kumbo; her children are Kubbi and Kapota, and necessarily Iguana in gens, because descent is in the female line. Iguana-Kapota must marry Ippai; her children are Murri and Mata, and also Iguana in gens, for the same reason. In like manner Emu-Buta must marry Murri; her children are Ippai and Ippata, and of the Emu gens. So Emu-Ippata must marry Kubbi; her children are Kumbo and Buta, and also of the Emu gens. In this manner the gens is maintained by keeping in its membership the children of all its female members. The same is true in all respects of each of the remaining gentes. It will be noticed that each gens is made up, theoretically, of the descendants of two supposed female ancestors, and contains four of the eight classes. It seems probable that originally there were but two male, and two female classes, which were set opposite to each other in respect to the right of marriage; and that the four afterward subdivided into eight. The Moreover, since the Iguana, Kangaroo and Opossum gentes are found to be counterparts of each other, in the classes they contain, it follows that they are subdivisions of an original gens. Precisely the same is true of Emu, Bandicoot and Blacksnake, in both particulars; thus reducing the six to two original gentes, with the right in each to marry into the other, but not into itself. It is confirmed by the fact that the members of the first three gentes could not originally intermarry; neither could the members of the last three. The reason which prevented intermarriage in the gens, when the three were one, would follow the subdivisions because they were of the same descent although under different gentile names. Exactly the same thing is found among the Seneca-Iroquois, as will hereafter be shown. Since marriage is restricted to particular classes, when there were but two gentes, one-half of all the females of one were, theoretically, the wives of one-half of all the males of the other. After their subdivision into six the benefit of marrying out of the gens, which was the chief advantage of the institution, was arrested, if not neutralized, by the presence of the classes together with the restrictions mentioned. It resulted in continuous in-and-in marriages beyond the immediate degree of brother and sister. If the gens could have eradicated the classes this evil would, in a great measure, have been removed. The organization into classes seems to have been directed to the single object of breaking up the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, which affords a probable explanation of the origin of the system. But since it did not look beyond this special abomination it retained a conjugal system nearly as objectionable, as well as cast it in a permanent form. It remains to notice an innovation upon the original constitution of the classes, and in favor of the gens, which reveals a movement, still pending, in the direction of the true ideal of the gens. It is shown in two particulars: firstly, in allowing each triad of gentes to intermarry with each other, to a limited extent; and secondly, to marry into classes not before permitted. Thus, Iguana-Murri can now marry Mata in the Kangaroo gens, his collateral sister, whereas originally he was restricted to Buta in the opposite three. So Iguana-Kubbi can now marry Kapota, his collateral sister. Emu-Kumbo can now marry Buta, and Emu-Ippai can marry Ippata in the Blacksnake gens, contrary to original limitations. Each class of males in each triad of gentes seems now to be allowed one additional class of females in the two remaining gentes of the same triad, from which they were before excluded. The memoranda sent by Mr. Fison, however, do not show a change to the full extent here indicated. This innovation would plainly have been a retrograde movement but that it tended to break down the classes. The line of progress among the Kamilaroi, so far as any is observable, was from classes into gentes, followed by a tendency to make the gens instead of the class the unit of the social organism. In this movement the overshadowing system of cohabitation was the resisting element. Social advancement was impossible An organization somewhat similar is indicated by the punalua of the Hawaiians which will be hereafter explained. Wherever the middle or lower stratum of savagery is uncovered, marriages of entire groups under usages defining the groups, have been discovered either in absolute form, or such traces as to leave little doubt that such marriages were normal throughout this period of man’s history. It is immaterial whether the group, theoretically, was large or small, the necessities of their condition would set a practical limit to the size of the group living together under this custom. If then community of husbands and wives is found to have been a law of the savage state, and, therefore, the essential condition of society in savagery, the inference would be conclusive that our own savage ancestors shared in this common experience of the human race. In such usages and customs an explanation of the low condition of savages is found. If men in savagery had not been left behind, in isolated portions of the earth, to testify concerning the early condition of mankind in general, it would have been impossible to form any definite conception of what it must have been. An important inference at once arises, namely, that the institutions of mankind have sprung up in a progressive connected series, each of which represents the result of unconscious reformatory movements to extricate society from existing evils. The wear of ages is upon these institutions, for the proper understanding of which they must be studied in this light. It cannot be assumed that the Australian savages are now at the bottom of the scale, for their arts and institutions, humble as they are, show the contrary; neither is there any ground for assuming their degradation from a higher condition, because the facts of human experience afford The Australian classes afford the first, and, so far as the writer is aware, the only case in which we are able to look down into the incipient stages of the organization into gentes, and even through it upon an anterior organization so archaic as that upon sex. It seems to afford a glimpse at society when it verged upon the primitive. Among other tribes the gens seems to have advanced in proportion to the curtailment of the conjugal system. Mankind rise in the scale and the family advances through its successive forms, as these rights sink down before the efforts of society to improve its internal organization. The Australians might not have effected the overthrow of the classes in thousands of years if they had remained undiscovered; while more favored continental tribes had long before perfected the gens, then advanced it through its successive phases, and at last laid it aside after entering upon civilization. Facts illustrating the rise of successive social organizations, such as that upon sex, and that upon kin are of the highest ethnological value. A knowledge of what they indicate is eminently desirable, if the early history of mankind is to be measurably recovered. Among the Polynesian tribes the gens was unknown; but traces of a system analogous to the Australian classes appear in In the light of these facts some of the excrescences of modern civilization, such as Mormonism, are seen to be relics of the old savagism not yet eradicated from the human brain. We have the same brain, perpetuated by reproduction, which worked in the skulls of barbarians and savages in by-gone ages; and it has come down to us ladened and saturated with the thoughts, aspirations and passions, with which it was busied through the intermediate periods. It is the same brain grown older and larger with the experience of the ages. These outcrops of barbarism are so many revelations of its ancient proclivities. They are explainable as a species of mental atavism. Out of a few germs of thought, conceived in the early ages, have been evolved all the principal institutions of mankind. Beginning their growth in the period of savagery, fermenting through the period of barbarism, they have continued their advancement through the period of civilization. The evolution of these germs of thought has been guided by a natural logic which formed an essential attribute of the brain itself. So unerringly has this principle performed its functions in all conditions of experience, and in all periods of time, that its results are uniform, coherent and traceable in their courses. These results alone will in time yield convincing proofs of the unity of origin of mankind. The mental history of the human race, which is revealed in institutions, inventions and discoveries, is presumptively the history of a single species, perpetuated through individuals, and developed through experience. Among the original germs of thought, which have exercised the most powerful influence upon the human mind, and upon human destiny, are these which relate to government, to the family, to language, to religion, and to property. They had a definite beginning far back in savagery, and a logical progress, but can have no final consummation, because they are still progressing, and must ever continue to progress. CHAPTER II. - THE IROQUOIS GENS.The Gentile Organization.—Its Wide Prevalence.—Definition of a Gens.—Descent in the Female Line the Archaic Rule.—Rights, Privileges and Obligations of Members of a Gens.—Right of Electing and Deposing its Sachem and Chiefs.—Obligation not to marry in the Gens.—Mutual Rights of Inheritance of the Property of deceased Members.—Reciprocal Obligations of Help, Defense and Redress of Injuries.—Right of Naming its Members.—Right of Adopting Strangers into the Gens.—Common Religious Rites, Query.—A Common Burial Place.—Council of the Gens.—Gentes named after Animals.—Number of Persons in a Gens. The experience of mankind, as elsewhere remarked, has developed but two plans of government, using the word plan in its scientific sense. Both were definite and systematic organizations of society. The first and most ancient was a social organization, founded upon gentes, phratries and tribes. The second and latest in time was a political organization, founded upon territory and upon property. Under the first a gentile society was created, in which the government dealt with persons through their relations to a gens and tribe. These relations were purely personal. Under the second a political society was instituted, in which the government dealt with persons through their relations to territory, e. g.—the township, the county, and the state. These relations were purely territorial. The two plans were fundamentally different. One belongs to ancient society, and the other to modern. The gentile organization opens to us one of the oldest and most widely prevalent institutions of mankind. It furnished Gens, ?????, and ganas in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit have alike the primary signification of kin. They contain the same element as gigno, ?????a?, and ganamai, in the same languages, signifying to beget; thus implying in each an immediate common descent of the members of a gens. A gens, therefore, is a body of consanguinei descended from the same common ancestor, distinguished by a gentile name, and bound together by affinities of blood. It includes a moiety only of such descendants. Where descent is in the female line, as it was universally in the archaic period, the gens is composed of a supposed female ancestor and her children, together with the children of her female descendants, through females, in perpetuity; and where descent is in the male line—into which it was changed after the appearance of property in masses—of a supposed male ancestor and his children, together with the children of his male descendants, through males, in perpetuity. The family name among ourselves is a survival of the gentile Among the nations named, the gens indicated a social organization of a remarkable character, which had prevailed from an antiquity so remote that its origin was lost in the obscurity of far distant ages. It was also the unit of organization of a social and governmental system, the fundamental basis of ancient society. This organization was not confined to the Latin, Grecian and Sanskrit speaking tribes, with whom it became such a conspicuous institution. It has been found in other branches of the Aryan family of nations, in the Semitic, Uralian and Turanian families, among the tribes of Africa and Australia, and of the American aborigines. An exposition of the elementary constitution of the gens, with its functions, rights, and privileges, requires our first attention; after which it will be traced, as widely as possible, among the tribes and nations of mankind in order to prove, by comparisons, its fundamental unity. It will then be seen that it must be regarded as one of the primary institutions of mankind. The gens has passed through successive stages of development in its transition from its archaic to its final form with the progress of mankind. These changes were limited, in the main, to two: firstly, changing descent from the female line, which was the archaic rule, as among the Iroquois, to the male line, which was the final rule, as among the Grecian and Roman gentes; and, secondly, changing the inheritance of the property of a deceased member of the gens from his gentiles, who took it in the archaic period, first to his agnatic kindred, and finally to his children. These changes, slight as they may seem, indicate very great changes of condition as well as a large degree of progressive development. The gentile organization, originating in the period of savagery, enduring through the three sub-periods of barbarism, finally gave way, among the more advanced tribes, when they attained civilization, the requirements of which it was unable 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, and then to follow it through its successive modifications among advanced nations, in order to discover both the changes and the causes which produced them. 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 an equivalent term, from not perceiving its universality. In previous works, and following my predecessors, I have so used them. 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. In like manner the plan of government of the Grecian tribes, anterior to civilization, involved the same organic series, with the exception of the last member: first, the gens, a body of consanguinei bearing a common gentile name; second, the phratry, an assemblage of gentes, united for social and religious objects; third, the tribe, an assemblage of gentes of the same lineage organized in phratries; and fourth, a nation, an assemblage of tribes who had coalesced in a gentile society upon one common territory, as the four tribes of the Athenians in Attica, and the three Dorian tribes at Sparta. Coalescence was a The Roman plan and series were the same: First, the gens, a body of consanguinei bearing a common gentile name; second, the curia, an assemblage of gentes united in a higher association for the performance of religious and governmental functions; third, the tribe, an assemblage of gentes organized in curiae; and fourth, a nation, an assemblage of tribes who had coalesced in a gentile society. The early Romans styled themselves, with entire propriety, the Populus Romanus. Wherever gentile institutions prevailed, and prior to the establishment of political society, we find peoples or nations in gentile societies, and nothing beyond. The state did not exist. Their governments were essentially democratical, because the principles on which the gens, phratry and tribe were organized were democratical. This last proposition, though contrary to received opinions, is historically important. The truth of it can be tested as the gens, phratry and tribe of the American aborigines, and the same organizations among the Greeks and Romans are successively considered. As the gens, the unit of organization, was essentially democratical, so necessarily was the phratry composed of gentes, the tribe composed of phratries, and the gentile society formed by the confederating, or coalescing of tribes. 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; whilst the children of her sons, and the children of her male descendants, through 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 the 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. The influence of property and its inheritance in producing the monogamian family which assured the paternity of children, and in causing a change of descent from the female line to the male, will be considered elsewhere. Between the two extremes, represented by the two rules of descent, three entire ethnical periods intervene, covering many thousands of years. With descent in the male line, the gens embraced all persons who traced their descent from a supposed common male ancestor, through males only, the evidence of the fact being, as in the other case, the possession of a common gentile name. It would include this ancestor and his children, the children of his sons, and the children of his male descendants, through males, in perpetuity; whilst the children of his daughters, and the children of his female descendants, through females, would belong to other gentes; namely, those of their respective fathers. Those retained in the gens in one case were those excluded in the other, and vice versÂ. Such was the gens in its final form, after the paternity of children became ascertainable through the rise of monogamy. The transition of a gens from one form into the other was perfectly simple, without involving its overthrow. All that was needed was an adequate motive, as will elsewhere be shown. The same gens, with descent changed to As intermarriage in the gens was prohibited, it withdrew its members from the evils of consanguine marriages, and thus tended to increase the vigor of the stock. The gens came into being upon three principal conceptions, namely the bond of kin, a pure lineage through descent in the female line, and non-intermarriage in the gens. When the idea of a gens was developed, it would naturally have taken the form of gentes in pairs, because the children of the males were excluded, and because it was equally necessary to organize both classes of descendants. With two gentes started into being simultaneously the whole result would have been attained, since the males and females of one gens would marry the females and males of the other, and the children, following the gentes of their respective mothers, would be divided between them. Resting on the bond of kin as its cohesive principle the gens afforded to each individual member that personal protection which no other existing power could give. After considering the rights, privileges and obligations of its members it will be necessary to follow the gens in its organic relations to a phratry, tribe and confederacy, in order to find the uses to which it was applied, the privileges which it conferred, and the principles which it fostered. The gentes of the Iroquois will be taken as the standard exemplification of this institution in the GanowÁnian family. They had carried their scheme of government from the gens to the confederacy, making it complete in each of its parts, and an excellent illustration of the capabilities of the gentile organization in its archaic form. When discovered the Iroquois were in the Lower Status of barbarism, and well advanced in the arts of life pertaining to this condition. They manufactured nets twine and rope from filaments of bark; wove belts and burden straps, with warp and woof, from the same materials; they manufactured earthen vessels and pipes from clay mixed with siliceous materials and hardened by fire, some of which were ornamented with rude medallions; they cultivated maize, beans, squashes, and to From lapse of time the Iroquois tribes have come to differ slightly in the number, and in the names of their respective gentes. The largest number being eight, as follows: Senecas.—1. Wolf.2. Bear.3. Turtle.4. Beaver.5. Deer.6. Snipe.7. Heron.8. Hawk. Cayugas.—1. Wolf.2. Bear.3. Turtle.4. Beaver.5. Deer.6. Snipe.7. Eel.8. Hawk. Onondagas.—1. Wolf.2. Bear.3. Turtle.4. Beaver.5. Deer.6. Snipe.7. Eel.8. Ball. Oneidas.—1. Wolf.2. Bear.3. Turtle. Mohawks.—1. Wolf.2. Bear.3. Turtle. Tuscaroras.—1. Gray Wolf.2. Bear.3. Great Turtle.4. Beaver.5. Yellow Wolf.6. Snipe.7. Eel.8. Little Turtle. These changes show that certain gentes in some of the tribes have become extinct through the vicissitudes of time; and that others have been formed by the segmentation of over-full gentes. With a knowledge of the rights, privileges and obligations The gens is individualized by the following rights, privileges, and obligations conferred and imposed upon its members, and which made up the jus gentilicium.
These functions and attributes gave vitality as well as individuality to the organization, and protected the personal rights of its members. I. The right of electing its sachem and chiefs. Nearly all the American Indian tribes had two grades of chiefs, who may be distinguished as sachems and common chiefs. Of these two primary grades all other grades were varieties. They were elected in each gens from among its members. A son could not be chosen to succeed his father, where descent was in the female line, because he belonged to a different gens, and no gens would have a chief or sachem from any gens but its own. The office of sachem was hereditary in the gens, in the sense that it was filled as often as a vacancy occurred; while the office of chief was non-hereditary, because it was bestowed in reward of personal merit, and died with the individual. Moreover, the duties of a sachem were confined to the affairs of peace. He could not go out to war as a sachem. On the other hand, the chiefs who were raised to office for personal bravery, for wisdom in affairs, or for eloquence in council, The office of sachem had a natural foundation in the gens, as an organized body of consanguinei which, as such, needed a representative head. As an office, however, it is older than the gentile organization, since it is found among tribes not thus organized, but among whom it had a similar basis in the punaluan group, and even in the anterior horde. In the gens the constituency of the sachem was clearly defined, the basis of the relation was permanent, and its duties paternal. While the office was hereditary in the gens it was elective among its male members. When the Indian system of consanguinity is considered, it will be found that all the male members of a gens were either brothers to each other, own or collateral, uncles or nephews, own or collateral, or collateral grandfathers and grandsons. Upon the death of a sachem, for example among the Seneca-Iroquois, a council of his gentiles The principle of democracy, which was born of the gentes, manifested itself in the retention by the gentiles of the right to elect their sachem and chiefs, in the safeguards thrown around the office to prevent usurpation, and in the check upon the election held by the remaining gentes. The chiefs in each gens were usually proportioned to the number of its members. Among the Seneca-Iroquois there is one chief for about every fifty persons. They now number in New York some three thousand, and have eight sachems and about sixty chiefs. There are reasons for supposing that the proportionate number is now greater than in former times. With respect to the number of gentes in a tribe, the more numerous the people the greater, usually, the number of gentes. The number varied in the different tribes, from three among the Delawares and Munsees to upwards of twenty among the Ojibwas and Creeks; six, eight, and ten being common numbers. II. The right of deposing its sachem and chiefs. This right, which was not less important than that to elect, was reserved by the members of the gens. Although the office was nominally for life, the tenure was practically during good behavior, in consequence of the power to depose. The installation of a sachem was symbolized as “putting on the horns,” and his deposition as “taking off the horns.” Among widely separated tribes of mankind horns have been made the emblem of office and of authority, suggested probably, as Tylor intimates, by the commanding appearance of the males among ruminant animals bearing horns. Unworthy behavior, followed by a loss of confidence, furnished a sufficient ground for deposition. When a sachem or chief had been deposed in due form by a council of his gens, he ceased thereafter to be recognized as such, and became thenceforth a private person. The council of the tribe also had power to depose both sachems and chiefs, without waiting for the action of the gens, and even against its wishes. Through the existence and occasional exercise of this power the supremacy of the gentiles over their sachem and chiefs was asserted and preserved. It also reveals the democratic constitution of the gens. III. The obligation not to marry in the gens. Although a negative proposition it was fundamental. It was evidently a primary object of the organization to isolate a moiety of the descendants of a supposed founder, and prevent their intermarriage for reasons of kin. When the gens came into existence brothers were intermarried to each other’s wives in a group, and sisters to each other’s husbands in a group, to which the gens interposed no obstacle. But it sought to exclude brothers and sisters from the marriage relation which was effected, as there are good reasons for stating, by the prohibition in question. Had the gens attempted to uproot the entire conjugal system of the period by its direct action, there is not the slightest probability that it would have worked its way into general establishment. The gens, originating probably in the ingenuity of a small band of savages, must soon have proved its utility in the production of superior men. Its nearly universal prevalence in the ancient world is the highest evidence IV. Mutual rights of inheritance of the property of deceased members. In the Status of savagery, and in the Lower Status of barbarism, the amount of property was small. It consisted in the former condition of personal effects, to which, in the latter, were added possessory rights in joint-tenement houses and in gardens. The most valuable personal articles were buried with the body of the deceased owner. Nevertheless, the question of inheritance was certain to arise, to increase in importance with the increase of property in variety and amount, and to result in some settled rule of inheritance. Accordingly we find the principle established low down in barbarism, and even back of that in savagery, that the property should remain in the gens, and be distributed among the gentiles of the deceased owner. It was customary law in the Grecian and Latin gentes in the Upper Status of barbarism, and remained as written law far into civilization, that the property of a deceased person should remain in the gens. But after the time of Solon among the Athenians it was limited to cases of intestacy. The question, who should take the property, has given rise to three great and successive rules of inheritance. First, that it should be distributed among the gentiles of the deceased owner. This was the rule in the Lower Status of barbarism, and so far as is known in the Status of savagery. Second, that the property should be distributed among the agnatic kindred of the deceased owner, to the exclusion of the remaining gentiles. The germ of this rule makes its appearance in the Lower Status of barbarism, and it probably became completely established in the Middle Status. Third, that the property should be inherited by the children of the deceased owner, to the exclusion of the remaining agnates. This became the rule in the Upper Status of barbarism. Theoretically, the Iroquois were under the first rule; but, practically, the effects of a deceased person were appropriated V. Reciprocal obligations of help, defense, and redress of injuries. In civilized society the state assumes the protection of persons and of property. Accustomed to look to this source for the maintenance of personal rights, there has been a corresponding abatement of the strength of the bond of kin. But under gentile society the individual depended for security upon his gens. It took the place afterwards held by the state, and possessed the requisite numbers to render its guardianship effective. Within its membership the bond of kin was a powerful element for mutual support. To wrong a person was to wrong his gens; and to support a person was to stand behind him with the entire array of his gentile kindred. In their trials and difficulties the members of the gens assisted each other. Two or three illustrations may be given from the Indian tribes at large. Speaking of the Mayas of Yucatan, Herrera remarks, that “when any satisfaction was to be made for damages, if he who was adjudged to pay was like to be reduced to poverty, the kindred contributed.” The ancient practice of blood revenge, which has prevailed so widely in the tribes of mankind, had its birthplace in the gens. It rested with this body to avenge the murder of one of its members. Tribunals for the trial of criminals and laws prescribing their punishment, came late into existence in gentile society; but they made their appearance before the institution of political society. On the other hand, the crime of murder is as old as human society, and its punishment by the revenge of kinsmen is as old as the crime itself. Among the Iroquois and other Indian tribes generally, the obligation to avenge the murder of a kinsman was universally recognized. It was, however, the duty of the gens of the slayer, and of the slain, to attempt an adjustment of the crime before proceeding to extremities. A council of the members of each gens The same sentiment of fraternity manifested itself in other ways in relieving a fellow gentilis in distress, and in protecting him from injuries. VI. The right of bestowing names upon its members. Among savage and barbarous tribes there is no name for the family. The personal names of individuals of the same family do not indicate any family connection between them. The family name is no older than civilization. After the birth of a child a name was selected by its mother from those not in use belonging to the gens, with the concurrence of her nearest relatives, which was then bestowed upon Two classes of names were in use, one adapted to childhood, and the other to adult life, which were exchanged at the proper period in the same formal manner; one being taken away, to use their expression, and the other bestowed in its place. O-wi'-go, a canoe floating down the stream, and Ah-wou'-ne-ont, hanging flower, are names for girls among the Seneca-Iroquois; and GÄ-ne-o-di'-yo, handsome lake, and Do-ne-ho-gÄ'-weh, door-keeper, are names of adult males. At the age of sixteen or eighteen, the first name was taken away, usually by a chief of the gens, and one of the second class bestowed in its place. At the next council of the tribe the change of names was publicly announced, after which the person, if a male, assumed the duties of manhood. In some Indian tribes the youth was required to go out upon the war-path and earn his second name by some act of personal bravery. After a severe illness it was not uncommon for the person, from superstitious considerations, to solicit and obtain a second change of name. It was sometimes done again in extreme old age. When a person was elected a sachem or a chief his name was taken away, and a new one conferred at the time of his installation. The individual had no control over the question of a change. It is the prerogative of the female relatives and of the chiefs; but an adult person might change his name provided he could induce a chief to announce it in council. A person having the control of a particular name, as the eldest son of that of his deceased father, might lend it to a friend in another gens; but after the death of the person thus bearing it the name reverted to the gens to which it belonged. Among the Shawnees and Delawares the mother has now the right to name her child into any gens she pleases; and the The precautions taken with respect to the use of names belonging to the gens sufficiently prove the importance attached to them, and the gentile rights they confer. Although this question of personal names branches out in many directions it is foreign to my purpose to do more than illustrate such general usages as reveal the relations of the members of a gens. In familiar intercourse and in formal salutation the American Indians address each other by the term of relationship the person spoken to sustains to the speaker. When related they salute by kin; when not related “my friend” is substituted. It would be esteemed an act of rudeness to address an Indian by his personal name, or to inquire his name directly from himself. Our Saxon ancestors had single personal names down to the Norman conquest, with none to designate the family. This indicates the late appearance of the monogamian family among them; and it raises a presumption of the existence in an earlier period of a Saxon gens. VII. The right of adopting strangers into the gens. Another distinctive right of the gens was that of admitting new members by adoption. Captives taken in war were either put to death, or adopted into some gens. Women and children taken prisoners usually experienced clemency in this form. Adoption not only conferred gentile rights, but also the nationality of the tribe. The person adopting a captive placed him or her in the relation of a brother or sister; if a mother adopted, in that of a son or daughter; and ever afterwards treated the person in all respects as though born in that relation. Slavery, which in the Upper Status of barbarism became the fate of the captive, was unknown among tribes in the Lower Status in the aboriginal period. The gauntlet also had some connection with adoption, since the person who succeeded, Among the Iroquois the ceremony of adoption was performed at a public council of the tribe, which turned it practically into a religious rite. VIII. Religious rites in the gens. Query. Among the Grecian and Latin tribes these rites held a conspicuous position. The highest polytheistic form of religion which had then appeared seems to have sprung from the gentes in which religious rites were constantly maintained. Some of them, from the sanctity they were supposed to possess, were nationalized. In some cities the office of high priest of certain divinities was hereditary in a particular gens. But the Indian tribes, although they had a polytheistic system, not much unlike that from which the Grecian and Roman must have sprung, had not attained that religious development which was so strongly impressed upon the gentes of the latter tribes. It can scarcely be said any Indian gens had special Each gens furnished a number of “Keepers of the Faith,” both male and female, who together were charged with the celebration of these festivals. With the progress of mankind out of the Lower into the IX. A common burial place. An ancient but not exclusive mode of burial was by scaffolding the body until the flesh had wasted, after which the bones were collected and preserved in bark barrels in a house constructed for their reception. Those belonging to the same gens were usually placed in the same house. The Rev. Dr. Cyrus Byington found these practices among the Choctas in 1827; and Adair mentions usages among the Cherokees substantially the same. “I saw three of them,” he remarks, “in one of their towns pretty near each other; * * * Each house contained the bones of one tribe separately, with the hieroglyphical figures of each family [gens] on each of the odd-shaped arks. They reckoned it irreligious to mix the bones of a relative with those of a stranger, as bone of bone and flesh of flesh should always be joined together.” Among the Iroquois, and what is true of them is generally true of other Indian tribes in the same status of advancement, all the members of the gens are mourners at the funeral of a deceased gentilis. The addresses at the funeral, the preparation of the grave, and the burial of the body were performed by members of other gentes. The Village Indians of Mexico and Central America practiced a slovenly cremation, as well as scaffolding, and burying in the ground. The former was confined to chiefs and prominent men. X. A council of the gens. The council was the great feature of ancient society, Asi The simplest and lowest form of the council was that of the gens. It was a democratic assembly because every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it. It elected and deposed its sachem and chiefs, it elected Keepers of the Faith, it condoned or avenged the murder of a gentilis, and it adopted persons into the gens. It was the germ of the higher council of the tribe, and of that still higher of the confederacy, each of which was composed exclusively of chiefs as representatives of the gentes. 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. When the gentes of the Grecian and Latin tribes are considered, the same rights privileges and obligations will be found to exist, with the exception of the I, II, and VI; and with respect to these their ancient existence is probable though the proof is not perhaps attainable. 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 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. Its functions might have been presented more elaborately in several particulars; but sufficient has been given to show its permanent and durable character. 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 Moqui Village Indians of New Mexico, 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 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. CHAPTER III. - THE IROQUOIS PHRATRY.Definition of a Phratry.—Kindred Gentes Reunited in a Higher Organization.—Phratry of the Iroquois Tribes.—Its Composition.—Its Uses and Functions.—Social and Religious.—Illustrations.—The Analogue of the Grecian Phratry; but in its Archaic Form.—Phratries of the Choctas.—Of the Chickasas.—Of the Mohegans.—Of the Thlin-keets.—Their Probable Universality in the Tribes of the American Aborigines. The phratry (f?at??a) 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. Among the Grecian tribes, where the phratric organization was nearly as constant as the gens, it became a very conspicuous institution. Each of the four tribes of the Athenians was organized in three phratries, each composed of thirty gentes, making a total of twelve phratries and three hundred and sixty gentes. Such precise numerical uniformity in the composition of each phratry and tribe could not have resulted from the subdivision of gentes through natural processes. It must have been produced, as Mr. Grote suggests, by legislative procurement in the interests of a symmetrical organization. All the gentes of a tribe, as a rule, were of common descent and bore a common tribal name, consequently it would not require severe constraint to unite the specified number in each phra The Roman curia was the analogue of the Grecian phratry. It is constantly mentioned by Dionysius as a phratry. Among the functions of the Grecian phratry was the observance of special religious rites, the condonation or revenge of the murder of a phrator, and the purification of a murderer after he had escaped the penalty of his crime preparatory to his restoration to society. 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. Each phratry (De-a-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 phratry. They are equal in grade, character and privileges. It is a common practice of the Senecas to call the gentes of their own phratry brother gentes, and those of the other phratry their cousin gentes, when they mention them in their relation to the phratries. Originally marriage was not allowed between the members of the same phratry; but the members of either could marry into any gens of the other. This prohibition tends to show that the gentes of each phratry were subdivisions of an original gens, and therefore the prohibition against marrying into a person’s own gens had followed to its subdivisions. This restriction, however, was long since removed, except with In like manner the Cayuga-Iroquois have eight gentes in two phratries; but these gentes are not divided equally between them. They are the following: First Phratry. Seven of these gentes are the same as those of the Senecas; but the Heron gens has disappeared, and the Eel takes its place, but transferred to the opposite phratry. The Beaver and the Turtle gentes also have exchanged phratries. The Cayugas style the gentes of the same phratry brother gentes to each other, and those of the opposite phratry their cousin gentes. The Onondaga-Iroquois have the same number of gentes, but two of them differ in name from those of the Senecas. They are organized in two phratries as follows: First Phratry. Second Phratry. Here again the composition of the phratries is different from that of the Senecas. Three of the gentes in the first phratry are the same in each; but the Bear gens has been transferred to the opposite phratry and is now found with the Deer. The division of gentes is also unequal, as among the Cayugas. The gentes in the same phratry are called brother gentes to each other, and those in the other their cousin gentes. While the Onondagas have no Hawk, the Senecas have no Eel gens; but the members of the two fraternize when they meet, claiming that there is a connection between them. The Mohawks and Oneidas have but three gentes, the Bear, the Wolf, and the Turtle, and no phratries. When the confederacy was formed, seven of the eight Seneca gentes existed in the several tribes as is shown by the establishment of sachemships in them; but the Mohawks and Oneidas then had only the three named. It shows that they had then lost an entire phratry, and one gens of that remaining, if it is assumed that the original tribes were once composed of the same gentes. When a tribe organized in gentes and phratries subdivides, it might occur on the line of the phratric organization. Although the members of a tribe are intermingled throughout by marriage, each gens in a phratry is composed of females with their children and descendants, through females, who formed the body of the phratry. They would incline at least to remain locally together, and thus might become detached in a body. The male members of the gens married to women of other gentes and remaining with their wives would not affect the gens since the children of the males do not belong to its connection. If the minute history of the Indian tribes is ever recovered it must be sought through the gentes and phratries, which can be followed from tribe to tribe. In such an investigation it will deserve attention whether tribes ever disintegrated by phratries. It is at least improbable. The Tuscarora-Iroquois became detached from the main stock at some unknown period in the past, and inhabited the Neuse river region in North Carolina at the time of their dis First Phratry. They have six gentes in common with the Cayugas and Onondagas, five in common with the Senecas, and three in common with the Mohawks and Oneidas. The Deer gens, which they once possessed, became extinct in modern times. It will be noticed, also, that the Wolf gens is now divided into two, the Gray and the Yellow, and the Turtle into two, the Great and Little. Three of the gentes in the first phratry are the same with three in the first phratry of the Senecas and Cayugas, with the exception that the Wolf gens is double. As several hundred years elapsed between the separation of the Tuscaroras from their congeners and their return, it affords some evidence of permanence in the existence of a gens. The gentes in the same phratry are called brother gentes to each other, and those in the other phratry their cousin gentes, as among the other tribes. From the differences in the composition of the phratries in the several tribes it seems probable that the phratries are modified in their gentes at intervals of time to meet changes of condition. Some gentes prosper and increase in numbers, while others through calamities decline, and others become extinct; so that transfers of gentes from one phratry to another were found necessary to preserve some degree of equality in the number of phrators in each. The phratric organization has existed among the Iroquois from time immemorial. It is probably older than the confederacy which was established more than four centuries ago. The amount of difference in their composition, as to the gentes they contain, represents the vicissitudes through which each tribe has passed in the interval. In any view of the matter it is small, tending to illustrate the permanence of the phratry as well as the gens. The Iroquois tribes had a total of thirty-eight gentes, and in four of the tribes a total of eight phratries. In its objects and uses the Iroquois phratry falls below the Grecian, as would be supposed, although our knowledge of the functions of the latter is limited; and below what is known of the uses of the phratry among the Roman tribes. In comparing the latter with the former we pass backward through two ethnical periods, and into a very different condition of society. The difference is in the degree of progress, and not in kind; for we have the same institution in each race, derived from the same or a similar germ, and preserved by each through immense periods of time as a part of a social system. Gentile society remained of necessity among the Grecian and Roman tribes until political society supervened; and it remained among the Iroquois tribes because they were still two ethnical periods below civilization. Every fact, therefore, in relation to the functions and uses of the Indian phratry is important, because it tends to illustrate the archaic character of an institution which became so influential in a more developed condition of society. The phratry, among the Iroquois, was partly for social and partly for religious objects. Its functions and uses can be best shown by practical illustrations. We begin with the lowest, with games, which were of common occurrence at tribal and confederate councils. In the ball game, for example, among the Senecas, they play by phratries, one against the other; and they bet against each other upon the result of the game. Each phratry puts forward its best players, usually from six to ten on a side, and the members of each phratry assemble together but upon opposite sides of the field in which the game is played. Before it commences, articles of personal property are hazarded upon the result by members of the opposite phratries. These are deposited with keepers to abide the event. The game is played with spirit and enthusiasm, and is an exciting spectacle. The members of each phratry, from their opposite stations, watch the game with eagerness, and cheer their respective players at every successful turn of the game. In many ways the phratric organization manifested itself. At a council of the tribe the sachems and chiefs in each phratry usually seated themselves on opposite sides of an imaginary council-fire, and the speakers addressed the two opposite bodies as the representatives of the phratries. Formalities, such as these, have a a peculiar charm for the Red Man in the transaction of business. Again; when a murder had been committed it was usual for the gens of the murdered person to meet in council; and, after ascertaining the facts, to take measures for avenging the deed. The gens of the criminal also held a council, and endeavored to effect an adjustment or condonation of the crime with the gens of the murdered person. But it often happened that the gens of the criminal called upon the other gentes of their phratry, when the slayer and the slain belonged to opposite phratries, to unite with them to obtain a condonation of the crime. In such a case the phratry held a council, and then addressed itself to the other phratry to which it sent a delegation with a belt of white wampum asking for a council of the phratry, and for an adjustment of the crime. They offered reparation to the family and gens of the murdered person in expressions of regret and in presents of value. Negotiations were continued between the two councils until an affirmative or a negative conclusion was reached. The influence of a phratry composed of several gentes would be greater than that of a single gens; and by calling into action the opposite phratry the probability of a condonation would be increased, especially if there were extenuating circumstances. We may thus see how naturally the Grecian phratry, prior to civilization, assumed the principal though not exclusive management of cases of murder, and also of the purification of the murderer if he escaped punishment; and, after the institution of political society, with what propriety the phratry assumed the duty of prosecuting the murderer in the courts of justice. At the funerals of persons of recognized importance in the tribe, the phratric organization manifested itself in a conspicuous manner. The phrators of the decedent in a body were the mourners, and the members of the opposite phratry conducted The phratry was also directly concerned in the election of sachems and chiefs of the several gentes, upon which they had a negative as well as a confirmative vote. After the gens of a deceased sachem had elected his successor, or had elected a chief of the second grade, it was necessary, as elsewhere stated, that their choice should be accepted and confirmed by each phratry. It was expected that the gentes of the same phratry would confirm the choice almost as a matter of course; but the opposite phratry also must acquiesce, and from this source opposition sometimes appeared. A council of each phratry was held and pronounced upon the question of acceptance or rejection. If the nomination made was accepted by both it became complete; but if either refused it was thereby set aside, and a new election was made by the gens. When the choice made by the gens had been accepted by the phratries, it was still necessary, as before stated, that the new sachem, or the new chief, should be invested by the council of the confederacy, which alone had power to invest, with office. The Senecas have now lost their Medicine Lodges which fell out in modern times; but they formerly existed and formed a prominent part of their religious system. To hold a Medicine Lodge was to observe their highest religious rites, and to practice their highest religious mysteries. They had two such organizations, one in each phratry, which shows still further the natural connection of the phratry with religious observances. Very little is now known concerning these lodges or their ceremonies. Each was a brotherhood, into which new members were admitted by a formal initiation. The phratry was without governmental functions in the strict sense of the phrase, these being confined to the gens, tribe and confederacy; but it entered into their social affairs with large administrative powers, and would have concerned itself more and more with their religious affairs as the condition of the people advanced. Unlike the Grecian phratry and the Roman curia it had no official head. There was no chief of the phratry as such, and no religious functionaries belonging to it as distinguished from the gens and tribe. The phratric institution among the Iroquois was in its rudimentary archaic form; Among the Village Indians of Mexico and Central America the phratry must have existed, reasoning upon general principles; and have been a more fully developed and influential organization than among the Iroquois. Unfortunately, mere glimpses at such an institution are all that can be found in the teeming narratives of the Spanish writers within the first century after the Spanish conquest. The four “lineages” of the Tlascalans who occupied the four quarters of the pueblo of Tlascala, were, in all probability, so many phratries. They were sufficiently numerous for four tribes; but as they occupied the same pueblo and spoke the same dialect the phratric organization was apparently a necessity. Each lineage, or phratry so to call it, had a distinct military organization, a peculiar costume and banner, and its head war-chief (Teuctli), who was its general military commander. They went forth to battle by phratries. The organization of a military force by phratries and by tribes was not unknown to the Homeric Greeks. Thus; Nestor advises Agamemnon to “separate the troops by phratries and by tribes, so that phratry may support phratry and tribe tribe.” With respect to the prevalence of this organization, among the Indian tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism, the subject has been but slightly investigated. It is probable that it was general in the principal tribes, from the natural manner in which it springs up as a necessary member of the organic series, and from the uses, other than governmental, to which it was adapted. In some of the tribes the phratries stand out prominently upon the face of their organization. Thus, the Chocta gentes are united in two phratries which must be mentioned first in order to show the relation of the gentes to each other. The first phratry is called “Divided People,” and contains four gentes. The second is called “Beloved People,” and also contains four gentes. This separation of the people into two divisions by gentes created two phratries. Some knowledge of the functions of these phratries is of course desirable; but without it, the fact of their existence is established by the divisions themselves. The evolution of a confederacy from a pair of gentes, for less than two are never found in any tribe, may be deduced, theoretically, from the known facts of Indian experience. Thus, the gens increases in the number of its members and divides into two; these again subdivide, and in time reunite in two or more phratries. These phratries form a tribe, and its members speak the same dialect. In course of time this tribe falls into several by the process of segmentation, which in turn reunite in a confederacy. Such a confederacy is a growth, through the tribe and phratry, from a pair of gentes. The Chickasas are organized in two phratries, of which one contains four, and the other eight gentes, as follows: I. Panther Phratry. The particulars with respect to the Chocta and Chickasa phratries I am unable to present. Some fourteen years ago A very complete illustration of the manner in which phratries are formed by natural growth, through the subdivision of gentes, is presented by the organization of the Mohegan tribe. It had three original gentes, the Wolf, the Turtle, and the Turkey. Each of these subdivided, and the subdivisions became independent gentes; but they retained the names of the original gentes as their respective phratric names. In other words the subdivisions of each gens reorganized in a phratry. It proves conclusively the natural process by which, in course of time, a gens breaks up into several, and these remain united in a phratric organization, which is expressed by assuming a phratric name. They are as follows: I. Wolf Phratry. It is thus seen that the original Wolf gens divided into four gentes, the Turtle into four, and the Turkey into three. Each new gens took a new name, the original retaining its own, which became, by seniority, that of the phratry. It is rare among the American Indian tribes to find such plain evidence of the segmentation of gentes in their external organization, followed by the formation into phratries of their respective subdivisions. It shows also that the phratry is founded upon the kinship of the gentes. As a rule the name of the original gens out of which others had formed is not known; but in each of these cases it remains as the name of the phratry. Since the latter, like the Grecian, was a social and religious rather than a governmental organization, it is externally less conspicuous than a gens or tribe which were essential to the government of society. The name of but one of the twelve Athenian phratries has come down to us in history. Those of the Iroquois had no name but that of a brotherhood. The Delawares and Munsees have the same three gentes, the Wolf, the Turtle, and the Turkey. Among the Delawares there are twelve embryo gentes in each tribe, but they seem to be lineages within the gentes and had not taken gentile names. It was a movement, however, in that direction. The phratry also appears among the Thlinkeets of the Northwest coast, upon the surface of their organization into gentes. They have two phratries, as follows: I. Wolf Phratry. Intermarriage in the phratry is prohibited, which shows, of itself, that the gentes of each phratry were derived from an original gens. From the foregoing facts the existence of the phratry is established in several linguistic stocks of the American aborigines. Its presence in the tribes named raises a presumption of its general prevalence in the GanowÁnian family. Among the Village Indians, where the numbers in a gens and tribe were greater, it would necessarily have been more important and consequently more fully developed. As an institution it was still in its archaic form, but it possessed the essential elements of the Grecian and the Roman. It can now be asserted that the full organic series of ancient society exists in full vitality upon the American continent; namely, the gens, the phratry, the tribe, and the confederacy of tribes. With further proofs yet to be adduced, the universality of the gentile organization upon all the continents will be established. If future investigation is directed specially to the functions of the phratric organization among the tribes of the American aborigines, the knowledge gained will explain many peculiarities of Indian life and manners not well understood, and throw additional light upon their usages and customs, and upon their plan of life and government. CHAPTER IV. - THE IROQUOIS TRIBE.The Tribe as an Organization.—Composed of Gentes Speaking the same Dialect.—Separation in area led to Divergence of Speech, and Segmentation.—The Tribe a Natural Growth.—Illustrations.—Attributes of a Tribe.—A Territory and Name.—An Exclusive Dialect.—The Right to Invest and Depose its Sachems and Chiefs.—A Religious Faith and Worship.—A Council of Chiefs.—A Head-Chief of Tribe in some Instances.—Three Successive Forms of Gentile Government: First, a Government of One Power; Second, of Two Powers; Third, of Three Powers. It is difficult to describe an Indian tribe by the affirmative elements of its composition. Nevertheless it is clearly marked, and the ultimate organization of the great body of the American aborigines. The large number of independent tribes into which they had fallen by the natural process of segmentation, is the striking characteristic of their condition. Each tribe was individualized by a name, by a separate dialect, by a supreme government, and by the possession of a territory which it occupied and defended as its own. The tribes were as numerous as the dialects, for separation did not become complete until dialectical variation had commenced. Indian tribes, therefore, are natural growths through the separation of the same people in the area of their occupation, followed by divergence of speech, segmentation, and independence. We have seen that the phratry was not so much a governmental as a social organization, while the gens, tribe, and confederacy, were necessary and logical stages of progress in the The exclusive possession of a dialect and of a territory has led to the application of the term nation to many Indian tribes, notwithstanding the fewness of the people in each. Tribe and nation, however, are not strict equivalents. A nation does not arise, under gentile institutions, until the tribes united under the same government have coalesced into one people, as the four Athenian tribes coalesced in Attica, three Dorian tribes at Sparta, and three Latin and Sabine tribes at Rome. Federation requires independent tribes in separate territorial areas; but coalescence unites them by a higher process in the same area, although the tendency to local separation by gentes and by tribes would continue. The confederacy is the nearest analogue of the nation, but not strictly equivalent. Where the gentile organization exists, the organic series gives all the terms which are needed for a correct description. An Indian tribe is composed of several gentes, developed from two or more, all the members of which are intermingled by marriage, and all of whom speak the same dialect. To a stranger the tribe is visible, and not the gens. The instances are extremely rare, among the American aborigines, in which the tribe embraced peoples speaking different dialects. When such cases are found, it resulted from the union of a weaker with a stronger tribe speaking a closely related dialect, as the union of the Missouris with the Otoes after the overthrow of the former. The fact that the great body of the aborigines were found in independent tribes illustrates the slow and difficult growth of the idea of government under gentile institutions. A small portion only had attained to the ultimate stage known among them, that of a confederacy of tribes speaking dialects of the same stock language. A coalescence of tribes into a nation had not occurred in any case in any part of America. A constant tendency to disintegration, which has proved such a hinderance to progress among savage and barbarous tribes, existed in the elements of the gentile organization. It was aggravated by a further tendency to divergence of speech, which was inseparable from their social state and the large areas of their occupation. A verbal language, although remarkably persistent in its vocables, and still more persistent in its grammatical forms, is incapable of permanence. Separation of the people in area was followed in time by variation in speech; and this, in turn, led to separation in interests and ultimate independence. It was not the work of a brief period, but of centuries of time, aggregating finally into thousands of years. The great number of dialects and stock languages in North and South America, which presumptively were derived, the Eskimo excepted, from one original language, require for their formation the time measured by three ethnical periods. New tribes as well as new gentes were constantly forming by natural growth; and the process was sensibly accelerated by the great expanse of the American continent. The method was simple. In the first place there would occur a gradual outflow of people from some overstocked geographical centre, which possessed superior advantages in the means of subsistence. Continued from year to year, a considerable population would thus be developed at a distance from the original seat of the tribe. In course of time the emigrants would become distinct in interests, strangers in feeling, and last of all, divergent in speech. Separation and independence would follow, although their territories were contiguous. A new tribe was thus created. This is a concise statement of the manner in which the tribes of the American aborigines were formed, but the statement must be taken as general. Repeating itself from age to age in newly acquired as well as in old areas, it must be regarded as a natural as well as inevitable result of the gentile organization, united with the necessities of their condition. When increased numbers pressed upon the means of subsistence, the surplus removed to a new seat where they established themselves with facility, because the government was perfect in every gens, and in any number of gentes united in a band. The manner in which tribes are evolved from each other can be shown directly by examples. The fact of separation is derived in part from tradition, in part from the possession by each of a number of the same gentes, and deduced in part from the relations of their dialects. Tribes formed by the subdivisions of an original tribe would possess a number of gentes in common, and speak dialects of the same language. After several centuries of separation they would still have a number of the same gentes. Thus, the Hurons, now Wyandotes, have six gentes of the same name with six of the gentes of the Seneca-Iroquois, after at least four hundred years of separation. The Potawattamies have eight gentes of the same name with eight among the Ojibwas, while the former have six, and the latter fourteen, which are different; showing that new gentes have been formed in each tribe by segmentation since their separation. A still older offshoot from the Ojibwas, or from the common parent tribe of both, the Miamis, have but three gentes in common with the former, namely, the Wolf, the Loon, and the Eagle. The minute social history of the tribes of the GanowÁnian family is locked up in the life and growth of the gentes. If investigation is ever turned strongly in this direction, the gentes themselves would become reliable guides, both in respect to the order of separation from each other of the tribes of the same stock, and possibly of the great stocks of the aborigines. The following illustrations are drawn from tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism. When discovered, the eight Missouri tribes occupied the banks of the Missouri river for more than a thousand miles; together with the banks of its tributaries, the Kansas and the Platte; and also the smaller rivers of Iowa. They also occupied the west bank of the Mississippi down to the Another illustration may be found in the tribes of Lake Superior. The Ojibwas, Otawas Prior to these secessions another affiliated tribe, the Miamis, had broken off from the Ojibwa stock, or the common parent tribe, and migrated to central Illinois and western Indiana. Following in the track of this migration were the Illinois, another and later offshoot from the same stem, who afterwards subdivided into the Peorias, Kaskaskias, Weaws, and Piankeshaws. Their dialects, with that of the Miamis, find their nearest affinity with the Ojibwa, and next with the Cree. The foregoing examples represent the natural process by which tribes are evolved from each other, or from a parent tribe established in an advantageous position. Each emigrating band was in the nature of a military colony, if it may be so strongly characterized, seeking to acquire and hold a new area; preserving at first, and as long as possible, a connection with the mother tribe. By these successive movements they sought to expand their joint possessions, and afterward to resist the intrusion of alien people within their limits. It is a noticeable fact that Indian tribes speaking dialects of the same stock language have usually been found in territorial continuity, however extended their common area. The same has, in the main, been true of all the tribes of mankind linguistically united. It is because the people, spreading from some geographical centre, and maintaining an arduous struggle for subsistence, and for the possession of their new territories, have preserved their connection with the mother land as a means of succor in times of danger, and as a place of refuge in calamity. It required special advantages in the means of subsistence to render any area an initial point of migration through the gradual development of a surplus population. These natural centres were few in number in North America. There are but three. First among them is the Valley of the Columbia, the most extraordinary region on the face of the earth in the variety and amount of subsistence it afforded, prior to the cultivation of maize and plants; The multiplication of tribes and dialects has been the fruitful source of the incessant warfare of the aborigines upon each other. As a rule the most persistent warfare has been waged between tribes speaking different stock languages; as, for example, between the Iroquois and Algonkin tribes, and between the Dakota tribes and the same. On the contrary the Algonkin and Dakota tribes severally have, in general, lived at peace among themselves. Had it been otherwise they would not have been found in the occupation of continuous areas. The worst exception were the Iroquois, who pursued a war of extermination against their kindred tribes, the Eries, the Neutral Nation, the Hurons and the Susquehannocks. Tribes speaking dialects of the same stock language are able to communicate orally and thus compose their differences. They also learned, Numbers within a given area were limited by the amount of subsistence it afforded. When fish and game were the main reliance for food, it required an immense area to maintain a small tribe. After farinaceous food was superadded to fish and game, the area occupied by a tribe was still a large one in proportion to the number of the people. New York, with its forty-seven thousand square miles, never contained at any time more than twenty-five thousand Indians, including with the Iroquois the Algonkins on the east side of the Hudson and upon Long Island, and the Eries and Neutral Nation in the western section of the state. A personal government founded upon gentes was incapable of developing sufficient central power to follow and control the increasing numbers of the people, unless they remained within a reasonable distance from each other. Among the Village Indians of New Mexico, Mexico, and Central America an increase of numbers in a small area did not arrest the process of disintegration. Each pueblo was usually an independent self-governing community. Where several pueblos were seated near each other on the same stream, the people were usually of common descent, and either under a tribal or confederate government. There are some seven stock languages in New Mexico alone, each spoken in several dialects. At the time of Coronado’s expedition, 1540-1542, the villages found were numerous but small. There were seven each of Cibola, Tucayan, Quivira, and Hemez, and twelve of Tiguex; The process of subdivision, illustrated by the foregoing examples, has been operating among the American aborigines for thousands of years, until upwards of forty stock languages, From the preceding observations, it is apparent that an American Indian tribe is a very simple as well as humble organization. It required but a few hundreds, and, at most, a few thousand people to form a tribe, and place it in a respectable position in the GanowÁnian family. It remains to present the functions and attributes of an Indian tribe, which may be discussed under the following propositions:
It will be sufficient to make a brief reference to each of these several attributes of a tribe. I. The possession of a territory and a name. Their territory consisted of the area of their actual settlements, and so much of the surrounding region as the tribe ranged over in hunting and fishing, and were able to defend against the encroachments of other tribes. Without this area was a wide margin of neutral grounds, separating them from their nearest frontegers if they spoke a different language, and claimed by neither; but less wide, and less clearly marked, when they spoke dialects of the same language. The country thus imperfectly defined, whether large or small, was the domain of the tribe, recognized as such by other tribes, and defended as such by themselves. In due time the tribe became individualized by a name, which, from their usual character, must have been in many cases accidental rather than deliberate. Thus, the Senecas II. The exclusive possession of a dialect. Tribe and dialect are substantially co-extensive, but there are exceptions growing out of special circumstances. Thus, the twelve Dakota bands are now properly tribes, because they are distinct in interests and in organization; but they were forced into premature separation by the advance of Americans upon their original area which forced them upon the plains. They had remained in such intimate connection previously that but one new dialect had commenced forming, the Tecton, on the Missouri; the Isauntie on the Mississippi being the original speech. A few years ago the Cherokees numbered twenty-six thousand, the largest number of Indians ever found within the limits of the United States speaking the same dialect. But in the mountain districts of Georgia a slight divergence of speech had occurred, though not sufficient to be distinguished as a dialect. There are a few other similar cases, but they do not III. The right of investing sachems and chiefs elected by the gentes. Among the Iroquois the person elected could not become a chief until his investiture by a council of chiefs. As the chiefs of the gentes composed the council of the tribe, with power over common interests, there was a manifest propriety in reserving to the tribal council the function of investing persons with office. But after the confederacy was formed, the power of “raising up” sachems and chiefs was transferred from the council of the tribe to the council of the confederacy. With respect to the tribes generally, the accessible information is insufficient to explain their usages in relation to the mode of investiture. It is one of the numerous subjects requiring further investigation before the social system of the Indian tribes can be fully explained. The office of sachem and chief was universally elective among the tribes north of Mexico; with sufficient evidence, as to other parts of the continent, to leave no doubt of the universality of the rule. Among the Delawares each gens had one sachem, (SÄ-ke'-mÄ), whose office was hereditary in the gens, besides two common chiefs, and two war-chiefs—making fifteen in three gentes—who composed the council of the tribe. Among the Ojibwas, the members of some one gens usually predominated at each settlement. Each gens had a sachem, whose office was hereditary in the gens, and several common chiefs. Where a large number of persons of the same gens lived in one locality they would be found similarly organized. There was no prescribed limit to the number of chiefs. A body of usages, which have never been collected, undoubtedly existed in the several Indian IV. The right to depose these sachems and chiefs. This right rested primarily with the gens to which the sachem and chief belonged. But the council of the tribe possessed the same power, and could proceed independently of the gens, and even in opposition to its wishes. In the Status of savagery, and in the Lower and also in the Middle Status of barbarism, office was bestowed for life, or during good behavior. Mankind had not learned to limit an elective office for a term of years. The right to depose, therefore, became the more essential for the maintenance of the principle of self-government. This right was a perpetual assertion of the sovereignty of the gens and also of the tribe; a sovereignty feebly understood, but nevertheless a reality. V. The possession of a religious faith and worship. After the fashion of barbarians the American Indians were a religious people. The tribes generally held religious festivals at particular seasons of the year, which were observed with forms of worship, dances and games. The Medicine Lodge, in many tribes, was the centre of these observances. It was customary to announce the holding of a Medicine Lodge weeks and months in advance to awaken a general interest in its ceremonies. The religious system of the aborigines is another of the subjects which has been but partially investigated. It is rich in materials for the future student. The experience of these tribes in developing their religious beliefs and mode of worship is a part of the experience of mankind; and the facts will hold an important place in the science of comparative religion. Their system was more or less vague and indefinite, and loaded with crude superstitions. Element worship can be traced among the principal tribes, with a tendency to polytheism in the advanced tribes. The Iroquois, for example, recognized a Great, and an Evil Spirit, and a multitude of inferior spiritual beings, the immortality of the soul, and a future state. Dancing was a form of worship among the American aborigines, and formed a part of the ceremonies at all religious festivals. In no part of the earth, among barbarians, has the dance received a more studied development. Every tribe has from ten to thirty set dances; each of which has its own name, songs, musical instruments, steps, plan and costume for persons. Some of them, as the war-dance, were common to all the tribes. Particular dances are special property, belonging either to a gens, or to a society organized for its maintenance, into which new members were from time to time initiated. The dances of the Dakotas, the Crees, the Ojibwas, the Iroquois, and of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, are the same in general character, in step, plan, and music; and the same is true of the dances of the Aztecs so far as they are accurately known. It is one system throughout the Indian tribes, and bears a direct relation to their system of faith and worship. VI. A supreme government through a council of chiefs. The council had a natural foundation in the gentes of whose chiefs it was composed. It met a necessary want, and was certain to remain as long as gentile society endured. As the It devolved upon the council to guard and protect the common interests of the tribe. Upon the intelligence and courage of the people, and upon the wisdom and foresight of the council, the prosperity and the existence of the tribe depended. Questions and exigencies were arising, through their incessant warfare with other tribes, which required the exercise of all these qualities to meet and manage. It was unavoidable, therefore, that the popular element should be commanding in its influence. As a general rule the council was open to any private individual who desired to address it on a public question. Even the women were allowed to express their wishes and opinions through an orator of their own selection. But the decision was made by the council. Unanimity was a fundamental law of its action among the Iroquois; but whether this usage was general I am unable to state. Military operations were usually left to the action of the voluntary principle. Theoretically, each tribe was at war with every other tribe with which it had not formed a treaty of peace. Any person was at liberty to organize a war-party and conduct an expedition wherever he pleased. He announced his project by giving a war-dance and inviting volunteers. This method furnished a practical test of the popularity of the undertaking. If he succeeded in forming a company, which would consist of such persons as joined him in the dance, they Indian tribes, and even confederacies, were weak organizations for military operations. That of the Iroquois, and that of the Aztecs, were the most remarkable for aggressive purposes. Among the tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism, including the Iroquois, the most destructive work was performed by inconsiderable war-parties, which were constantly forming and making expeditions into distant regions. Their supply of food consisted of parched corn reduced to flour, carried in a pouch attached to the belt of each warrior, with such fish and game as the route supplied. The going out of these war-parties, and their public reception on their return, were among the prominent events in Indian life. The sanction of the council for these expeditions was not sought, neither was it necessary. The council of the tribe had power to declare war and make peace, to send and receive embassies, and to make alliances. It exercised all the powers needful in a government so simple and limited in its affairs. Intercourse between independent tribes was conducted by delegations of wise-men and chiefs. When such a delegation was expected by any tribe, a council was convened for its reception, and for the transaction of its business. VII. A head-chief of the tribe in some instances. In some Indian tribes one of the sachems was recognized as its head-chief; and as superior in rank to his associates. A need existed, to some extent, for an official head of the tribe to represent it when the council was not in session; but the duties A council of Indian chiefs is of little importance by itself; but as the germ of the modern parliament, congress, and legislature, it has an important bearing in the history of mankind. The growth of the idea of government commenced with the organization into gentes in savagery. It reveals three great stages of progressive development between its commencement and the institution of political society after civilization had been attained. The first stage was the government of a tribe by a council of chiefs elected by the gentes. It may be called a government of one power; namely, the council. It prevailed generally among tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism. The second stage was a government co-ordinated between a council of chiefs, and a general military commander; one representing the civil, and the other the military functions. This second form began to manifest itself in the Lower Status of barbarism, after confederacies were formed, and it became definite in the Middle Status. The office of general, or principal military commander, was the germ of that of a chief executive magistrate, the king, the emperor, and the president. It may be called a government of two powers, namely, the council of chiefs, and the general. The third stage was the government of a people or nation by a council of chiefs, an Recurring to the tribe, it was limited in the numbers of the people, feeble in strength, and poor in resources; but yet a completely organized society. It illustrates the condition of mankind in the Lower Status of barbarism. In the Middle Status there was a sensible increase of numbers in a tribe, and an improved condition; but with a continuance of gentile society without essential change. Political society was still impossible from want of advancement. The gentes organized into tribes remained as before; but confederacies must have been more frequent. In some areas, as in the Valley of Mexico, larger numbers were developed under a common government, Following the ascending organic series, we are next to consider the confederacy of tribes, in which the gentes, phratries and tribes will be seen in new relations. The remarkable adaptation of the gentile organization to the condition and wants of mankind, while in a barbarous state, will thereby be further illustrated. CHAPTER V. - THE IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY.Confederacies Natural Growths.—Founded upon Common Gentes, and a Common Language.—The Iroquois Tribes.—Their Settlement in New York.—Formation of the Confederacy.—Its Structure and Principles.—Fifty Sachemships Created.—Made Hereditary in certain Gentes.—Number assigned to each Tribe.—These Sachems formed the Council of the Confederacy.—The Civil Council.—Its Mode of Transacting Business.—Unanimity Necessary to its Action.—The Mourning Council.—Mode of Raising up Sachems.—General Military Commanders.—This Office the Germ of that of a Chief Executive Magistrate.—Intellectual Capacity of the Iroquois. A tendency to confederate for mutual defense would very naturally exist among kindred and contiguous tribes. When the advantages of a union had been appreciated by actual experience the organization, at first a league, would gradually cement into a federal unity. The state of perpetual warfare in which they lived would quicken this natural tendency into action among such tribes as were sufficiently advanced in intelligence and in the arts of life to perceive its benefits. It would be simply a growth from a lower into a higher organization by an extension of the principle which united the gentes in a tribe. As might have been expected, several confederacies existed in different parts of North America when discovered, some of which were quite remarkable in plan and structure. Among the number may be mentioned the Iroquois Confederacy of five independent tribes, the Creek Confederacy of six, the Otawa Confederacy of three, the Dakota League of the “Seven Council-Fires,” the Moqui Confederacy in New Mexico of Seven Pueb The two highest examples of Indian confederacies in North America were those of the Iroquois and of the Aztecs. From their acknowledged superiority as military powers, and from their geographical positions, these confederacies, in both cases, produced remarkable results. Our knowledge of the structure and principles of the former is definite and complete, while of the latter it is far from satisfactory. The Aztec confederacy has been handled in such a manner historically as to leave it doubtful whether it was simply a league of three kindred tribes, offensive and defensive, or a systematic confederacy like that of the Iroquois. That which is true of the latter was probably in a general sense true of the former, so that a knowledge of one will tend to elucidate the other. The conditions under which confederacies spring into being and the principles on which they are formed are remarkably simple. They grow naturally, with time, out of pre-existing elements. Where one tribe had divided into several and these subdivisions occupied independent but contiguous territories, the confederacy re-integrated them in a higher organization, on the basis of the common gentes they possessed, and of the affiliated dialects they spoke. The sentiment of kin embodied in the gens, the common lineage of the gentes, and their dialects still mutually intelligible, yielded the material elements for It may here be remarked, parenthetically, that it was impossible in the Lower, in the Middle, or in the Upper Status of barbarism for a kingdom to arise by natural growth in any part of the earth under gentile institutions. I venture to make this suggestion at this early stage of the discussion in order to call attention more closely to the structure and principles of ancient society, as organized in gentes, phratries and tribes. Monarchy is incompatible with gentilism. It belongs to the later period of civilization. Despotisms appeared in some instances among the Grecian tribes in the Upper Status of barbarism; but they were founded upon usurpation, were considered illegitimate by the people, and were, in fact, alien to the ideas of gentile society. The Grecian tyrannies were despotisms founded upon usurpation, and were the germ out of which the later kingdoms arose; while the so-called kingdoms of the heroic age were military democracies, and nothing more. The Iroquois have furnished an excellent illustration of the manner in which a confederacy is formed by natural growth assisted by skillful legislation. Originally emigrants from beyond When the confederacy was formed, about A. D. 1400-1450, It is affirmed by the Iroquois that the confederacy was formed by a council of wise-men and chiefs of the five tribes which The origin of the plan is ascribed to a mythical, or, at least, traditionary person, HÄ-yo-went'-hÄ, the Hiawatha of Longfellow’s celebrated poem, who was present at this council and the central person in its management. In his communications with the council he used a wise-man of the Onondagas, Da-gÄ-no-we'-dÄ, as an interpreter and speaker to expound the structure and principles of the proposed confederacy. The same tradition further declares that when the work was accomplished HÄ-yo-went'-hÄ miraculously disappeared in a white canoe, which arose with him in the air and bore him out of their sight. Other prodigies, according to this tradition, attended and signalized the formation of the confederacy, which is still celebrated among them as a masterpiece of Indian wisdom. Such in truth it was; and it will remain in history as a monument of their genius in developing gentile institutions. It will also be remembered as an illustration of what tribes of mankind have been able to accomplish in the art of government while in the Lower Status of barbarism, and under the disadvantages this condition implies. Which of the two persons was the founder of the confederacy it is difficult to determine. The silent HÄ-yo-went'-hÄ was, not unlikely, a real person of Iroquois lineage; The Iroquois affirm that the confederacy as formed by this council, with its powers, functions and mode of administration, has come down to them through many generations to the present time with scarcely a change in its internal organization. When the Tuscaroras were subsequently admitted, their sachems were allowed by courtesy to sit as equals in the general council, but the original number of sachems was not increased, and in strictness those of the Tuscaroras formed no part of the ruling body. The general features of the Iroquois Confederacy may be summarized in the following propositions: I. The confederacy was a union of Five Tribes, composed of common gentes, under one government on the basis of equality; each Tribe remaining independent in all matters pertaining to local self-government. II. It created a General Council of Sachems, who were limited in number, equal in rank and authority, and invested with supreme powers over all matters pertaining to the Confederacy. III. Fifty Sachemships were created and named in perpetuity in certain gentes of the several Tribes; with power in these gentes to fill vacancies, as often as they occurred, by election from among their respective members, and with the further power to depose from office for cause; but the right to invest these Sachems with office was reserved to the General Council. IV. The Sachems of the Confederacy were also Sachems in their respective Tribes, and with the Chiefs of these Tribes formed the Council of each, which was supreme over all matters pertaining to the Tribe exclusively. V. Unanimity in the Council of the Confederacy was made essential to every public act. VI. In the General Council the Sachems voted by Tribes, which gave to each Tribe a negative upon the others. VII. The Council of each Tribe had power to convene the General Council; but the latter had no power to convene itself. VIII. The General Council was open to the orators of the people for the discussion of public questions; but the Council alone decided. IX. The Confederacy had no chief Executive Magistrate, or official head. X. Experiencing the necessity for a General Military Commander they created the office in a dual form, that one might neutralize the other. The two principal War-chiefs created were made equal in powers. These several propositions will be considered and illustrated, but without following the precise form or order in which they are stated. At the institution of the confederacy fifty permanent sachemships were created and named, and made perpetual in the gentes to which they were assigned. With the exception of two, which were filled but once, they have been held by as many different persons in succession as generations have passed away between that time and the present. The name of each sachemship is also the personal name of each sachem while he holds the office, each one in succession taking the name of his predecessor. These sachems, when in session, formed the council of the confederacy in which the legislative, executive, and judicial powers were vested, although such a discrimination of functions had not come to be made. To secure order in the succession, the several gentes in which these offices were made hereditary were empowered to elect successors from among their respective members when vacancies occurred, as elsewhere explained. As a further measure of protection to their own body each sachem, after his election and its confirmation, was invested with his office by a council of the confederacy. When thus installed his name was “taken away” and that of the sachemship was bestowed upon him. By this name he was afterwards known among them. They were all upon equality in rank, authority, and privileges. These sachemships were distributed unequally among the five tribes; but without giving to either a preponderance of power; and unequally among the gentes of the last three tribes. The Mohawks had nine sachems, the Oneidas nine, the Onondagas fourteen, the Cayugas ten, and the Senecas eight. This was the number at first, and it has remained the number to the present time. A table of these sachemships is subjoined, with their names in the Seneca dialect, and their arrangement in classes to facilitate the attainment of unanimity in council. In Table of sachemships of the Iroquois, founded at the institution of the Confederacy; with the names which have been borne by their sachems in succession, from its formation to the present time:
Two of these sachemships have been filled but once since their creation. HÄ-yo-went'-hÄ and Da-gÄ-no-we'-da consented to take the office among the Mohawk sachems, and to leave their names in the list upon condition that after their demise the two should remain thereafter vacant. They were installed upon these terms, and the stipulation has been observed to the present day. At all councils for the investiture of sachems their names are still called with the others as a tribute of respect to their memory. The general council, therefore, consisted of but forty-eight members. Each sachem had an assistant sachem, who was elected by the gens of his principal from among its members, and who was installed with the same forms and ceremonies. He was styled an “aid.” It was his duty to stand behind his superior The names bestowed upon the original sachems became the names of their respective successors in perpetuity. For example, upon the demise of GÄ-ne-o-di'-yo, one of the eight Seneca sachems, his successor would be elected by the Turtle gens in which this sachemship was hereditary, and when raised up by the general council he would receive this name, in place of his own, as a part of the ceremony. On several different occasions I have attended their councils for raising up sachems both at the Onondaga and Seneca reservations, and witnessed the ceremonies herein referred to. Although but a shadow of the old confederacy now remains, it is fully organized with its complement of sachems and aids, with the exception of the Mohawk tribe which removed to Canada about 1775. Whenever vacancies occur their places are filled, and a general council is convened to install the new sachems and their aids. The present Iroquois are also perfectly familiar with the structure and principles of the ancient confederacy. For all purposes of tribal government the five tribes were independent of each other. Their territories were separated by fixed boundary lines, and their tribal interests were distinct. The eight Seneca sachems, in conjunction with the other Seneca chiefs, formed the council of the tribe by which its affairs were administered, leaving to each of the other tribes the same control over their separate interests. As an organization the tribe was neither weakened nor impaired by the confederate compact. Each was in vigorous life within its appropriate sphere, presenting some analogy to our own states within an embracing republic. It is worthy of remembrance that the Iroquois commended to our forefathers a union of the colonies similar to their own as early as 1755. They saw in the common interests and common speech of the several colonies the The tribes occupied positions of entire equality in the confederacy, in rights, privileges and obligations. Such special immunities as were granted to one or another indicate no intention to establish an unequal compact, or to concede unequal privileges. There were organic provisions apparently investing particular tribes with superior power; as, for example, the Onondagas were allowed fourteen sachems and the Senecas but eight; and a larger body of sachems would naturally exercise a stronger influence in council than a smaller. But in this case it gave no additional power, because the sachems of each tribe had an equal voice in forming a decision, and a negative upon the others. When in council they agreed by tribes, and unanimity in opinion was essential to every public act. The Onondagas were made “Keepers of the Wampum,” and “Keepers of the Council Brand,” the Mohawks, “Receivers of Tribute” from subjugated tribes, and the Senecas “Keepers of the Door” of the Long House. These and some other similar provisions were made for the common advantage. The cohesive principle of the confederacy did not spring exclusively from the benefits of an alliance for mutual protection, but had a deeper foundation in the bond of kin. The confederacy rested upon the tribes ostensibly, but primarily upon common gentes. All the members of the same gens, whether Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, or Senecas, were brothers and sisters to each other in virtue of their descent from the same common ancestor; and they recognized each other as such with the fullest cordiality. When they met the first inquiry was the name of each other’s gens, and next the immediate pedigree of their respective sachems; after which they were usually able to find, under their peculiar system of consanguinity, The “Long House” (Ho-de'-no-sote) was made the symbol of the confederacy; and they styled themselves the “People of the Long House” (Ho-de'-no-sau-nee). This was the name, and the only name, with which they distinguished themselves. The confederacy produced a gentile society more complex than that of a single tribe, but it was still distinctively a gentile society. The coalescence of the Latin and Sabine gentes into the Roman people and nation was a result of the same processes. In all alike the gens, phratry and tribe were the first three stages of organization. The confederacy followed as the fourth. But it does not appear, either among the Grecian or Latin tribes in the Later Period of barbarism, that it became more than a loose league for offensive and defensive purposes. Of the nature and details of organization of the Grecian and Latin confederacies our knowledge is limited and imperfect, because the facts are buried in the obscurity of the traditionary period. The process of coalescence arises later than the confederacy in gentile society; but it was a necessary as well as vital stage of progress by means of which the nation, the state, and political society were at last attained. Among the Iroquois tribes it had not manifested itself. The valley of Onondaga, as the seat of the central tribe, and the place where the Council Brand was supposed to be perpetually burning, was the usual though not the exclusive place for holding the councils of the confederacy. In ancient times it was summoned to convene in the autumn of each year; but public exigencies often rendered its meetings more frequent. Each tribe had power to summon the council, and to appoint the time and place of meeting at the council-house of either tribe, when circumstances rendered a change from the usual place at Onondaga desirable. But the council had no power to convene itself. Originally the principal object of the council was to raise up Invoking the patience of the reader, it is necessary to enter into some details with respect to the mode of transacting business at the Civil and Mourning Councils. In no other way can the archaic condition of society under gentile institutions be so readily illustrated. If an overture was made to the confederacy by a foreign tribe, it might be done through either of the five tribes. It was the prerogative of the council of the tribe addressed to determine whether the affair was of sufficient importance to require a council of the confederacy. After reaching an affirmative conclusion, a herald was sent to the nearest tribes in position, on the east and on the west, with a belt of wampum, which contained a message to the effect that a civil council (Ho-de-os'-seh) would meet at such a place and time, and for such an object, each of which was specified. It was the duty of the tribe receiving the message to forward it to the tribe When the sachems met in council, at the time and place appointed, and the usual reception ceremony had been performed, they arranged themselves in two divisions and seated themselves upon opposite sides of the council-fire. Upon one side were the Mohawk, Onondaga and Seneca sachems. The tribes they represented were, when in council, brother tribes to each other and father tribes to the other two. In like manner their sachems were brothers to each other and fathers to those opposite. They constituted a phratry of tribes and of sachems, by an extension of the principle which united gentes in a phratry. On the opposite side of the fire were the Oneida and Cayuga, and, at a later day, the Tuscarora sachems. The tribes they represented were brother tribes to each other, and son tribes to the opposite three. Their sachems also were brothers to each other, and sons of those in the opposite division. They formed a second tribal phratry. As the Oneidas were a subdivision of the Mohawks, and the Cayugas a subdivision of the Onondagas or Senecas, they were in reality junior tribes; whence their relation of seniors and juniors, and the application of the phratric principle. When the tribes are named in council the Mohawks by precedence are mentioned first. Their tribal epithet was “The Shield” (Da-gÄ-e-o'-dÄ). The Onondagas came next under the epithet of “Name-Bearer” (Ho-de-san-no'-ge-tÄ), because they had been appointed to select and name the fifty original sachems. It was customary for the foreign tribe to be represented at the council by a delegation of wise-men and chiefs, who bore their proposition and presented it in person. After the council was formally opened and the delegation introduced, one of the sachems made a short address, in the course of which he thanked the Great Spirit for sparing their lives and permitting them to meet together; after which he informed the delegation that the council was prepared to hear them upon the affair for which it had convened. One of the delegates then submitted their proposition in form, and sustained it by such arguments as he was able to make. Careful attention was given by the members of the council that they might clearly comprehend the matter in hand. After the address was concluded, the delegation withdrew from the council to await at a distance the result of its deliberations. It then became the duty of the sachems to agree upon an answer, which was reached through the ordinary routine of debate and consultation. When a decision had been made, a speaker was appointed to communicate the answer of the council, to receive which the delegation were recalled. The speaker was usually chosen from the tribe at whose instance the council had been convened. It was customary for him to review the whole subject in a formal speech, in the course of which the acceptance, in whole or in part, or the rejection of the proposition were announced with the reasons therefor. Where an agreement was entered upon, belts of wampum were exchanged as evidence of its terms. With these proceedings the council terminated. “This belt preserves my words” was a common remark of an Iroquois chief in council. He then delivered the belt as the evidence of what he had said. Several such belts would be given in the course of a negotiation to the opposite party. In the reply of the latter a belt would be returned for each proposition accepted. The Iroquois experienced the necessity for Unanimity among the sachems was required upon all public questions, and essential to the validity of every public act. It was a fundamental law of the confederacy. By this method of gaining assent the equality and independence of the several tribes were recognized and preserved. If any sachem was obdurate or unreasonable, influences were brought to bear upon him, through the preponderating sentiment, which he could not well resist; so that it seldom happened that inconvenience or detriment resulted from their adherence to the rule. Whenever all efforts to procure unanimity had failed, the whole matter was laid aside because further action had become impossible. The induction of new sachems into office was an event of great interest to the people, and not less to the sachems who retained thereby some control over the introduction of new members into their body. To perform the ceremony of raising up sachems the general council was primarily instituted. It was named at the time, or came afterwards to be called, the Mourning Council (Hen-nun-do-nuh'-seh), because it embraced the twofold object of lamenting the death of the departed sachems and of installing his successor. Upon the death of a sachem, the tribe in which the loss had occurred had power to summon a general council, and to name the time and place of its meeting. A herald was sent out with a belt of wampum, usually the official belt of the deceased sachem given to him at his installation, which conveyed this laconic message;—“the name” (mentioning that of the late ruler) “calls for a council.” It also announced the day and place of convocation. In some cases the official belt of the sachem was sent to the central council-fire at Onondaga immediately after his burial, as a notification of his demise, and the time for holding the council was determined afterwards. The Mourning Council, with the festivities which followed the investiture of sachems, possessed remarkable attractions for the Iroquois. They flocked to its attendance from the most distant localities with zeal and enthusiasm. It was opened and Among other things, the ancient wampum belts, into which the structure and principles of the confederacy “had been talked,” to use their expression, were produced and read or interpreted for the instruction of the newly inducted sachem. A wise-man, not necessarily one of the sachems, took these belts one after the other and walking to and fro between the two divisions of sachems, read from them the facts which they recorded. According to the Indian conception, these belts can By investing their sachems with office through a general council, the framers of the confederacy had in view the threefold object of a perpetual succession in the gens, the benefits The Iroquois name for a sachem (Ho-yar-na-go'-war), which signifies “a counselor of the people,” was singularly appropriate to a ruler in a species of free democracy. It not only defines the office well, but it also suggests the analogous designation of the members of the Grecian council of chiefs. The Grecian chiefs were styled “councilors of the people.” The designation for a chief of the second grade, Ha-sa-no-wÄ'-na, At the time the confederacy was formed To-do-dÄ'-ho was the most prominent and influential of the Onondaga chiefs. His accession to the plan of a confederacy, in which he would experience a diminution of power, was regarded as highly meritorious. He was raised up as one of the Onondaga sachems and his name placed first in the list. Two assistant sachems were raised up with him to act as his aids and to stand behind him on public occasions. Thus dignified, this sachemship has since been regarded by the Iroquois as the most illustrious of the forty-eight, from the services rendered by the first To-do-dÄ'-ho. The circumstance was early seized upon by the inquisitive colonists to advance the person who held this office to the position of king of the Iroquois; but the misconception was refuted, and the institutions of the Iroquois were relieved of the burden of an impossible feature. In the general council he sat among his equals. The confederacy had no chief executive magistrate. Under a confederacy of tribes the office of general, (Hos-gÄ-Ä-geh'-da-go-wÄ) “Great War Soldier,” makes its first appearance. Cases would now arise when the several tribes in their confederate capacity would be engaged in war; and the necessity for a general commander to direct the movements of the united bands would be felt. The introduction of this office as a permanent feature in the government was a great event in the history of human progress. It was the beginning of a differentiation of the military from the civil power, which, when completed, changed essentially the external manifestation of the government. But even in later stages of progress, when the military spirit predominated, the essential character of the government was not changed. Gentilism arrested usurpation. With the rise of the office of general, the government was gradually changed from a government of one power, into a government of two powers. The functions of government became, in course of time, co-ordinated between the two. This new office was the germ of that of a chief executive magistrate; for out of the general came the king, the emperor, and the president, as elsewhere suggested. The office sprang from the military necessities of society, and had a logical development. For this reason its first appearance and subsequent growth have an important place in this discussion. In the course of this volume I shall attempt to trace the progressive development of this office, from the Great War Soldier of the Iroquois through the Teuctli of the Aztecs, to the Basileus of the Grecian, and the Rex of the Roman tribes; among all of whom, through three successive ethnical periods, the office was the same, namely, that of a general in a military democracy. Among the Iroquois, the Aztecs, and the Romans the office was elective, or confirmative, by a constituency. Presumptively, it was the same among the Greeks of the traditionary period. It is claimed that the office of basileus among the Grecian tribes in the Homeric period was hereditary from father to son. This is at least doubtful. It is such a wide and total departure from the original tenure of the office as to require positive evidence to establish the fact. An election, or confirmation by a constituency, would still be necessary under When the Iroquois confederacy was formed, or soon after that event, two permanent war-chiefships were created and named, and both were assigned to the Seneca tribe. One of them (Ta-wan'-ne-ars, signifying needle-breaker) was made hereditary in the Wolf, and the other (So-no'-so-wÄ, signifying great oyster shell) in the Turtle gens. The reason assigned for giving them both to the Senecas was the greater danger of attack at the west end of their territories. They were elected in the same manner as the sachems, were raised up by a general council, and were equal in rank and power. Another account states that they were created later. They discovered immediately after the confederacy was formed that the structure of the Long House was incomplete because there were no officers to execute the military commands of the confederacy. A council was convened to remedy the omission, which established the two perpetual war-chiefs named. As general commanders they had charge of the military affairs of the confederacy, and the command of its joint forces when united in a general expedition. Governor Blacksnake, recently deceased, held the office first named, thus showing that the succession has been regularly maintained. The creation of two principal war-chiefs instead of one, and with equal powers, argues a subtle and calculating policy to prevent the domination of a single man even in their military affairs. They did without experience precisely as the Romans did in creating two consuls instead of one, after they had abolished the office of rex. Two consuls would In Indian Ethnography the subjects of primary importance are the gens, phratry, tribe and confederacy. They exhibit the organization of society. Next to these are the tenure and functions of the office of sachem and chief, the functions of the council of chiefs, and the tenure and functions of the office of principal war-chief. When these are ascertained, the structure and principles of their governmental system will be known. A knowledge of their usages and customs, of their arts and inventions, and of their plan of life will then fill out the picture. In the work of American investigators too little attention has been given to the former. They still afford a rich field in which much information may be gathered. Our knowledge, which is now general, should be made minute and comparative. The Indian tribes in the Lower, and in the Middle Status of barbarism, represent two of the great stages of progress from savagery to civilization. Our own remote forefathers passed through the same conditions, one after the other, and possessed, there can scarcely be a doubt, the same, or very similar institutions, with many of the same usages and customs. However little we may be interested in the American Indians personally, their experience touches us more nearly, as an exemplification of the experience of our own ancestors. Our primary institutions root themselves in a prior gentile society in which the gens, phratry and tribe were the organic series, and in which the council of chiefs was the instrument of government. The phenomena of their ancient society must have presented many points in common with that of the Iroquois and other Indian tribes. This view of the matter lends an additional interest to the comparative institutions of mankind. The Iroquois confederacy is an excellent exemplification of a gentile society under this form of organization. It seems to realize all the capabilities of gentile institutions in the Lower Status of barbarism; leaving an opportunity for further development, but no subsequent plan of government until the institutions of political society, founded upon territory and upon prop This exposition of the Iroquois confederacy is far from exhaustive of the facts, but it has been carried far enough to answer my present object. The Iroquois were a vigorous and intelligent people, with a brain approaching in volume the Aryan average. Eloquent in oratory, vindictive in war, and indomitable in perseverance, they have gained a place in history. If their military achievements are dreary with the atrocities of savage warfare, they have illustrated some of the highest virtues of mankind in their relations with each other. The confederacy which they organized must be regarded as a remarkable production of wisdom and sagacity. One of its avowed objects was peace; to remove the cause of strife by uniting their tribes under one government, and then extending it by incorporating other tribes of the same name and lineage. They urged the Eries and the Neutral Nation to become members of the confederacy, and for their refusal expelled them from their borders. Such an insight into the highest objects of government is creditable to their intelligence. Their numbers were small, but they counted in their ranks a large number of able men. This proves the high grade of the stock. From their position and military strength they exercised a marked influence upon the course of events between the En With a knowledge of the gens in its archaic form and of its capabilities as the unit of a social system, we shall be better able to understand the gentes of the Greeks and Romans yet to be considered. The same scheme of government composed of gentes, phratries and tribes in a gentile society will be found among them as they stood at the threshold of civilization, with the superadded experience of two entire ethnical periods. Descent among them was in the male line, property was inherited by the children of the owner instead of the agnatic kindred, and the family was now assuming the monogamian form. The growth of property, now becoming a commanding element, and the increase of numbers gathered in walled cities were slowly demonstrating the necessity for the second great plan of government—the political. The old gentile system was becoming incapable of meeting the requirements of society as it approached civilization. Glimpses of a state, founded upon territory and property, were breaking upon the Grecian and Roman minds before which gentes and tribes were to disappear. To enter upon the second plan of government, it was necessary to supersede the gentes by townships and city wards—the gentile by a territorial system. The going down of the gentes and the uprising of organized townships mark the dividing line, pretty nearly, between the barbarian and the civilized worlds—between ancient and modern society. CHAPTER VI. - GENTES IN OTHER TRIBES OF THE GANOWÁNIAN FAMILY.Divisions of American Aborigines.—Gentes in Indian Tribes; with their Rules of Descent and Inheritance.—I. Hodenosaunian Tribes.—II. Dakotian.—III. Gulf.—IV. Pawnee.—V. Algonkin.—VI. Athapasco-Apache.—VII. Tribes of Northwest Coast.—Eskimos, a Distinct Family.—VIII. Salish, Sahaptin, and Kootenay Tribes.—IX. Shoshonee.—X. Village Indians of New Mexico, Mexico and Central America.—XI. South American Indian Tribes.—Probable Universality of the Organization in Gentes in the GanowÁnian Family. When America was first discovered in its several regions, the Aborigines were found in two dissimilar conditions. First were the Village Indians, who depended almost exclusively upon horticulture for subsistence; such were the tribes in this status in New Mexico, Mexico and Central America, and upon the plateau of the Andes. Second, were the Non-horticultural Indians, who depended upon fish, bread-roots and game; such were the Indians of the Valley of the Columbia, of the Hudson’s Bay Territory, of parts of Canada, and of some other sections of America. Between these tribes, and connecting the extremes by insensible gradations, were the partially Village, and partially Horticultural Indians; such were the Iroquois, the New England and Virginia Indians, the Creeks, Choctas, Cherokees, Minnitarees, Dakotas and Shawnees. The weapons, arts, usages, inventions, dances, house architecture, form of government, and plan of life of all alike bear the impress of a common mind, and reveal, through their wide range, the successive stages of development of the same original conceptions. In a previous work I presented the system of consanguinity and affinity of some seventy American Indian tribes; and upon the fact of their joint possession of the same system, with evidence of its derivation from a common source, ventured to claim for them the distinctive rank of a family of mankind, under the name of the GanowÁnian, the “Family of the Bow and Arrow.” Having considered the attributes of the gens in its archaic form, it remains to indicate the extent of its prevalence in the tribes of the GanowÁnian family. In this chapter the organization will be traced among them, confining the statements to the names of the gentes in each tribe, with their rules of descent and inheritance as to property and office. Further explanations will be added when necessary. The main point to be established is the existence or non-existence of the gentile organization among them. Wherever the institution has been found in these several tribes it is the same in all essential respects as the gens of the Iroquois, and therefore needs no further exposition in this connection. Unless the contrary is stated, it may be understood that the existence of the organization was ascertained by the author from the Indian tribe or some of its members. The classification of tribes follows that adopted in “Systems of Consanguinity.” I. Hodenosaunian Tribes. 1. Iroquois. The gentes of the Iroquois have been considered. 2. Wyandotes. This tribe, the remains of the ancient Hurons, is composed of eight gentes, as follows:
Descent is in the female line, with marriage in the gens prohibited. The office of sachem, or civil chief, is hereditary in the gens, but elective among its members. They have seven sachems and seven war-chiefs, the Hawk gens being now extinct. The office of sachem passes from brother to brother, or from uncle to nephew; but that of war-chief was bestowed in reward of merit, and was not hereditary. Property was hereditary in the gens, consequently children took nothing from their father; but they inherited their mother’s effects. Where the rule is stated hereafter it will be understood that unmarried as well as married persons are included. Each gens had power to depose as well as elect its chiefs. The Wyandotes have been separated from the Iroquois at least four hundred years; but they still have five gentes in common, although their names have either changed beyond identification, or new names have been substituted by one or the other. The Eries, Neutral Nation, Nottoways, Tutelos, II. Dakotian Tribes. A large number of tribes are included in this great stock of the American aborigines. At the time of their discovery they had fallen into a number of groups, and their language into a number of dialects; but they inhabited, in the main, continuous areas. They occupied the head waters of the Mississippi, and both banks of the Missouri for more than a thousand miles in extent. In all probability the Iroquois, and their cognate tribes, were an offshoot from this stem. 1. Dakotas or Sioux. The Dakotas, consisting at the present time of some twelve independent tribes, have allowed the gentile organization to fall into decadence. It seems substantially certain that they once possessed it because their nearest congeners, the Missouri tribes, are now thus organized. They have societies named after animals analogous to gentes, but the latter are now wanting. Carver, who was among them in 1767, remarks that “every separate body of Indians is divided into bands or tribes; which band or tribe forms a little community with the nation to which it belongs. As the nation has some particular symbol by which it is distinguished from others, so each tribe has a badge from which it is denominated; as that of the eagle, the panther, the tiger, the buffalo, etc. One band of the Naudowissies [Sioux] is represented by a Snake, another a Tortoise, a third a Squirrel, a fourth a Wolf, and a fifth a Buffalo. Throughout every nation they particularize themselves in the same manner, and the meanest person among them will remember his lineal descent, and distinguish himself by his respective family.” Carver also noticed the two grades of chiefs among the 2. Missouri tribes. 1. Punkas. This tribe is composed of eight gentes, as follows:
In this tribe, contrary to the general rule, descent is in the male line, the children belonging to the gens of their father. Intermarriage in the gens is prohibited. The office of sachem is hereditary in the gens, the choice being determined by election; but the sons of a deceased sachem are eligible. It is probable that the change from the archaic form was recent, from the fact that among the Otoes and Missouris, two of the eight Missouri tribes, and also among the Mandans, descent is still in the female line. Property is hereditary in the gens. 2. Omahas. This tribe is composed of the following twelve gentes:
Descent, inheritance, and the law of marriage are the same as among the Punkas. 3. Iowas. In like manner the Iowas have eight gentes, as follows:
A gens of the Beaver PÄ-kuh'-thÄ once existed among the Iowas and Otoes, but it is now extinct. Descent, inheritance, and the prohibition of intermarriage in the gens are the same as among the Punkas. 4. Otoes and Missouris. These tribes have coalesced into one, and have the eight following gentes:
Descent among the Otoes and Missouris is in the female line, the children belonging to the gens of their mother. The office of sachem, and property are hereditary in the gens, in which intermarriage is prohibited. 5. Kaws. The Kaws (Kaw'-za) have the following fourteen gentes:
The Kaws are among the wildest of the American aborigines, but are an intelligent and interesting people. Descent, inheritance and marriage regulations among them are the same as among the Punkas. It will be observed that there are two Eagle gentes, and two of the Deer, which afford a good illustration of the segmentation of a gens; the Eagle gens having probably divided into two and distinguished themselves by 3. Winnebagoes. When discovered this tribe resided near the lake of their name in Wisconsin. An offshoot from the Dakotian stem, they were apparently following the track of the Iroquois eastward to the valley of the St. Lawrence, when their further progress in that direction was arrested by the Algonkin tribes between Lakes Huron and Superior. Their nearest affiliation is with the Missouri tribes. They have eight gentes as follows:
Descent, inheritance, and the law of marriage are the same among them as among the Punkas. It is surprising that so many tribes of this stock should have changed descent from the female line to the male, because when first known the idea of property was substantially undeveloped, or but slightly beyond the germinating stage, and could hardly, as among the Greeks and Romans, have been the operative cause. It is probable that it occurred at a recent period under American and missionary influences. Carver found traces of descent in the female line in 1787 among the Winnebagoes. “Some nations,” he remarks, “when the dignity is hereditary, limit the succession to the female line. On the death of a chief his sisters’ son succeeds him in preference to his own son; and if he 4. Upper Missouri Tribes. 1. Mandans. In intelligence and in the arts of life the Mandans were in advance of all their kindred tribes, for which they were probably indebted to the Minnitarees. They are divided into seven gentes as follows:
Descent is in the female line, with office and property hereditary in the gens. Intermarriage in the gens is not permitted. Descent in the female line among the Mandans would be singular where so many tribes of the same stock have it in the male, were it not in the archaic form from which the other tribes had but recently departed. It affords a strong presumption that it was originally in the female line in all the Dakotian tribes. This information with respect to the Mandans was obtained at the old Mandan Village in the Upper Missouri, in 1862, from Joseph Kip, whose mother was a Mandan woman. He confirmed the fact of descent by naming his mother’s gens, which was also his own. 2. Minnitarees. This tribe and the Upsarokas (Up-sar'-o-kas) or Crows, are subdivisions of an original people. They are doubtful members of this branch of the GanowÁnian family: although from the number of words in their dialects and in those of the Missouri and Dakota tribes which are common, they have been placed with them linguistically. They have had an antecedent experience of which but little is known. Minnitarees carried horticulture, the timber-framed house, and a peculiar religious system into this area which they taught to
Descent is in the female line, intermarriage in the gens is forbidden, and the office of sachem as well as property is hereditary in the gens. The Minnitarees and Mandans now live together in the same village. In personal appearance they are among the finest specimens of the Red Man now living in any part of North America. 3. Upsarokas or Crows. This tribe has the following gentes:
Descent, inheritance and the prohibition of intermarriage in the gens, are the same as among the Minnitarees. Several of the names of the Crow gentes are unusual, and more suggestive of bands than of gentes. For a time I was inclined to discredit them. But the existence of the organization into gentes was clearly established by their rules of descent, and marital usages, and by their laws of inheritance with respect to property. My interpreter when among the Crows was Robert Meldrum, then one of the factors of the American Fur Company, who had lived with the Crows forty years, and was one of their chiefs. He had mastered the language so completely that he thought in it. The following special usages with respect to inheritance The Crows have a custom with respect to marriage, which I have found in at least forty other Indian tribes, which may be mentioned here, because some use will be made of it in a subsequent chapter. If a man marries the eldest daughter in a family he is entitled to all her sisters as additional wives when they attain maturity. He may waive the right, but if he insists, his superior claim would be recognized by her gens. Polygamy is allowed by usage among the American aborigines generally; but it was never prevalent to any considerable extent from the inability of persons to support more than one family. Direct proof of the existence of the custom first mentioned was afforded by Meldrum’s wife, then at the age of twenty-five. She was captured when a child in a foray upon the Blackfeet, and became Meldrum’s captive. He induced his mother-in-law to adopt the child into her gens and family, which made the captive the younger sister of his then wife, and gave him the right to take her as another wife when she reached maturity. He availed himself of this usage of the tribe to make his claim paramount. This usage has a great antiquity in the human family. It is a survival of the old custom of punalua. III. Gulf Tribes. 1. Muscokees or Creeks. The Creek Confederacy consisted of six Tribes; namely, the Creeks, Hitchetes, Yoochees, Ala The Creeks are composed of twenty-two gentes as follows:
The remaining tribes of this confederacy are said to have had the organization into gentes, as the author was informed by the Rev. S. M. Loughridge, who was for many years a missionary among the Creeks, and who furnished the names of the gentes above given. He further stated that descent among the Creeks was in the female line; that the office of sachem and the property of deceased persons were hereditary in the gens, and that intermarriage in the gens was prohibited. At the present time the Creeks are partially civilized with a changed plan of life. They have substituted a political in place of the old social system, so that in a few years all traces of their old gentile institutions will have disappeared. In 1869 they numbered about fifteen thousand, which would give an average of five hundred and fifty persons to the gens. 2. Choctas. Among the Choctas the phratric organization appears in a conspicuous manner, because each phratry is named, and stands out plainly as a phratry. It doubtless existed in a majority of the tribes previously named, but the subject has not been specially investigated. The tribe of the Creeks consists of eight gentes arranged in two phratries, composed of four gentes each, as among the Iroquois.
The gentes of the same phratry could not intermarry; but the members of either of the first gentes could marry into either gens of the second, and vice versÂ. It shows that the Choctas, like the Iroquois, commenced with two gentes, each of which afterwards subdivided into four, and that the original prohibition of intermarriage in the gens had followed the subdivisions. Descent among the Choctas was in the female line. Property and the office of sachem were hereditary in the gens. In 1869 they numbered some twelve thousand, which would give an average of fifteen hundred persons to a gens. The foregoing information was communicated to the author by the late Dr. Cyrus Byington, who entered the missionary service in this tribe in 1820 while they still resided in their ancient territory east of the Mississippi, who removed with them to the Indian Territory, and died in the missionary service about the year 1868, after forty-five years of missionary labors. A man of singular excellence and purity of character, he has left behind him a name and a memory of which humanity may be proud. A Chocta once expressed to Dr. Byington a wish that he might be made a citizen of the United States, for the reason that his children would then inherit his property instead of his gentile kindred under the old law of the gens. Chocta usages would distribute his property after his death among his brothers and sisters and the children of his sisters. He could, however, give his property to his children in his life-time, in which case they could hold it against the members of his gens. Many Indian tribes now have considerable property in domestic animals and in houses and lands owned by individuals, among whom the practice of giving it to their children in their life-time has become common to avoid gentile inheritance. As property increased in quantity the disinheritance of children began to arouse opposition to gentile inheritance; and in some of the tribes, that of the Choctas among the number, the old usage was abolished a few years since, and the right to inherit was vested exclusively in the children of the deceased owner. It came, however, through the substitution of a political system in the place of the gentile system, an elective council and magistracy being substituted in place of the old government of chiefs. Under the previous usages the wife inherited nothing from her husband, nor he from her; but the wife’s effects were divided among her children, and in default of them, among her sisters. 3. Chickasas. In like manner the Chickasas were organized in two phratries, of which the first contains four, and the second eight gentes, as follows:
Descent was in the female line, intermarriage in the gens was prohibited, and property as well as the office of sachem were hereditary in the gens. The above particulars were obtained from the Rev. Charles C. Copeland, an American missionary residing with this tribe. In 1869 they numbered some five thousand, which would give an average of about four hundred persons to the gens. A new gens seems to have been formed after their intercourse with the Spaniards commenced, or this name, for reasons, may have been substituted in the place of an original name. One of the phratries is also called the Spanish. 4. Cherokees. This tribe was anciently composed of ten gentes, of which two, the Acorn, Ah-ne-dsu'-la, and the Bird, Ah-ne-dse'-skwÄ, are now extinct. They are the following:
Descent is in the female line, and intermarriage in the gens prohibited. In 1869 the Cherokees numbered fourteen thousand, which would give an average of seventeen hundred and fifty persons to each gens. This is the largest number, so far as the fact is known, ever found in a single gens among the American aborigines. The Cherokees and Ojibwas at the present time exceed all the remaining Indian tribes within the United States in the number of persons speaking the same dialect. It may be remarked further, that it is not probable that there ever was at any time in any part of North America a hundred thousand Indians who spoke the same dialect. The Aztecs, Tezcucans and Tlascalans were the only tribes of whom so large a number could, with any propriety, be claimed; and with respect to them it is difficult to perceive how the existence of so large a number in either tribe could be established, at the epoch of the Spanish Conquest, upon trustworthy evidence. The unusual numbers of the Creeks and Cherokees is due to the possession of domestic animals and a well-developed field agriculture. They are now partially civilized, having substituted an elective constitutional government in the place of the ancient gentes, under the influence of which the latter are rapidly falling into decadence. 5. Seminoles. This tribe is of Creek descent. They are said to be organized into gentes, but the particulars have not been obtained. IV. Pawnee Tribes. Whether or not the Pawnees are organized in gentes has not been ascertained. Rev. Samuel Allis, who had formerly been a missionary among them, expressed to the author his belief that they were, although he had not investigated the matter
I once met a band of Pawnees on the Missouri, but was unable to obtain an interpreter. The Arickarees, whose village is near that of the Minnitarees, are the nearest congeners of the Pawnees, and the same difficulty occurred with them. These tribes, with the Huecos and some two or three other small tribes residing on the Canadian river, have always lived west of the Missouri, and speak an independent stock language. If the Pawnees are organized in gentes, presumptively the other tribes are the same. V. Algonkin Tribes. At the epoch of their discovery this great stock of the American aborigines occupied the area from the Rocky Mountains to Hudson’s Bay, south of the Siskatchewun, and thence eastward to the Atlantic, including both shores of Lake Superior, except at its head, and both banks of the St. Lawrence below Lake Champlain. Their area extended southward along the Atlantic coast to North Carolina, and down the east bank of the Mississippi in Wisconsin and Illinois to Kentucky. Within the eastern section of this immense region the Iroquois and their affiliated tribes were an intrusive people, their only competitor for supremacy within its boundaries. Gitchigamian
Descent is in the male line, the children belonging to their father’s gens. There are several reasons for the inference that it was originally in the female line, and that the change was comparatively recent. In the first place, the Delawares, who are recognized by all Algonkin tribes as one of the oldest of their lineage, and who are styled “Grandfathers” by all alike, still have descent in the female line. Several other Algonkin tribes have the same. Secondly, evidence still remains that within two or three generations back of the present, descent was in the female line, with respect to the office of chief. Intermarriage in the gens is prohibited, and both property and office are hereditary in the gens. The children, however, at the present time, take the most of it to the exclusion of their gentile kindred. The property and effects of the mother pass to her children, and in default of them, to her sisters, own and collateral. In like manner the son may succeed his father in the office of sachem; but where there are several sons the choice is determined by the elective principle. The gentiles not only elect, but they also retain the power to depose. At the present time the Ojibwas number some sixteen thousand, which would give an average of about seven hundred to each gens. 2. Potawattamies. This tribe has fifteen gentes, as follows:
Descent, inheritance, and the law of marriage are the same as among the Ojibwas. 3. Otawas. 4. Crees. This tribe, when discovered, held the northwest shore of Lake Superior, and spread from thence to Hudson’s Bay, and westward to the Red River of the North. At a later day they occupied the region of the Siskatchewun, and south of it. Like the Dakotas they have lost the gentile organization which presumptively once existed among them. Lin Mississippi Tribes. The western Algonkins, grouped under this name, occupied the eastern banks of the Mississippi in Wisconsin and Illinois, and extended southward into Kentucky, and eastward into Indiana. 1. Miamis. The immediate congeners of the Miamis, namely, the Weas, Piankeshaws, Peorias, and Kaskaskias, known at an early day, collectively, as the Illinois, are now few in numbers, and have abandoned their ancient usages for a settled agricultural life. Whether or not they were formerly organized in gentes has not been ascertained, but it is probable that they were. The Miamis have the following ten gentes:
Under their changed condition and declining numbers the gentile organization is rapidly disappearing. When its decline commenced descent was in the male line, intermarriage in the gens was forbidden, and the office of sachem together with property were hereditary in the gens. 2. Shawnees. This remarkable and highly advanced tribe, one of the highest representatives of the Algonkin stock, still retain their gentes, although they have substituted in place of the old gentile system a civil organization with a first and second head-chief and a council, each elected annually by popular suffrage. They have thirteen gentes, which they still maintain for social and genealogical purposes, as follows:
Descent, inheritance, and the rule with respect to marrying out of the gens are the same as among the Miamis. In 1869 the Shawnees numbered but seven hundred, which would give an average of about fifty persons to the gens. They once numbered three or four thousand persons, which was above the average among the American Indian tribes. The Shawnees had a practice, common also to the Miamis and Sauks and Foxes, of naming children into the gens of the father or of the mother or any other gens, under certain restrictions, which deserves a moment’s notice. It has been shown that among the Iroquois each gens had its own special names for persons which no other gens had a right to use. There are traces of the archaic rule of descent among the Shawnees, of which the following illustration may be given as it was mentioned to the author. LÄ-ho'-weh, a sachem of the Wolf gens, when about to die, expressed a desire that a son of one of his sisters might succeed him in the place of his own son. But his nephew (Kos-kwa'-the) was of the Fish and his son of the Rabbit gens, so that neither could succeed him without first being transferred, by a change of name, to the Wolf gens, in which the office was hereditary. His wish was respected. After his death the name of his nephew was changed to Tep-a-tÄ-go-the', one of the Wolf names, and he was elected to the office. Such laxity indicates a decadence of the gentile organization; but it tends to show that at no remote period descent among the Shawnees was in the female line. 3. Sauks and Foxes. These tribes are consolidated into one, and have the following gentes:
Descent, inheritance, and the rule requiring marriage out of the gens, are the same as among the Miamis. In 1869 they numbered but seven hundred, which would give an average of fifty persons to the gens. The number of gentes still preserved affords some evidence that they were several times more numerous within the previous two centuries. 4. Menominees and Kikapoos. These tribes, which are independent of each other, are organized in gentes, but their names have not been procured. With respect to the Menominees it may be inferred that, until a recent period, descent was in the female line, from the following statement made to the author, in 1859, by Antoine Gookie, a member of this tribe. In answer to a question concerning the rule of inheritance, he replied: “If I should die, my brothers and maternal uncles would rob my wife and children of my property. We now expect that our children will inherit our effects, but there is no certainty Rocky Mountain Tribes. 1. Blood Blackfeet. This tribe is composed of the five following gentes:
Descent is in the male line, but intermarriage in the gens is not allowed. 2. Piegan Blackfeet. This tribe has the eight following gentes:
Descent is in the male line, and intermarriage in the gens is prohibited. Several of the names above given are more appropriate to bands than to gentes; but as the information was obtained from the Blackfeet direct, through competent interpreters, (Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Culbertson, the latter a Blackfeet woman) I believe it reliable. It is possible that nicknames for gentes in some cases may have superseded the original names. Atlantic Tribes. 1. Delawares. As elsewhere stated the Delawares are, in the duration of their separate existence, one of the oldest of the Algonkin tribes. Their home country, when discovered, was the region around and north of Delaware Bay. They are comprised in three gentes, as follows:
These subdivisions are in the nature of phratries, because Descent among the Delawares is in the female line, which renders probable its ancient universality in this form in the Algonkin tribes. The office of sachem was hereditary in the gens, but elective among its members, who had the power both to elect and depose. Property also was hereditary in the gens. Originally the members of the three original gentes could not intermarry in their own gens; but in recent years the prohibition has been confined to the sub-gentes. Those of the same name in the Wolf gens, now partially become a phratry, for example, cannot intermarry, but those of different names marry. The practice of naming children into the gens of their father also Examples of succession in office afford the most satisfactory illustrations of the aboriginal law of descent. A Delaware woman, after stating to the author that she, with her children, belonged to the Wolf gens, and her husband to the Turtle, remarked that when Captain Ketchum (TÄ-whe'-lÄ-na), late head chief or sachem of the Turtle gens, died, he was succeeded by his nephew, John Conner (TÄ-tÄ-ne'-sha), a son of one of the sisters of the deceased sachem, who was also of the Turtle gens. The decedent left a son, but he was of another gens and consequently incapable of succeeding. With the Delawares, as with the Iroquois, the office passed from brother to brother, or from uncle to nephew, because descent was in the female line. 2. Munsees. The Munsees are an offshoot from the Delawares, and have the same gentes, the Wolf, the Turtle and the Turkey. Descent is in the female line, intermarriage in the gens is not permitted, and the office of sachem, as well as property, are hereditary in the gens. 3. Mohegans. All of the New England Indians, south of the river Kennebeck, of whom the Mohegans formed a part, were closely affiliated in language, and could understand each other’s dialects. Since the Mohegans are organized in gentes, there is a presumption that the Pequots, Narragansetts, and other minor bands were not only similarly organized, but had the same gentes. The Mohegans have the same three with the Delawares, the Wolf, the Turtle and the Turkey, each of which is composed of a number of gentes. It proves their immediate connection with the Delawares and Munsees by descent, and also reveals, as elsewhere stated, the process of subdivision by which an original gens breaks up into several, which remain united in a phratry. In this case also it may be seen how the phratry arises naturally under gentile institutions. It is rare among the American aborigines to find preserved the evidence of the segmentation of original gentes as clearly as in the present case. The Mohegan phratries stand out more conspicuously than those of any other tribe of the American aborigines, because they cover the gentes of each, and the phratries must be stated to explain the classification of the gentes; but we know less about them than of those of the Iroquois. They are the following:
Descent is in the female line, intermarriage in the gens is forbidden, and the office of sachem is hereditary in the gens, the office passing either from brother to brother, or from uncle to nephew. Among the Pequots and Narragansetts descent was in the female line, as I learned from a Narragansett woman whom I met in Kansas. 4. Abenakis. The name of this tribe, WÄ-be-na'-kee, signifies “Rising Sun People.”
Descent is now in the male line, intermarriage in the gens was anciently prohibited, but the prohibition has now lost most of its force. The office of sachem was hereditary in the gens. It will be noticed that several of the above gentes are the same as among the Ojibwas. VI. Athapasco-Apache Tribes. Whether or not the Athapascans of Hudson’s Bay Territory, and the Apaches of New Mexico, who are subdivisions of an original stock, are organized in gentes has not been definitely ascertained. When in the former territory, in 1861, I made an effort to determine the question among the Hare and Red Knife Athapascans, but was unsuccessful for want of competent interpreters; and yet it seems probable that if the system existed, traces of it would have been discovered even with imperfect means of inquiry. The late Robert Kennicott made a similar attempt for the author among the A-chÄ'-o-ten-ne, or Slave Lake Athapascans, with no better success. He found special regulations with respect to marriage and the descent of the office of sachem, which seemed to indicate the presence of gentes, but he could not obtain satisfactory information. The Kutchin (Louchoux) of the Yukon river region are Athapascans. In a letter to the author by the late George Gibbs, he remarks: “In a letter which I have from a gentleman at Fort Simpson, Makenzie river, it is mentioned that among the Louchoux or Kutchin there are three grades or classes of society—undoubtedly a mistake for totem, though the totems probably differ in rank, as he goes on to say—that a man does not marry into his own class, but takes a wife from some other; and that a chief from the highest may marry with a woman of the lowest without loss of caste. The children belong to the grade of the mother; and the members of the same grade in the different tribes do not war with each other.” Among the Kolushes of the Northwest Coast, who affiliate linguistically though not closely with the Athapascans, the organization into gentes exists. Mr. Gallatin remarks that they are “like our own Indians, divided into tribes or clans; a distinction of which, according to Mr. Hale, there is no trace among the Indians of Oregon. The names of the tribes [gen VII. Indian Tribes of the Northwest Coast. In some of these tribes, beside the Kolushes, the gentile organization prevails. “Before leaving Puget’s Sound,” observes Mr. Gibbs, in a letter to the author, “I was fortunate enough to meet representatives of three principal families of what we call the Northern Indians, the inhabitants of the Northwest Coast, extending from the Upper end of Vancouver’s Island into the Russian Possessions, and the confines of the Esquimaux. From them I ascertained positively that the totemic system exists at least among these three. The families I speak of are, beginning at the northwest, Tlinkitt, commonly called the Stikeens, after one of their bands; the Tlaidas; and Chimsyans, called by Gallatin, Weas. There are four totems common to these, the Whale, the Wolf, the Eagle, and the Crow. Neither of these can marry into the same totem, although in a different nation or family. What is remarkable is that these nations constitute entirely different families. I mean by this that their languages are essentially different, having no perceptible analogy.” Mr. Dall, in his work on Alaska, written still later, remarks that “the Tlinkets are divided into four totems: the Raven (Yehl), the Wolf (Kanu'kh), the Whale, and the Eagle (Chethl).... Opposite totems only can marry, and the child usually takes the mother’s totem.” Mr. Hubert H. Bancroft presents their organization still more fully, showing two phratries, and the gentes belonging to each. He remarks of the Thlinkeets that the “nation is separated into two great divisions or clans, one of which is called the Wolf and the other the Raven.... The Raven trunk is again divided into sub-clans, called the Frog, the Goose, the Sea-Lion, the Owl, and the Salmon. The Wolf family comprises the Bear, Eagle, Dolphin, Shark, and Alca.... Tribes of the same clan may not war on each other, but at the same time members of The Eskimos do not belong to the GanowÁnian family. Their occupation of the American continent in comparison with that of the latter family was recent or modern. They are also without gentes. VIII. Salish, Sahaptin and Kootenay Tribes. The tribes of the Valley of the Columbia, of whom those above named represent the principal stocks, are without the gentile organization. Our distinguished philologists, Horatio Hale and the late George Gibbs, both of whom devoted special attention to the subject, failed to discover any traces of the system among them. There are strong reasons for believing that this remarkable area was the nursery land of the GanowÁnian family, from which, as the initial point of their migrations, they spread abroad over both divisions of the continent. It seems probable, therefore, that their ancestors possessed the organization into gentes, and that it fell into decay and finally disappeared. IX. Shoshonee Tribes. The Comanches of Texas, together with the Ute tribes, the Bonnaks, the Shoshonees, and some other tribes, belong to this stock. Mathew Walker, a Wyandote half-blood, informed the author, in 1859, that he had lived among the Comanches, and that they had the following gentes:
If the Comanches are organized in gentes, there is a presumption that the other tribes of this stock are the same. This completes our review of the social system of the Indian tribes of North America, north of New Mexico. The greater portion of the tribes named were in the Lower Status of barbarism at the epoch of European discovery, and the remainder in the Upper Status of savagery. From the wide and nearly universal prevalence of the organization into gentes, its ancient universality among them with descent in the female line may with reason be assumed. Their system was purely social, hav X. Village Indians. 1. Moqui Pueblo Indians. The Moqui tribes are still in undisturbed possession of their ancient communal houses, seven in number, near the Little Colorado in Arizona, once a part of New Mexico. They are living under their ancient institutions, and undoubtedly at the present moment fairly represent the type of Village Indian life which prevailed from ZuÑi to Cuzco at the epoch of Discovery. ZuÑi, Acoma, Taos, and several other New Mexican pueblos are the same structures which were found there by Coronado in 1540-1542. Notwithstanding their apparent accessibility we know in reality but little concerning their mode of life or their domestic institutions. No systematic investigation has ever been made. What little information has found its way into print is general and accidental. The Moquis are organized in gentes, of which they have nine, as follows:
Dr. Ten Broeck, Assistant Surgeon, U. S. A., furnished to Mr. Schoolcraft the Moqui legend of their origin which he obtained at one of their villages. They said that “many years ago their Great Mother There are current traditions in many gentes, like that of the Moquis, of the transformation of their first progenitors from the animal, or inanimate object, which became the symbol of the gens, into men and women. Thus, the Crane gens of the Ojibwas have a legend that a pair of cranes flew over the wide area from the Gulf to the Great Lakes and from the prairies of the Mississippi to the Atlantic in quest of a place where subsistence was most abundant, and finally selected the Rapids on the outlet of Lake Superior, since celebrated for its fisheries. Having alighted on the bank of the river and folded their wings the Great Spirit immediately changed them into a man and woman, who became the progenitors of the Crane gens of the Ojibwas. There are a number of gentes in the different tribes who abstain from eating the animal whose name they bear; but this is far from universal. 2. Lagunas. The Laguna Pueblo Indians are organized in gentes, with descent in the female line, as appears from an address of Rev. Samuel Gorman before the Historical Society of New Mexico in 1860. “Each town is classed into tribes or families, and each of these groups is named after some animal, bird, herb, timber, planet, or one of the four elements. In the pueblo of Laguna, which is one of above one thousand inhabitants, there are seventeen of these tribes; some are called bear, some deer, some rattlesnake, some corn, some wolf, some water, etc., etc. The children are of the same tribe as their mother. And, according to ancient custom, two persons of the same tribe are forbidden to marry; but, recently, this custom begins to be less rigorously observed than anciently.” “Their land is held in common, as the property of the community, but after a person cultivates a lot he has a personal claim to it, which he can sell to any one of the same community; or else when he dies it belongs to his widow or daughters; or, if he were a single man, it remains in his father’s family.” 3. Aztecs, Tezcucans and Tlacopans. The question of the organization of these, and the remaining Nahuatlac tribes of Mexico, in gentes will be considered in the next ensuing chapter. 4. Mayas of Yucatan. Herrera makes frequent reference to the “kindred,” and in such a manner with regard to the tribes in Mexico, Central and South America as to imply the existence of a body of persons organized on the basis of consanguinity much more numerous than would be found apart from gentes. Thus: “He that killed a free man was to make satisfaction to the children and kindred.” Herrera remarks further of the Mayas, that “they were wont to observe their pedigrees very much, and therefore thought themselves all related, and were helpful to one another.... They did not marry mothers, or sisters-in-law, nor any that bore the same name as their father, which was looked upon as unlawful.” XI. South American Indian Tribes. Traces of the gens have been found in all parts of South America, as well as the actual presence of the GanowÁnian system of consanguinity, but the subject has not been fully investigated. Speaking of the numerous tribes of the Andes brought by the Incas under a species of confederation, Herrera observes that “this variety of tongues proceeded from the nations being divided into races, tribes, or clans.” To the Village Indians of North and South America, whose indigenous culture had advanced them far into, and near the end of, the Middle Period of barbarism, our attention naturally turns for the transitional history of the gentes. The archaic A glance at the remains of ancient architecture in Central America and Peru sufficiently proves that the Middle Period of barbarism was one of great progress in human development, of growing knowledge, and of expanding intelligence. It was followed by a still more remarkable period in the Eastern hemisphere after the invention of the process of making iron had given that final great impulse to human progress which was to bear a portion of mankind into civilization. Our appreciation of the grandeur of man’s career in the Later Period of barbarism, when inventions and discoveries multiplied with such rapidity, would be intensified by an accurate knowl CHAPTER VII. - THE AZTEC CONFEDERACY.Misconception of Aztec Society.—Condition of Advancement.—Nahuatlac Tribes.—Their Settlement in Mexico.—Pueblo of Mexico founded, A. D., 1325.—Aztec Confederacy Established, A. D., 1426.—Extent of Territorial Domination.—Probable Number of the People.—Whether or not the Aztecs were organized in Gentes and Phratries.—The Council of Chiefs.—Its probable Functions.—Office held by Montezuma.—Elective in Tenure.—Deposition of Montezuma.—Probable Functions of the Office.—Aztec Institutions essentially Democratical—The Government a Military Democracy. The Spanish adventurers, who captured the Pueblo of Mexico, adopted the erroneous theory that the Aztec government was a monarchy, analogous in essential respects to existing monarchies in Europe. This opinion was adopted generally by the early Spanish writers, without investigating minutely the structure and principles of the Aztec social system. A terminology not in agreement with their institutions came in with this misconception which has vitiated the historical narrative nearly as completely as though it were, in the main, a studied fabrication. With the capture of the only stronghold the Aztecs possessed, their governmental fabric was destroyed, Spanish rule was substituted in its place, and the subject of their internal organization and polity was allowed substantially to pass into oblivion. The Aztecs and their confederate tribes were ignorant of iron and consequently without iron tools; they had no money, and traded by barter of commodities; but they worked the native metals, cultivated by irrigation, manufactured coarse fabrics of cotton, constructed joint-tenement houses of adobe-bricks and of stone, and made earthenware of excellent quality. They had, therefore, attained to the Middle Status of barbarism. They still held their lands in common, lived in large households composed of a number of related families; and, as there are strong reasons for believing, practiced communism in living in the household. It is rendered reasonably certain that they had but one prepared meal each day, a dinner; at which they separated, the men eating first and by themselves, and the women and children afterwards. Having neither tables nor chairs for dinner service they had not learned to eat their single daily meal in the manner of civilized nations. These features of their social condition show sufficiently their relative status of advancement. In connection with the Village Indians of other parts of Mexico and Central America, and of Peru, they afforded the best exemplification of this condition of ancient society then existing on the earth. They represented one of the great stages of progress toward civilization in which the institutions derived from a previous ethnical period are seen in higher advancement, and which were to be transmitted, in the course of human experience, to an ethnical condition still higher, and undergo still further development before civilization was possible. But the Village Indians were not destined to attain the Upper Status of barbarism so well represented by the Homeric Greeks. The Indian pueblos in the valley of Mexico revealed to Europeans a lost condition of ancient society, which was so remarkable and peculiar that it aroused at the time an insatiable curiosity. More volumes have been written, in the propor The “kingdom of Mexico” as it stands in the early histories, and the “empire of Mexico” as it appears in the later, is a fiction of the imagination. At the time there was a seeming foundation for describing the government as a monarchy, in the absence of a correct knowledge of their institutions; but the misconception can no longer be defended. That which the Spaniards found was simply a confederacy of three Indian tribes, of which the counterpart existed in all parts of the continent, and they had no occasion in their descriptions to advance a step beyond this single fact. The government was administered by a council of chiefs, with the co-operation of a general commander of the military bands. It was a government of two powers; the civil being represented by the council, and the military by a principal war-chief. Since the institutions of the confederate tribes were essentially democratical, the government may be called a military democracy, if a designation more special than confederacy is required. Three tribes, the Aztecs or Mexicans, the Tezcucans and the Tlacopans, were united in the Aztec confederacy, which gives the two upper members of the organic social series. Whether or not they possessed the first and the second, namely, The Aztecs were one of seven kindred tribes who had migrated from the north and settled in and near the valley of Mexico; and who were among the historical tribes of that country at the epoch of the Spanish Conquest. They called themselves collectively the Nahuatlacs in their traditions. Acosta, who visited Mexico in 1585, and whose work was published at Seville in 1589, has given the current native tradition of their migrations, one after the other, from Aztlan, with their names and places of settlement. He states the order of their arrival as follows: 1. Sochimilcas, “Nation of the Seeds of Flowers,” who settled upon Lake Xochimilco, on the south slope of the valley of Mexico; 2. Chalcas, “People of Mouths,” who came long after the former and settled near them, on Lake Chalco; 3. Tepanecans, “People of the Bridge,” who settled at Azcopozalco, west of Lake Tezcuco, on the western slope of the valley; 4. Culhuas, “A Crooked People,” who settled on the east side of Lake Tezcuco, and were afterwards known as Tezcucans; 5. Tlatluicans, “Men of the Sierra,” who, finding the valley appropriated around the lake, passed over the Sierra southward and settled upon the other side; 6. Tlascalans, “Men of Bread,” who, after living for a time with the Tepanecans, finally settled beyond the valley eastward, at Tlascala; 7. The Aztecs, who came last and occupied the site of the present city of Mexico. This tradition embodies one significant fact of a kind that could not have been invented; namely, that the seven tribes were of immediate common origin, the fact being confirmed by their dialects; and a second fact of importance, that they came from the north. It shows that they were originally one people, who had fallen into seven and more tribes by the natural process of segmentation. Moreover, it was this same fact which rendered the Aztec confederacy possible as well as probable, a common language being the essential basis of such organizations. The Aztecs found the best situations in the valley occupied, and after several changes of position they finally settled upon a small expanse of dry land in the midst of a marsh bordered with fields of pedregal and with natural ponds. Here they founded the celebrated pueblo of Mexico (Tenochtitlan), A. D. 1325, according to Clavigero, one hundred and ninety-six years prior to the Spanish Conquest. At the epoch of the Spanish Conquest five of the seven tribes, namely, the Aztecs, Tezcucans, Tlacopans, Sochimilcas, and Chalcans resided in the valley, which was an area of quite limited dimensions, about equal to the state of Rhode Island. It was a mountain or upland basin having no outlet, oval in form, being longest from north to south, one hundred and twenty miles in circuit, and embracing about sixteen hundred square miles excluding the surface covered by water. The valley, as described, is surrounded by a series of hills, one range rising above another with depressions between, encompassing the valley with a mountain barrier. The tribes named resided in some thirty pueblos, more or less, of which that of Mexico was the largest. There is no evidence that any considerable portion of these tribes had colonized outside of the valley and the adjacent hill-slopes; but, on the contrary, there is abundant evidence that the remainder of modern Mexico was then occupied by numerous tribes who spoke languages different from the Nahuatlac, and the majority of whom were independent. The Tlascalans, the Cholulans, a supposed subdivision of the former, the Tepeacas, the Huexotzincos, the Meztitlans, a supposed subdivision of the Tezcucans, and the Tlatluicans were the remaining Nahuatlac tribes living without the valley of Mexico, all of whom were independent excepting the last, and the Tepeacas. A large number of other tribes, forming some seventeen territorial groups, more or less, and speaking as many stock languages, held the remainder of Mexico. They present, in their state of disintegration and independence, a nearly exact repetition of the tribes of the United States and British America, at the time of their discovery, a century or more later. Prior to A. D. 1426, when the Aztec confederacy was formed, very little had occurred in the affairs of the valley tribes of historical importance. They were disunited and belligerent, and without influence beyond their immediate localities. About this time the superior position of the Aztecs began to manifest its results in a preponderance of numbers and of strength. Under their war-chief, Itzcoatl, the previous supremacy of the Tezcucans and Tlacopans was overthrown, and a league or confederacy was established as a consequence of their previous wars against each other. It was an alliance between the three tribes, offensive and defensive, with stipulations for the division among them, in certain proportions, of the spoils, and the after tributes of subjugated tribes. The plan of organization of this confederacy has been lost. From the absence of particulars it is now difficult to determine whether it was simply a league to be continued or dissolved at pleasure; or a consolidated organization, like that of the Iroquois, in which the parts were adjusted to each other in permanent and definite relations. Each tribe was independent in whatever related to local self-government; but the three were externally one people in whatever related to aggression or defense. While each tribe had its own council of chiefs, and its own head war-chief, the war-chief of the Aztecs was the commander-in-chief of the confederate bands. This may be inferred from the fact that the Tezcucans and Tlacopans had a voice either in the election or in the confirmation of the Aztec war-chief. The acquisition of the chief command by the Aztecs tends to show that their influence predominated in establishing the terms upon which the tribes confederated. Nezahualcojotl had been deposed, or at least dispossessed of his office, as principal war-chief of the Tezcucans, to which he was at this time (1426) restored by Aztec procurement. The event may be taken as the elate of the formation of the confederacy or league whichever it was. Before discussing the limited number of facts which tend to illustrate the character of this organization, a brief reference should be made to what the confederacy accomplished in acquiring territorial domination during the short period of its existence. From A. D. 1426 to 1520, a period of ninety-four years, the confederacy was engaged in frequent wars with adjacent tribes, and particularly with the feeble Village Indians southward from the valley of Mexico to the Pacific, and thence eastward well toward Guatemala. They began with those nearest in position whom they overcame, through superior numbers and concentrated action, and subjected to tribute. The villages in this area were numerous but small, consisting in many cases of a single large structure of adobe-brick or of stone, and in some cases of several such structures grouped together. These joint-tenement houses interposed serious hinderances to Aztec conquest, but they did not prove insuperable. These forays were continued from time to time for the avowed object of gathering spoil, imposing tribute, and capturing prisoners for sacrifice; No attempt was made to incorporate these tribes in the Aztec confederacy, which the barrier of language rendered This is about all that can now be discovered of the material basis of the so-called kingdom or empire of the Aztecs. The confederacy was confronted by hostile and independent tribes on the west, northwest, northeast, east, and southeast sides: as witness, the Mechoacans on the west, the Otomies on the northwest, (scattered bands of the Otomies near the valley had been placed under tribute), the Chichimecs or wild tribes north of the Otomies, the Meztitlans on the northeast, the Tlascalans on the east, the Cholulans and Huexotzincos on the southeast, A few words seem to be necessary concerning the population of the valley and of the pueblo of Mexico. No means exist for ascertaining the number of the people in the five Nahuatlac tribes who inhabited the valley. Any estimate must be conjectural. As a conjecture then, based upon what is known of their horticulture, their means of subsistence, their institutions, their limited area, and not forgetting the tribute they received, two hundred and fifty thousand persons in the aggregate would probably be an excessive estimate. It would give about a hundred and sixty persons to the square mile, equal to nearly twice the present average population of the state of New York, and about equal to the average population of Rhode Island. It is difficult to perceive what sufficient reason can be assigned for so large a number of inhabitants in all the villages within the valley, said to have been from thirty to forty. Those who claim a higher number will be bound to show how a barbarous people, without flocks and herds, and without field agriculture, could have sustained in equal areas a larger number of inhabitants than a civilized people can now maintain armed with these advantages. It cannot be shown for the simple reason that it could not have been true. Out of this population thirty thousand may, perhaps, be assigned to the pueblo of Mexico. It will be unnecessary to discuss the position and relations of the valley tribes beyond the suggestions made. The Aztec monarchy should be dismissed from American aboriginal history, not only as delusive, but as a misrepresentation of the Indians, who had neither developed nor invented monarchical institutions. The government they formed was a confederacy of tribes, and nothing more; and probably not equal in plan and symmetry with that of the Iroquois. In dealing with this organization, War-chief, Sachem, and Chief will be sufficient to distinguish their official persons. The pueblo of Mexico was the largest in America. Romantically situated in the midst of an artificial lake, its large joint-tenement houses plastered over with gypsum, which made them a brilliant white, and approached by causeways, it presented to the Spaniards, in the distance, a striking and enchanting spectacle. It was a revelation of an ancient society lying two ethnical periods back of European society, and eminently calculated, from its orderly plan of life, to awaken curiosity and inspire enthusiasm. A certain amount of extravagance of opinion was unavoidable. A few particulars have been named tending to show the extent of Aztec advancement to which some others may now be added. Ornamental gardens were found, magazines of weapons and of military costumes, improved apparel, manufactured fabrics of cotton of superior workmanship, improved implements and utensils, and an increased variety of food; picture-writing, used chiefly to indicate the tribute in kind each subjugated village was to pay; a calendar for measuring time, and open markets for the barter of commodities. Administrative offices had been created to meet the demands of a growing municipal life; a priesthood, with a temple worship and a ritual including human sacrifices, had been established. The office of head war-chief had also risen into increased importance. These, and other circumstances of their condition, not necessary to be detailed, imply a corresponding development of their institutions. Such are some of the differences between the Lower and the Middle Status of barbarism, as illustrated by the relative conditions of the Iroquois and the Aztecs, both having doubtless the same original institutions. With these preliminary suggestions made, the three most important and most difficult questions with respect to the Aztec social system, remain to be considered. They relate first, to the existence of Gentes and Phratries; second, the existence and functions of the Council of Chiefs; and, third, the existence and functions of the office of General Military Commander, held by Montezuma. I. The Existence of Gentes and Phratries. It may seem singular that the early Spanish writers did not discover the Aztec gentes, if in fact they existed; but the case was nearly the same with the Iroquois under the observation of our own people more than two hundred years. The existence among them of clans, named after animals, was pointed out at an early day, but without suspecting that it was the unit of a social system upon which both the tribe and the confederacy rested. There is a large amount of indirect and fragmentary evidence in the Spanish writers pointing both to the gens and the phratry, some of which will now be considered. Reference has been made to the frequent use of the term “kindred” by Herrera, showing that groups of persons were noticed who were bound together by affinities of blood. This, from the size of the group, The pueblo of Mexico was divided geographically into four quarters, each of which was occupied by a lineage, a body of people more nearly related by consanguinity among themselves than they were to the inhabitants of the other quarters. Presumptively, each lineage was a phratry. Each quarter was again subdivided, and each local subdivision was occupied by a community of persons bound together by some common tie. Their military organization was based upon these social di An inference of the existence of Aztec gentes arises also from their land tenure. Clavigero remarks that “the lands which were called Altepetlalli [altepetl = pueblo] that is, those of the communities of cities and villages, were divided into as many parts as there were districts in a city, and every district possessed its own part entirely distinct from, and independent of every other. These lands could not be alienated by any means whatever.” The sachem had no title whatever to the lands, and therefore none to transmit to any one. He was thought to be the proprietor because he held an office which was perpetually maintained, and because there was a body of lands perpetually belonging to a gens over which he was a sachem. The misconception of this office and of its tenure has been the fruitful source of unnumbered errors in our aboriginal histories. The lineage of Herrera, and the communities of Clavigero were evidently organizations, and the same organization. They found in this body of kindred, without knowing the fact, the unit of their social system—a gens, as we must suppose. Indian chiefs are described as lords by Spanish writers, and invested with rights over lands and over persons they never possessed. It is a misconception to style an Indian chief a lord in the European sense, because it implies a condition of society that did not exist. A lord holds a rank and a title by hereditary right, secured to him by special legislation in derogation of the rights of the people as a whole. To this rank and title, since the overthrow of feudalism, no duties are attached which may be claimed by the king or the kingdom as a matter of right. On the contrary, an Indian chief holds an office, not by hereditary right, but by election from a constituency, which retained the right to depose him for cause. The office carried with it the obligation to perform certain duties for the benefit of the constituency. He had no authority over the persons or property or lands of the members of the gens. It is thus seen that no analogy exists between a lord and his title, and an Indian chief and his office. One belongs to political society, and represents an aggression of the few upon the many; while the other belongs to gentile society and is founded upon the common interests of the members of the gens. Unequal privileges find no place in the gens, phratry or tribe. Further traces of the existence of Aztec gentes will appear. A prima facie case of the existence of gentes among them is at least made out. There was also an antecedent probability to this effect, from the presence of the two upper members of the organic series, the tribe, and the confederacy, and from the general prevalence of the organization among other tribes. A The usages regulating the inheritance of property among the Aztecs have come down to us in a confused and contradictory condition. They are not material in this discussion, except as they reveal the existence of bodies of consanguinei, and the inheritance by children from their fathers. If the latter were the fact it would show that descent was in the male line, and also an extraordinary advance in a knowledge of property. It is not probable that children enjoyed an exclusive inheritance, or that any Aztec owned a foot of land which he could call his own, with power to sell and convey to whomsoever he pleased. II. The Existence and Functions of the Council of Chiefs. The existence of such a council among the Aztecs might have been predicted from the necessary constitution of Indian society. Theoretically, it would have been composed of that class of chiefs, distinguished as sachems, who represented bodies of kindred through an office perpetually maintained. Here again, as elsewhere, a necessity is seen for gentes, whose principal chiefs would represent the people in their ultimate social subdivisions as among the Northern tribes. Aztec gentes are fairly necessary to explain the existence of Aztec chiefs. Of the presence of an Aztec council there is no doubt whatever; but of the number of its members and of its functions we are left in almost total ignorance. Brasseur de Bourbourg remarks generally that “nearly all the towns or tribes are divided into four clans or quarters whose chiefs constitute the great council.” In the current histories this council is treated as an advisory board of Montezuma’s, as a council of ministers of his own creation; thus Clavigero: “In the history of the conquest we shall find Montezuma in frequent deliberation with his council on the pretensions of the Spaniards. We do not know the number of each council, nor do historians furnish us with the lights necessary to illustrate such a subject.” Upper Status of savagery through the three sub-periods of barbarism to the commencement of civilization, when, having been changed into a preconsidering council with the rise of the assembly of the people, it gave birth to the modern legislature in two bodies. It does not appear that there was a general council of the Aztec confederacy, composed of the principal chiefs of the three tribes, as distinguished from the separate councils of each. A complete elucidation of this subject is required before it can be known whether the Aztec organization was simply a league, offensive and defensive, and as such under the primary control of the Aztec tribe, or a confederacy in which the parts were integrated in a symmetrical whole. This problem must await future solution. III. The Tenure and Functions of the Office of Principal War-chief. The name of the office held by Montezuma, according to the best accessible information, was simply Teuctli, which signifies a war-chief. As a member of the council of chiefs he was sometimes called Tlatoani, which signifies speaker. This office of a general military commander was the highest known to the Aztecs. It was the same office and held by the same tenure as that of principal war-chief in the Iroquois confederacy. It made the person, ex officio, a member of the council of chiefs, as may be inferred from the fact that in some of the tribes the principal war-chief had precedence in the council both in debate and in pronouncing his opinion. Clavigero recognizes this office in several Nahuatlac tribes, but never applies it to the Aztec war-chief. “The highest rank of nobility in Tlascala, in Huexotzinco and in Cholula was that of Teuctli. To obtain this rank it was necessary to be of noble birth, to have given proofs in several battles of the utmost courage, to have arrived at a certain age, and to command great riches for the enormous expenses which were necessary to be supported by the possessor of such a dignity.” The Spanish writers concur generally in the statement that the office held by Montezuma was elective, with the choice confined to a particular family. The office was found to pass from brother to brother, or from uncle to nephew. They were unable, however, to explain why it did not in some cases pass from father to son. Since the mode of succession was unusual to the Spaniards there was less possibility of a mistake with regard to the principal fact. Moreover, two successions occurred under the immediate notice of the conquerors. Montezuma was succeeded by Cuitlahua. In this case the office passed from brother to brother, although we cannot know whether they were own or collateral brothers without a knowledge of their system of consanguinity. Upon the death of the latter Guatemozin was elected to succeed him. Here the office passed from uncle to nephew, but we do not know whether he was an own or a collateral nephew. (See Part Third, ch. iii.) In previous cases the office had passed from brother to brother and also from uncle to nephew. It may therefore be suggested, as a probable explanation, that the office held by Montezuma was hereditary in a gens (the eagle was the blazon or totem on the house occupied by Montezuma), by the members of which the choice was made from among their number; that their nomination was then submitted separately to the four lineages or divisions of the Aztecs (conjectured to be phratries), for acceptance or rejection; and also to the Tezcucans and Tlacopans, who were directly interested in the selection of the general commander. When they had severally considered and confirmed the nomination each division appointed a person to signify their concurrence; whence the six miscalled electors. It is not unlikely that the four high chiefs of the Aztecs, mentioned as electors by a number of authors, were in fact the war-chiefs of the four divisions of the Aztecs, like the four war-chiefs of the four lineages of the Tlascalans. The function of these persons was not to elect, but to ascertain by a conference with each other whether the choice made by the gens had been concurred in, and if so to announce the result. The foregoing is submitted as a conjectural explanation, upon the fragments of evidence remaining, of the mode of succession to the Aztec office of principal war-chief. It is seen to harmonize with Indian usages, and with the theory of the office of an elective Indian chief. The right to depose from office follows as a necessary consequence of the right to elect, where the term was for life. It is thus turned into an office during good behavior. In these two Respecting the functions of this office very little satisfactory information can be derived from the Spanish writers. There is no reason for supposing that Montezuma possessed any power over the civil affairs of the Aztecs. Moreover, every presumption is against it. In military affairs when in the field he had the powers of a general; but military movements were probably decided upon by the council. It is an interesting fact to be noticed that the functions of a priest were attached to the office of principal war-chief, and, as it is claimed, those of a judge. The tenure of the office of principal war-chief and the presence of a council with power to depose from office, tend to show that the institutions of the Aztecs were essentially democratical. The elective principle with respect to war-chief, and which we must suppose existed with respect to sachem and chief, and the presence of a council of chiefs, determine the material fact. A pure democracy of the Athenian type was unknown in the Lower, in the Middle, or even in the Upper Theoretically, the Aztecs, Tezcucans and Tlacopans should severally have had a head-sachem to represent the tribe in civil affairs when the council of chiefs was not in session, and to take the initiative in preparing its work. There are traces of such an officer among the Aztecs in the Ziahuacatl, who is sometimes called the second chief, as the war-chief is called the first. But the accessible information respecting this office is too limited to warrant a discussion of the subject. It has been shown among the Iroquois that the warriors could appear before the council of chiefs and express their views upon public questions; and that the women could do the same through orators of their own selection. This popular participation in the government led in time to the popular assembly, with power to adopt or reject public measures submitted to them by the council. Among the Village Indians there is no evidence, so far as the author is aware, that there was an assembly of the people to consider public questions with power to act upon them. The four lineages probably met for special objects, but this was very different from a general assembly for public objects. From the democratic character of their institutions and their advanced condition the Aztecs were drawing near the time when the assembly of the people might be expected to appear. The growth of the idea of government among the American aborigines, as elsewhere remarked, commenced with the gens and ended with the confederacy. Their organizations were social and not political. Until the idea of property had advanced very far beyond the point they had attained, the substitution of political for gentile society was impossible. There is not a fact to show that any portion of the aborigines, at least in North America, had reached any conception of the second great plan of government founded upon territory and upon property. The spirit of the government and the condition of the people harmonize with the institutions under which they live. When the military spirit predominates, as it did among the Aztecs, a military democracy rises naturally under gentile institutions. Such a government neither supplants the free spirit of the gentes, nor weakens the principles of democracy, but accords with them harmoniously. CHAPTER VIII. - THE GRECIAN GENS.Early condition of Grecian Tribes.—Organized into Gentes.—Changes in the Character of the Gens.—Necessity for a Political System.—Problem to be Solved.—The Formation of a State.—Grote’s Description of the Grecian Gentes.—Of Their Phratries and Tribes.—Attributes of the Gens.—Similar to those of the Iroquois Gentes.—The Office of Chief of the Gens.—Whether Elective or Hereditary.—The Gens the Basis of the Social System.—Antiquity of the Gentile Lineage.—Inheritance of Property.—Archaic and Final Rule.—Relationships between the Members of a Gens.—The Gens the Centre of Social and Religious Influence. Civilization may be said to have commenced among the Asiatic Greeks with the composition of the Homeric poems about 850 B. C.; and among the European Greeks about a century later with the composition of the Hesiodic poems. Anterior to these epochs, there was a period of several thousand years during which the Hellenic tribes were advancing through the Later Period of barbarism, and preparing for their entrance upon a civilized career. Their most ancient traditions find them already established in the Grecian peninsula, upon the eastern border of the Mediterranean, and upon the intermediate and adjacent islands. An older branch of the same stock, of which the Pelasgians were the chief representatives, had preceded them in the occupation of the greater part of these areas, and were in time either Hellenized by them, or forced into emigration. The anterior condition of the Hellenic tribes and of their predecessors, must be deduced from the arts and Pelasgians and Hellenes alike were organized in gentes, phratries The Hellenes in general were in fragmentary tribes, presenting the same characteristics in their form of government as the barbarous tribes in general, when organized in gentes and in the same stage of advancement. Their condition was precisely such as might have been predicted would exist under gentile institutions, and therefore presents nothing remarkable. When Grecian society came for the first time under historical observation, about the first Olympiad (776 B. C.) and down to the legislation of Cleisthenes (509 B. C.), it was Several centuries elapsed, after the first attempts were made to found the new political system, before the problem was solved. After experience had demonstrated that the gentes were incapable of forming the basis of a state, several distinct schemes of legislation were tried in the various Grecian communities, who copied more or less each other’s experiments, all tending to the same result. Among the Athenians, from whose experience the chief illustrations will be drawn, may be mentioned the legislation of Theseus, on the authority of tradition; that of Draco (624 B. C.); that of Solon (594 B. C.); and that of Cleisthenes (509 B. C.), the last three of which were within the historical period. The development of municipal life and institutions, the aggregation of wealth in walled cities, and the great changes in the mode of life thereby produced, prepared the way for the overthrow of gentile society, and for the establishment of political society in its place. Before attempting to trace the transition from gentile into political society, with which the closing history of the gentes is identified, the Grecian gens and its attributes will be first considered. Athenian institutions are typical of Grecian institutions in general, in whatever relates to the constitution of the gens and tribe, down to the end of ancient society among them. At In all cases the Grecian tribe presupposes the gentes, the bond of kin and of dialect forming the basis upon which they united in a tribe; but the tribe did not presuppose the phratry, which, as an intermediate organization, although very common among all these tribes, was liable to be intermitted. At Sparta, there were subdivisions of the tribes called obÊs (?a?), each tribe containing ten, which were analogous to phratries; but concerning the functions of these organizations some uncertainty prevails. The Athenian gentes will now be considered as they appeared in their ultimate form and in full vitality; but with the The social system of the Athenians exhibits the following series: first, the gens (?????) founded upon kin; second, the phratry (f??t?a and f?at??a), a brotherhood of gentes derived by segmentation, probably, from an original gens; third, the tribe (f????, later f???), composed of several phratries, the members of which spoke the same dialect; and fourth, a people or nation, composed of several tribes united by coalescence into one gentile society, and occupying the same territory. These integral and ascending organizations exhausted their social system under the gentes, excepting the confederacy of tribes occupying independent territories, which, although it occurred in some instances in the early period and sprang naturally out of gentile institutions, led to no important results. It is likely that the four Athenian tribes confederated before they coalesced, the last occurring after they had collected in one territory under pressure from other tribes. If true of them, it would be equally true of the Dorian and other tribes. When such tribes coalesced into a nation, there was no term in the language to express the result, beyond a national name. The Romans, under very similar institutions, styled themselves the Populus Romanus, which expressed the fact exactly. They were then simply a people, and nothing more; which was all that could result from an aggregation of gentes, curiÆ and tribes. The four Athenian tribes formed a society or people, which became completely autonomous in the legendary period under the name of the Athenians. Throughout the early Grecian communities, the gens phratry and tribe were constant phenomena of their social systems, with the occasional absence of the phratry. Mr. Grote has collected the principal facts with respect to the Grecian gentes with such critical ability that they cannot The similarities between the Grecian and the Iroquois gens will at once be recognized. Differences in characteristics will also be perceived, growing out of the more advanced condition of Grecian society, and a fuller development of their religious system. It will not be necessary to verify the existence of the several attributes of the gens named by Mr. Grote, as the proof is plain in the classical authorities. There were other characteristics which doubtless pertained to the Grecian gens, although it may be difficult to establish the existence of all of them; such as: 7. The limitation of descent to the male line; 8. The prohibition of intermarriage in the gens excepting in the case of heiresses; 9. The right of adopting strangers into the gens; and 10. The right of electing and deposing its chiefs. The rights, privileges and obligations of the members of the Grecian gens may be recapitulated, with the additions named, as follows:
A brief reference to the added characteristics should be made. 7. The limitation of descent to the male line. There is no doubt that such was the rule, because it is proved by their genealogies. I have not been able to find in any Greek author a definition of a gens or of a gentilis that would furnish a sufficient test of the right of a given person to the gentile connection. Cicero, Varro and Festus have defined the Roman gens and gentilis, which were strictly analogous to the Grecian, with sufficient fullness to show that descent was in the male line. From the nature of the gens, descent was either in the female line or the male, and included but a moiety of the descendants of the founder. It is precisely like the family among ourselves. Those who are descended from the males bear the family name, and they constitute a gens in the full sense of the term, but in a state of dispersion, and without any bond of union excepting those nearest in degree. The females lose, with their marriage, the family name, and with their children are transferred to another family. Grote remarks that Aristotle was the “son of the physician Nikomachus who belonged to the gens of the Asklepiads.” 8. The obligation not to marry in the gens excepting in specified cases. This obligation may be deduced from the consequences of marriage. The wife by her marriage lost the religious rites of her gens, and acquired those of her husband’s gens. The rule is stated as so general as to imply that marriage was usually out of the gens. “The virgin who quits her father’s house,” Wachsmuth remarks, “is no longer a sharer of the paternal sacrificial hearth, but enters the religious communion of her husband, and this gave sanctity to the marriage tie.” The prohibition of intermarriage in the gens was fundamental in the archaic period; and it undoubtedly remained after descent was changed to the male line, with the exception of heiresses and female orphans for whose case special provision was made. Although a tendency to free marriage, beyond certain degrees of consanguinity, would follow the complete establishment of the monogamian family, the rule requiring persons to marry out of their own gens would be apt to remain so long as the gens was the basis of the social system. The special provision in respect to heiresses tends to confirm this supposition. Becker remarks upon this question, that “rela 9. The right to adopt strangers into the gens. This right was practiced at a later day, at least in families; but it was done with public formalities, and was doubtless limited to special cases. 10. The right to elect and depose its chiefs. This right undoubtedly existed in the Grecian gentes in the early period. Presumptively it was possessed by them while in the Upper Status of barbarism. Each gens had its archon (?????), which was the common name for a chief. Whether the office was elective, for example, in the Homeric period, or was transmitted by hereditary right to the eldest son, is a question. The latter was not the ancient theory of the office; and a change so great and radical, affecting the independence and personal rights of all the members of the gens, requires positive proof to override the presumption against it. Hereditary right to an office, carrying with it authority over, and obligations from, the members of a gens is a very different thing from an office bestowed by a free election, with the reserved power to depose for unworthy behavior. The free spirit of the Athenian gentes down to the time of Solon and Cleisthenes forbids the supposition, as to them, that they had parted with a right so vital to the independence of the members of the gens. I have not been able to find any satisfactory explanation of the tenure of this office. Hereditary succession, if it existed, would indicate a remarkable development of the aristocratical element in ancient society, in derogation of the democratical constitution of the gentes. Moreover, it would be a sign of the commencement, at least, of their decadence. All the members of a gens were free and equal, the rich and the poor enjoying equal Whether the higher offices of anax, koiranos, and basileus were transmitted by hereditary right from father to son, or were elective or confirmative by a larger constituency, is also a question. It will be considered elsewhere. The former would indicate the subversion, as the latter the conservation, of gentile institutions. Without decisive evidence to the contrary every presumption is adverse to hereditary right. Some additional light will be gained on this subject when the Roman gentes are considered. A careful re-investigation of the tenure of this office would, not unlikely, modify essentially the received accounts. It may be considered substantially assured that the Grecian gentes possessed the ten principal attributes named. All save three, namely, descent in the male line, marrying into the gens in the case of heiresses, and the possible transmission of the highest military office by hereditary right, are found with slight variations in the gentes of the Iroquois. It is thus rendered apparent that in the gentes, both the Grecian and the Iroquois tribes possessed the same original institution, the one having the gens in its later, and the other in its archaic form. Recurring now to the quotation from Mr. Grote, it may be remarked that had he been familiar with the archaic form of the gens, and with the several forms of the family anterior to the monogamian, he would probably have modified essentially some portion of his statement. An exception must be taken to his position that the basis of the social system of the Greeks “was the house, hearth, or family.” The form of the family in the mind of the distinguished historian was evidently the Roman, under the iron-clad rule of a pater familias, to which the Grecian family of the Homeric period approximated in the complete domination of the father over the household. It would have been equally untenable had other and anterior The question here raised is important, since not only Mr. Grote, but also Niebuhr, Thirlwall, Maine, Mommsen, and many other able and acute investigators have taken the same position with respect to the monogamian family of the patriarchal type as the integer around which society integrated in the Grecian and Roman systems. Nothing whatever was based upon the family in any of its forms, because it was incapable of entering a gens as a whole. The gens was homogeneous and to a great extent permanent in duration, and as such, the natural basis of a social system. A family of the monogamian type might have become individualized and powerful in a gens, and in society at large; but the gens nevertheless did not and could not recognize or depend upon the family as an integer of itself. The same remarks are equally true with respect to the modern family and political society. Although individualized by property rights and privileges, and recognized as a legal entity by statutory enactment, the family is not the unit of the political system. The state recognizes the counties of which it is composed, the county its townships, but the township takes no note of the family; so the nation recognized its tribes, the tribes its phratries, and the phratries its gentes; but the gens took no note of the family. In dealing There are a number of valuable observations by Mr. Grote, upon the Grecian gentes, which I desire to incorporate as an exposition of them; although these observations seem to imply that they are no older than the then existing mythology, or hierarchy of the gods from the members of which some of the gentes claimed to have derived their eponymous ancestor. In the light of the facts presented, the gentes are seen to have existed long before this mythology was developed—before Jupiter or Neptune, Mars or Venus were conceived in the human mind. Mr. Grote proceeds: “Thus stood the primitive religious and social union of the population of Attica in its gradually ascending scale—as distinguished from the political union, probably of later introduction, represented at first by the trittyes and naukraries, and in after times by the ten Kleisthenean tribes, subdivided into trittyes and demes. The religious and family bond of aggregation is the earlier of the two; but the political bond, though beginning later, will be found to acquire constantly increasing influence throughout the greater part of this history. In the former, personal relation is the essential and predominant characteristic—local relation being subordinate: in the latter, property and residence become the chief considerations, and the personal element counts only as measured along with these accompaniments. All these phratric and gentile associations, the larger as well as the smaller, were founded upon the same principles and tendencies of the Grecian mind—a coalescence of the idea of worship with that of ancestry, or of communion in certain special religious rites with communion of blood, real or supposed. The god or hero, to whom the assembled members offered their sacrifices, was conceived as the primitive ancestor to whom they owed their origin; often through a long list of intermediate names, as in the case of the Milesian HekatÆus, so often before referred to. Each family had its own sacred rites and funeral “The gentes both at Athens, and in other parts of Greece, bore a patronymic name, the stamp of their believed common paternity. Mr. Grote speaks of the gens as an extension of the family, and as presupposing its existence; treating the family as primary and the gens as secondary. This view, for the reasons stated, is untenable. The two organizations proceed upon different principles and are independent of each other. The gens embraces a part only of the descendants of a supposed common ancestor, and excludes the remainder; it also embraces a part only of a family, and excludes the remainder. In order to be a constituent of the gens, the family should enter entire within its folds, which was impossible in the archaic period, and constructive only in the later. In the organization of gentile society the gens is primary, forming both the basis and the unit of the system. The family also is primary, and older than the gens; the punaluan and the consanguine families having pre The gens existed in the Aryan family when the Latin, Grecian and Sanskrit speaking tribes were one people, as is shown by the presence in their dialects of the same term (gens, [????? Greek: genos], and ganas) to express the organization. They derived it from their barbarous ancestors, and more remotely from their savage progenitors. If the Aryan family became differentiated as early as the Middle Period of barbarism, which seems probable, the gens must have been transmitted to them in its archaic form. After that event, and during the long periods of time which elapsed between the separation of these tribes from each other and the commencement of civilization, those changes in the constitution of the gens, which have been noticed hypothetically, must have occurred. It is impossible to conceive of the gens as appearing, for the first time, in any other than its archaic form; consequently the Grecian gens must have been originally in this form. If, then, causes can be found adequate to account for so great a change of descent as that from the female line to the male, the argument will be complete, although in the end it substituted a new body of kindred in the gens in place of the old. The growth of the idea of property, and the rise of monogamy, furnished motives sufficiently powerful to demand and obtain this change in order to bring children into the gens of their father, and into a participation in the inheritance of his estate. Monogamy assured the paternity of children, which was unknown when the gens was instituted, and the exclusion of children from the inheritance was no longer possible. In the face of the new circumstances, the gens would be forced into reconstruction or dissolution. When the gens of the Iroquois, as it appeared in the Lower Status of barbarism, is placed beside the gens of the Grecian tribes as it appeared in the Upper Status, it is impossible not to perceive that they are the same organization, the one in its archaic and the other in its ultimate form. The differences between them are precisely those which would have been forced upon the gens by the exigencies of human progress. Along with these mutations in the constitution of the gens How nearly the members of a gens were related, or whether they were related at all, has been made a question. Mr. Grote remarked that “Pollux informs us distinctly that the members of the same gens at Athens were not commonly related by blood,—and even without any express testimony we might have concluded such to be the fact. To what extent the gens, at the unknown epoch of its formation was based upon actual relationship, we have no means of determining, either with regard to the Athenian or the Roman gentes, which were in the main points analogous. Gentilism is a tie by itself; distinct from the family ties, but presupposing their existence and extending them by an artificial analogy, partly founded in religious belief, and partly on positive compact, so as to comprehend strangers in blood. All the members of one gens, or even of one phratry, believed themselves to be sprung, not indeed from the same grandfather or great-grandfather, but from the same divine or heroic ancestor.... And this fundamental belief, into which the Greek mind passed with so much facility, was adopted and converted by positive compact into the gentile and phratric principle of union.... Doubtless Niebuhr, in his valuable discussion of the ancient Roman gentes, is right in supposing that they were not real families, procreated from any common his The several statements of Pollux, Niebuhr and Grote are true in a certain sense, but not absolutely so. The lineage of a gens ran back of the acknowledged ancestor, and therefore the gens of ancient date could not have had a known progenitor; neither could the fact of a blood connection be proved by their system of consanguinity; nevertheless the gentiles not only believed in their common descent, but were justified in so believing. The system of consanguinity which pertained to the gens in its archaic form, and which the Greeks probably once possessed, preserved a knowledge of the relationships of all the members of a gens to each other. This fell into desuetude with the rise of the monogamian family, as I shall endeavor elsewhere to show. The gentile name created a pedigree beside which that of a family was insignificant. It was the function of this name to preserve the fact of the common descent of those who bore it; but the lineage of the gens was so ancient that its members could not prove the actual relation As the unit of the organic social system, the gens would naturally become the centre of social life and activity. It was organized as a social body, with its archon or chief, and treasurer; having common lands to some extent, a common burial place, and common religious rites. Beside these were the rights, privileges and obligations which the gens conferred and imposed upon all its members. It was in the gens that the religious activity of the Greeks originated, which expanded over the phratries, and culminated in periodical festivals common to all the tribes. This subject has been admirably treated by M. De Coulanges in his recent work on “The Ancient City.” In order to understand the condition of Grecian society, anterior to the formation of the state, it is necessary to know the constitution and principles of the Grecian gens; for the character of the unit determines the character of its compounds in the ascending series, and can alone furnish the means for their explanation. CHAPTER IX. - THE GRECIAN PHRATRY, TRIBE AND NATION.The Athenian Phratry.—How Formed.—Definition of DikÆarchus.—Objects chiefly Religious.—The Phratriarch.—The Tribe.—Composed of Three Phratries.—The Phylo-basileus.—The Nation.—Composed of Four Tribes.—Boule, or Council of Chiefs.—Agora, or Assembly of the People.—The Basileus.—Tenure of the Office.—Military and Priestly Functions.—Civil Functions not shown.—Governments of the Heroic Age, Military Democracies.—Aristotle’s Definition of a Basileus.—Later Athenian Democracy.—Inherited From the Gentes.—Its powerful Influence upon Athenian Development. The phratry, as we have seen, was the second stage of organization in the Grecian social system. It consisted of several gentes united for objects, especially religious, which were common to them all. It had a natural foundation in the bond of kin, as the gentes in a phratry were probably subdivisions of an original gens, a knowledge of the fact having been preserved by tradition. “All the contemporary members of the phratry of HekatÆus,” Mr. Grote remarks, “had a common god for their ancestor at the sixteenth degree,” This is a plausible explanation, because such marriages would intermingle the blood of the gentes. On the contrary, gentes formed, in the course of time, by the division of a gens and by subsequent subdivisions, would give to all a common lineage, and form a natural basis for their re-integration in a phratry. As such the phratry would be a natural growth, and as such only can it be explained as a gentile institution. The gentes thus united were brother gentes, and the association itself was a brotherhood as the term imports. Stephanus of Byzantium has preserved a fragment of DikÆarchus, in which an explanation of the origin of the gens, phratry and tribe is suggested. It is not full enough, with respect to either, to amount to a definition; but it is valuable as a recognition of the three stages of organization in ancient Grecian society. He uses patry (p?t??) in the place of gens (?????), as Pindar did in a number of instances, and Homer occasionally. The passage may be rendered: “Patry is one of three forms of social union among the Greeks, according to DikÆarchus, which we call respectively, patry, phratry, and tribe. The patry comes into being when relationship, originally solitary, passes over into the second stage [the relationship of parents with children and children with parents], and derives its eponym from the oldest and chief member of the patry, as Aicidas, Pelopidas.” “But it came to be called phatria and phratria when certain ones gave their daughters to be married into another patry. For the woman who was given in marriage participated no longer in her paternal sacred rites, but was enrolled in the patry of her husband; so that for the union, formerly subsisting by affection between sisters and brothers, there was established another union based on community of religious rites, which they denominated a phratry; and so that again, while the patry took its rise in the way we have previously mentioned, from the blood relation between parents and children and children and parents, the phratry took its rise from the relationship between brothers.” “But tribe and tribesmen were so called from the coalescence It will be noticed that marriage out of the gens is here recognized as a custom, and that the wife was enrolled in the gens, rather than the phratry, of her husband. DikÆarchus, who was a pupil of Aristotle, lived at a time when the gens existed chiefly as a pedigree of individuals, its powers having been transferred to new political bodies. He derived the origin of the gens from primitive times; but his statement that the phratry originated in the matrimonial practices of the gentes, while true doubtless as to the practice, is but an opinion as to the origin of the organization. Intermarriages, with common religious rites, would cement the phratric union; but a more satisfactory foundation of the phratry may be found in the common lineage of the gentes of which it was composed. It must be remembered that the gentes have a history running back through the three sub-periods of barbarism into the previous period of savagery, antedating the existence even of the Aryan and Semitic families. The phratry has been shown to have appeared among the American aborigines in the Lower Status of barbarism; while the Greeks were familiar with so much only of their former history as pertained to the Upper Status of barbarism. Mr. Grote does not attempt to define the functions of the phratry, except generally. They were doubtless of a religious character chiefly; but they probably manifested themselves, as among the Iroquois, at the burial of the dead, at public games, at religious festivals, at councils, and at the agoras of the people, where the grouping of chiefs and people would be by phratries rather than by gentes. It would also naturally show itself in the array of the military forces, of which a memorable example is given by Homer in the address of Nestor to Agamemnon. The obligation of blood revenge, which was turned at a later day into a duty of prosecuting the murderer before the legal tribunals, rested primarily upon the gens of the slain person; but it was also shared in by the phratry, and became a phratric obligation. Since the phratry was intermediate between the gens and the tribe, and not invested with governmental functions, it was less fundamental and less important than either of the others; but it was a common, natural and perhaps necessary stage It is customary to speak of the four Athenian tribes as divided each into three phratries, and of each phratry as divided into thirty gentes; but this is merely for convenience in description. A people under gentile institutions do not divide themselves into symmetrical divisions and subdivisions. The natural process of their formation was the exact reverse of this method; the gentes fell into phratries, and ultimately into tribes, which reunited in a society or a people. Each was a natural growth. That the number of gentes in each Athenian phratry was thirty is a remarkable fact incapable of explanation by natural causes. A motive sufficiently powerful, such as a desire for a symmetrical organization of the phratries and tribes, might lead to a subdivision of gentes by consent until the number was raised to thirty in each of these phratries; and when the number in a tribe was in excess, by the consolidation of kindred gentes until the number was reduced to thirty. A more probable way would be by the admission of alien gentes into phratries needing an increase of number. Having a certain number of tribes, phratries and gentes by natural growth, the reduction of the last two to uniformity in the four tribes could thus have been secured. Once cast in this numerical scale of thirty gentes to a phratry and three phratries to a tribe, the proportion might easily have been maintained for centuries, except perhaps as to the number of gentes in each phratry. The religious life of the Grecian tribes had its centre and source in the gentes and phratries. It must be supposed that As the gens had its archon, who officiated as its priest in the religious observances of the gens, so each phratry had its phratriarch (f?at???????), who presided at its meetings, and officiated in the solemnization of its religious rites. “The phratry,” observes M. De Coulanges, “had its assemblies and its tribunals, and could pass decrees. In it, as well as in the family, there was a god, a priesthood, a legal tribunal and a government.” Next in the ascending scale of organization was the tribe, consisting of a number of phratries, each composed of gentes. The persons in each phratry were of the same common lineage, When the several phratries of a tribe united in the commemoration of their religious observances it was in their higher organic constitution as a tribe. As such, they were under the presidency, as we find it expressed, of a phylo-basileus, who was the principal chief of the tribe. Whether he acted as their commander in the military service I am unable to state. He possessed priestly functions, always inherent in the office of basileus, and exercised a criminal jurisdiction in cases of murder; whether to try or to prosecute a murderer, I am unable to state. The priestly and judicial functions attached to the office of basileus tend to explain the dignity it acquired in the legendary and heroic periods. But the absence of civil functions, in the strict sense of the term, of the presence of which we have no satisfactory evidence, is sufficient to render the term king, so constantly employed in history as the equivalent of basileus, a misnomer. Among the Athenians we have the tribe-basileus, where the term is used by the Greeks themselves as legitimately as when applied to the general military commander of the four The fourth and ultimate stage of organization was the nation united in a gentile society. Where several tribes, as those of the Athenians and the Spartans, coalesced into one people, it enlarged the society, but the aggregate was simply a more complex duplicate of a tribe. The tribes took the same place in the nation which the phratries held in the tribe, and the gentes in the phratry. There was no name for the organism The Athenian nation of the heroic age presents in its government three distinct, and in some sense co-ordinate, departments or powers, namely: first, the council of chiefs (????); second, the agora (?????), or assembly of the people; and third, the basileus (as??e??), or general military commander. Although municipal and subordinate military offices in large numbers had been created, from the increasing necessities of their condition, the principal powers of the government were held by the three instrumentalities named. I am unable to discuss in an adequate manner the functions and powers of the council, the agora or the basileus, but will content myself with a few suggestions upon subjects grave enough to deserve reinvestigation at the hands of professed Hellenists. I. The Council of Chiefs. The office of basileus in the Grecian tribes has attracted far more attention than either the council or the agora. As a consequence it has been unduly magnified while the council and the agora have either been depreciated or ignored. We know, however, that the council of chiefs was a constant phenomenon in every Grecian nation from the earliest period to which our knowledge extends down to the institution of political society. Its permanence as a feature of their social system is conclusive evidence that its functions were substantial, and that its powers, at least presumptively, were ultimate and supreme. This presumption arises from what is known of the archaic character and functions of the council of chiefs under gentile institutions, and from its vocation. How it was constituted in the heroic age, and under what tenure the office of chief was held, we are not clearly informed; but it is a reasonable inference that the council was composed of the chiefs of the gentes. Since the number who formed the council was usually less than the number II. The Agora. Although an assembly of the people became established in the legendary period, with a recognized power to adopt or reject public measures submitted by the council, it is not as ancient as the council. The latter came in at the institution of the gentes; but it is doubtful whether the agora existed, with the functions named, back of the Upper Status of barbarism. It has been shown that among the Iroquois, in the Lower Status, the people presented their wishes to the council of chiefs through orators of their own selection, and that a popular influence was felt in the affairs of the confederacy; but an assembly of the people, with the right to adopt or reject public measures, would evince an amount of progress in intelligence and knowledge beyond the Iroquois. When the agora first appears, as represented in Homer, and in the Greek Tragedies, it had the same characteristics which it afterwards maintained in the ecclesia of the Athenians, and in the comitia curiata of the Romans. It was the prerogative of the council of chiefs to mature public measures, and then submit them to the assembly of the people for acceptance or rejection, and their decision was final. The functions of the agora were limited to this single act. It could neither originate measures, nor interfere in the administration of affairs; but nevertheless it was a substantial power, eminently adapted to the protection of their liberties. In the heroic age certainly, and far back in the legendary period, the agora is a constant phenomenon among the Grecian tribes, and, in connection with the council, is conclusive evidence of the democratical constitution of gentile society throughout these periods. A public sentiment, as we have reason to suppose, was created among the people on all important questions, through the exercise of their intelligence, which the council of chiefs found it desirable as well as necessary to consult, both for the public good and III. The Basileus. This officer became a conspicuous character in the Grecian society of the heroic age, and was equally prominent in the legendary period. He has been placed by historians in the centre of the system. The name of the office (as??e??) was used by the best Grecian writers to characterize the government, which was styled a basileia (?s??e??). Modern writers, almost without exception, translate basileus by the term king, and basileia by the term kingdom, without qualification, and as exact equivalents. I wish to call attention to this office of basileus, as it existed in the Grecian tribes, and to question the correctness of this interpretation. There is no similarity whatever between the basileia of the ancient Athenians and the modern kingdom or monarchy; certainly not enough to justify the use of the same term to describe both. Our idea of a kingly government is essentially of a type in which a king, surrounded by a privileged and titled class in the ownership and possession of the lands, rules according to his own will and pleasure by edicts and decrees; claiming an hereditary right to rule, because he cannot allege the consent of the governed. Such governments have been self-imposed Mr. Grote claims that “the primitive Grecian government is essentially monarchical, reposing on personal feeling and divine right;” The true statement, as it seems to an American, is precisely the reverse of Mr. Grote’s; namely, that the primitive Grecian government was essentially democratical, reposing on gentes, phratries and tribes, organized as self-governing bodies, and on the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. This is borne out by all we know of the gentile organization, which has been shown to rest on principles essentially democratical. The question then is, whether the office of basileus passed in reality from father to son by hereditary right; which, if true, would tend to show a subversion of these principles. We have seen that in the Lower Status of barbarism the office of chief was hereditary in a gens, by which is meant that the va The illustration of Mr. Grote, drawn from the Iliad, is without significance on the question made. Ulysses, from whose address the quotation is taken, was speaking of the command of an army before a besieged city. He might well say: “All the Greeks cannot by any means rule here. The rule of many is not a good thing. Let us have one koiranos, one basileus, to whom Zeus has given the sceptre, and the divine sanctions in order that he may command us.” Basileia may be defined as a military democracy, the people being free, and the spirit of the government, which is the essential thing, being democratical. The basileus was their general, holding the highest, the most influential and the most important office known to their social system. For the want of a better term to describe the government, basileia was adopted by Grecian writers, because it carried the idea of a generalship which had then become a conspicuous feature in the government. With the council and the agora both existing with the basileus, if a more special definition of this form of government is required, military democracy expresses it with at least reasonable correctness; while the use of the term kingdom, with the meaning it necessarily conveys, would be a misnomer. In the heroic age the Grecian tribes were living in walled cities, and were becoming numerous and wealthy through field agriculture, manufacturing industries, and flocks and herds. New offices were required, as well as some degree of separation of their functions; and a new municipal system was growing up apace with their increasing intelligence and necessities. It was also a period of incessant military strife for the possession of the most desirable areas. Along with the increase of property the aristocratic element in society undoubtedly increased, and was the chief cause of those disturbances which prevailed in Athenian society from the time of Theseus to the times of Solon and Cleisthenes. During this period, and until the final abolition of the office some time before the first Olympiad, (776 B. C.) the basileus, from the character of his office and from the state of the times, became more prominent and more Among the Spartan tribes the ephoralty was instituted at a very early period to limit the powers of the basileis in consequence of a similar experience. Although the functions of the council in the Homeric and the legendary periods are not accurately known, its constant presence is evidence sufficient that its powers were real, essential and permanent. With the simultaneous existence of the agora, and in the absence of proof of a change of institutions, we are led to the conclusion that the council, under established usages, was supreme over gentes, Thucydides refers incidentally to the governments of the traditionary period, as follows: “Now when the Greeks were becoming more powerful, and acquiring possession of property still more than before, many tyrannies were established in the cities, from their revenues becoming greater; whereas before there had been hereditary basileia with specified powers.” (p??te??? d? ?sa? ?p? ??t??? ???as? pat???a? as??e?a?) Aristotle has given the most satisfactory definition of the basileia and of the basileus of the heroic period of any of the Grecian writers. These then are the four kinds of basileia he remarks: the first is that of the heroic times, which was a government over a free people, with restricted rights in some particulars; for the basileus was their general, their judge and their chief priest. The second, that of the barbarians, which is an hereditary despotic government, regulated by laws; the third is that which they call Aesymnetic, which is an elective tyranny. The fourth is the Lacedaemonian, which is nothing more than an hereditary generalship. Under gentile institutions, with a people composed of gentes, phratries and tribes, each organized as independent self-governing bodies, the people would necessarily be free. The rule of a king by hereditary right and without direct accountability in such a society was simply impossible. The impossibility arises from the fact that gentile institutions are incompatible with a king or with a kingly government. It would require, what I think cannot be furnished, positive proof of absolute hereditary right in the office of basileus, with the presence of civil functions, to overcome the presumption which arises from the structure and principles of ancient Grecian society. An Englishman, under his constitutional monarchy, is as free as an American under the republic, and his rights and liberties are as well protected; but he owes that freedom and protection to a body of written laws, created by legislation and enforced by courts of justice. In ancient Grecian society, usages and customs supplied the place of written laws, and the person depended for his freedom and protection upon the institutions of his social system. His safeguard was pre-eminently in such institutions as the elective tenure of office implies. The reges of the Romans were, in like manner, military commanders, with priestly functions attached to their office; and this so-called kingly government falls into the same category of a military democracy. The rex, as before stated, was nominated by the senate, and confirmed by the comitia curiata; and the last of the number was deposed. With his deposition the office was abolished, as incompatible with what remained of the democratic principle, after the institution of Roman political society. The nearest analogues of kingdoms among the Grecian tribes were the tyrannies, which sprang up here and there, in the early period, in different parts of Greece. They were governments imposed by force, and the power claimed was no greater than that of the feudal kings of mediÆval times. A transmission of the office from father to son through a few generations in order to superadd hereditary right was needed to complete the analogy. But such governments were so inconsistent with Grecian ideas, and so alien to their democratic institutions, that none of them obtained a permanent footing in Greece. Mr. Grote remarks that “if any energetic man could by audacity or craft break down the constitution and render himself permanent ruler according to his own will and pleasure—even though he might rule well—he could never inspire the people with any sentiment of duty towards him. His sceptre was illegitimate from the beginning, and even the taking of his life, far from being interdicted by that moral feeling which condemned the shedder of blood in other cases, was considered meritorious.” When the Athenians established the new political system, founded upon territory and upon property, the government was a pure democracy. It was no new theory, or special invention of the Athenian mind, but an old and familiar system, with an antiquity as great as that of the gentes themselves. Democratic ideas had existed in the knowledge and practice of their The plan of government instituted by Cleisthenes rejected the office of a chief executive magistrate, while it retained the council of chiefs in an elective senate, and the agora in the popular assembly. It is evident that the council, the agora and the basileus of the gentes were the germs of the senate, the popular assembly, and the chief executive magistrate (king, emperor and president) of modern political society. The latter office sprang from the military necessities of organized society, and its development with the upward progress of mankind is instructive. It can be traced from the common war-chief, first to the Great War Soldier, as in the Iroquois Confederacy; secondly, to the same military commander in a confederacy of tribes more advanced, with the functions of a priest attached to the office, as the Teuctli of the Aztec Confederacy; thirdly, to the same military commander in a nation formed by a coalescence of tribes, with the functions of a priest and of a judge attached to the office, as in the basileus of the Greeks; and finally, to the chief magistrate in modern political society. The elective archon of the Athenians, who succeeded Failure of the Gentes as a Basis of Government.—Legislation of Theseus.—Attempted Substitution of Classes.—Its Failure.—Abolition of the Office of Basileus.—The Archonship.—Naucraries and Tryttyes.—Legislation of Solon.—The Property Classes.—Partial Transfer of Civil Power from the Gentes to the Classes.—Persons Unattached to any Gens.—Made Citizens.—The Senate.—The Ecclesia.—Political Society Partially Attained.—Legislation of Cleisthenes.—Institution Of Political Society.—The Attic Deme or Township.—Its Organization and Powers.—Its Local Self-government.—The Local Tribe or District.—The Attic Commonwealth.—Athenian Democracy. The several Grecian communities passed through a substantially similar experience in transferring themselves from gentile into political society; but the mode of transition can be best illustrated from Athenian history, because the facts with respect to the Athenians are more fully preserved. A bare outline of the material events will answer the object in view, as it is not proposed to follow the growth of the idea of government beyond the inauguration of the new political system. It is evident that the failure of gentile institutions to meet the now complicated wants of society originated the movement to withdraw all civil powers from the gentes, phratries and tribes, and re-invest them in new constituencies. This movement was gradual, extending through a long period of time, and was embodied in a series of successive experiments by means of which a remedy was sought for existing evils. The coming in of the new system was as gradual as the going out of Looking backward upon the line of human progress, it may be remarked that the stockaded village was the usual home of the tribe in the Lower Status of barbarism. In the Middle Status joint-tenement houses of adobe-bricks and of stone, in the nature of fortresses, make their appearance. But in the Upper Status, cities surrounded with ring embankments, and finally with walls of dressed stone, appear for the first time in human experience. It was a great step forward when the thought found expression in action of surrounding an area ample for a considerable population with a defensive wall of dressed stone, with towers, parapets and gates, designed to protect all alike and to be defended by the common strength. Cities of this grade imply the existence of a stable and developed field agriculture, the possession of domestic animals in flocks and herds, of merchandise in masses and of property in houses and lands. The city brought with it new demands in the art of government by creating a changed condition of society. A necessity gradually arose for magistrates and judges, military and municipal officers of different grades, with a mode of raising and supporting military levies which would require public revenues. Municipal life and wants must have greatly augmented the duties and responsibilities of the council of chiefs, and perhaps have overtaxed its capacity to govern. It has been shown that in the Lower Status of barbarism the government was of one power, the council of chiefs; that in the Middle Status it was of two powers, the council of chiefs and the military commander; and that in the Upper Status it was of three powers, the council of chiefs, the assembly of the people and the military commander. But after the commencement of civilization, the differentiation of the powers of the government had proceeded still further. The military power, first devolved upon the basileus, was now exercised by The creation of these municipal offices was a necessary consequence of the increasing magnitude and complexity of their affairs. Under the increased burden gentile institutions were breaking down. Unnumbered disorders existed, both from the conflict of authority, and from the abuse of powers not as yet well defined. The brief and masterly sketch by Thucydides of the condition of the Grecian tribes in the transitional period, The first attempt among the Athenians to subvert the gentile organization and establish a new system is ascribed to Theseus, and therefore rests upon tradition; but certain facts remained to the historical period which confirm some part at least of his supposed legislation. It will be sufficient to regard Theseus as representing a period, or a series of events. From the time of Cecrops to Theseus, according to Thucydides, the Attic people had always lived in cities, having their own prytaneums and archons, and when not in fear of danger did not consult their basileus, but governed their own affairs separately according to their own councils. But when Theseus was made basileus, he persuaded them to break up the council-houses and magistracies of their several cities and come into relation with Athens, with one council-house (???e?t?????), and one prytaneum (p??ta?e???), to which all were considered as belonging. But another act is ascribed to Theseus evincing a more radical plan, as well as an appreciation of the necessity for a fundamental change in the plan of government. He divided the people into three classes, irrespective of gentes, called respectively the EupatridÆ or “well-born,” the Geomori or “husbandmen,” and the Demiurgi or “artisans.” The principal offices were assigned to the first class both in the civil administration and in the priesthood. This classification was not only a recognition of property and of the aristocratic element in the government of society, but it was a direct movement against the governing power of the gentes. It was the evident intention to unite the chiefs of the gentes with their families, and the men of wealth in the several gentes, in a class by themselves, with the right to hold the principal offices in which the powers of society were vested. The separation of the remainder into two great classes traversed the gentes again. Important results might have followed if the voting power had been taken from the gentes, phratries and tribes, and given to the classes, subject to the right of the first to hold the principal offices. This does not appear to have been done, although absolutely necessary to give vitality to the classes. Moreover, it did not change essentially the previous order of things with respect to holding office. Those now called Eupatrids were probably the men of the several gentes who had previously been called into office. This scheme of Theseus died out, because there was in reality no transfer of powers from the gentes, phratries and tribes to the classes, and because such classes were inferior to the gentes as the basis of a system. The centuries that elapsed from the unknown time of Theseus to the legislation of Solon (594 B. C.) formed one of the most important periods in Athenian experience; but the succession of events is imperfectly known. The office of basileus was abolished prior to the first Olympiad (776 B. C.), and the archonship established in its place. The latter seems to have been hereditary in a gens, and it is stated to have been hereditary in a particular family within the gens, the first twelve archons being called the MedontidÆ, from Medon, the first ar In the time of Solon, it may be further noticed, the Court of Areopagus, composed of ex-archons, had come into existence with power to try criminals and with a censorship over morals, together with a number of new offices in the military, naval and administrative services. But the most important event that occurred about this time was the institution of the naucraries (?a???a??a?), twelve in each tribe, and forty-eight in all; each of which was a local circumscription of householders from which levies were drawn into the military and naval service, and from which taxes were probably collected. The naucrary was the incipient deme or township which, when the idea of a territorial basis was fully developed, was to become the foundation of the second great plan of government. By whom the naucraries were instituted is unknown. “They must have existed even before the time of Solon,” Boeckh remarks, “since the presiding officers of the naucraries (p??t??e?? t?? ?a???????) are mentioned before the time of his legislation; and when Aristotle ascribes their institution to Solon, we may refer this account only to their confirmation by the political constitution of Solon.” Notwithstanding the great changes that had occurred in the instrumentalities by which the government was administered, the people were still in a gentile society, and living under gentile institutions. The gens, phratry and tribe were in full vitality, and the recognized sources of power. Before the time of Solon no person could become a member of this society except through connection with a gens and tribe. All other persons were beyond the pale of the government. The council of chiefs remained, the old and time-honored instrument of government; but the powers of the government were now coordinated between itself, the agora or assembly of the people, the Court of Areopagus, and the nine archons. It was the prerogative of the council to originate and mature public measures for submission to the people, which enabled it to shape the policy of the government. It doubtless had the general administration of the finances, and it remained to the end, as it had been from the beginning, the central feature of the government. The assembly of the people had now come into increased prominence. Its functions were still limited to the adoption or rejection of public measures submitted to its decision by the council; but it began to exercise a powerful influence upon public affairs. The rise of this assembly as a power in the government is the surest evidence of the progress of the Athenian people in knowledge and intelligence. Unfortunately the functions and powers of the council of chiefs and of the assembly of the people in this early period have been imperfectly preserved, and but partially elucidated. In 624 B. C. Draco had framed a body of laws for the Athenians which were chiefly remarkable for their unnecessary severity; but this code demonstrated that the time was drawing near in Grecian experience when usages and customs were to be superseded by written laws. As yet the Athenians had not learned the art of enacting laws as the necessity for them appeared, which required a higher knowledge of the functions of legislative bodies than they had attained. They were in that stage in which lawgivers appear, and legislation is in a scheme When Solon came into the archonship (594 B. C.) the evils prevalent in society had reached an unbearable degree. The struggle for the possession of property, now a commanding interest, had produced singular results. A portion of the Athenians had fallen into slavery, through debt,—the person of the debtor being liable to enslavement in default of payment; others had mortgaged their lands and were unable to remove the encumbrances; and as a consequence of these and other embarrassments society was devouring itself. In addition to a body of laws, some of them novel, but corrective of the principal financial difficulties, Solon renewed the project of Theseus of organizing society into classes, not according to callings as before, but according to the amount of their property. It is instructive to follow the course of these experiments to supersede the gentes and substitute a new system, because we shall find the Roman tribes, in the time of Servius Tullius, trying the same experiment for the same purpose. Solon divided the people into four classes according to the measure of their wealth, and going beyond Theseus, he invested these classes with certain powers, and imposed upon them certain obligations. It transferred a portion of the civil powers of the gentes, phratries and tribes to the property classes. In proportion as the substance of power was drawn from the former and invested in the latter, the gentes would be weakened and their decadence would commence. But so far as classes composed of persons were substituted for gentes composed of persons, the government was still founded upon person, and upon relations purely personal. The scheme failed to reach the substance of the question. Moreover, in changing the council of chiefs into the senate of four hundred, the members were taken in equal numbers from the four tribes, and not from the classes. But it will be noticed that the idea of property, as the basis of a system of government, was now incorporated by Solon in the new plan of property classes. It failed, however, to reach the idea of political society, which must rest upon territory as well as property, and deal with persons through their territorial It will be further noticed that the people were now organized as an army, consisting of three divisions; the cavalry, the heavy-armed infantry, and the light-armed infantry, each with its own officers of different grades. The form of the statement limits the array to the last three classes, which leaves the first class in the unpatriotic position of appropriating to themselves the principal offices of the government, and taking no part in the military service. This undoubtedly requires modification. The same plan of organization, but including the five classes, will re-appear among the Romans under Servius Tullius, by whom the body of the people were organized as an army (exercitus) fully officered and equipped in each subdivision. The idea of a military democracy, different in organization but the same theoretically as that of the previous period, re-appears in a new dress both in the Solonian and in the Servian constitution. In addition to the property element, which entered into the basis of the new system, the territorial element was partially incorporated through the naucraries before adverted to, in which it is probable there was an enrollment of citizens and of their property to form a basis for military levies and for taxa There was one weighty reason for the overthrow of the gentes and the substitution of a new plan of government. It was probably recognized by Theseus, and undoubtedly by Solon. From the disturbed condition of the Grecian tribes and the unavoidable movements of the people in the traditionary period and in the times prior to Solon, many persons transferred themselves from one nation to another, and thus lost their connection with their own gens without acquiring a connection with another. This would repeat itself from time to time, through personal adventure, the spirit of trade, and the exigencies of warfare, until a considerable number with their posterity would be developed in every tribe unconnected with any gens. All such persons, as before remarked, would be without the pale of the government with which there could be no connection excepting through a gens and tribe. The fact is noticed by Mr. Grote. “The phratries and gentes,” he remarks, “probably never at any time included the whole population of the country—and the population not included in them tended to become The schemes of Theseus and of Solon made imperfect provision for their admission to citizenship through the classes; but as the gentes and phratries remained from which they were excluded, the remedy was still incomplete. Mr. Grote further remarks, that “it is not easy to make out distinctly what was the political position of the ancient Gentes and Phratries, as Solon left them. The four tribes consisted altogether of gentes and phratries, insomuch that no one could be included in any one of the tribes who was not also a member of some gens and phratry. Now the new probouleutic or pre-considering senate consisted of 400 members,—100 from each of the tribes: persons not included in any gens and phratry could therefore have had no access to it. The conditions of eligibility were similar, according to ancient custom, for the nine archons—of course, also, for the senate of Areopagus. So that there There was also an increasing difficulty in keeping the members of a gens, phratry and tribe locally together. As parts of a governmental organic series, this fact of localization was highly necessary. In the earlier period, the gens held its lands in common, the phratries held certain lands in common for religious uses, and the tribe probably held other lands in common. When they established themselves in country or city, they settled locally together by gentes, by phratries and by tribes, as a consequence of their social organization. Each gens was in the main by itself—not all of its members, for two gentes were represented in every family, but the body who propa The seriousness of the difficulties to be overcome in creating a political society are strikingly illustrated in the experience of the Athenians. In the time of Solon, Athens had already produced able men; the useful arts had attained a very considerable development; commerce on the sea had become a national interest; agriculture and manufactures were well advanced; and written composition in verse had commenced. They were in fact a civilized people, and had been for two centuries; but their institutions of government were still gentile, and of the type prevalent throughout the Later Period of barbarism. A great impetus had been given to the Athenian commonwealth by the new system of Solon; nevertheless, nearly a century Cleisthenes went to the bottom of the question, and placed the Athenian political system upon the foundation on which it remained to the close of the independent existence of the commonwealth. He divided Attica into a hundred demes, or townships, each circumscribed by metes and bounds, and distinguished by a name. Every citizen was required to register himself, and to cause an enrollment of his property in the deme in which he resided. This enrollment was the evidence as well as the foundation of his civil privileges. The deme displaced the naucrary. Its inhabitants were an organized body politic with powers of local self-government, like the modern American township. This is the vital and the remarkable feature of the system. It reveals at once its democratic character. The government was placed in the hands of the people in the first of the series of territorial organizations. The demotÆ elected a demarch (d?a????), who had the custody of the public register; he had also power to convene the demotÆ for the purpose of electing magistrates and judges, for revising the registry of citizens, and for the enrollment of such as became of age during the year. They elected a treasurer, and provided for the assessment and collection of taxes, and for furnishing the quota of troops required of the deme for the service of the state. They also elected thirty dicasts or judges, who tried all causes arising in the deme where the amount involved fell below a certain sum. Besides these powers of local self-government, which is the essence of a democratic system, each deme had its own temple and religious worship, and its own priest, also elected by the demotÆ. Omitting minor par The second member of the organic territorial series consisted of ten demes, united in a larger geographical district. It was called a local tribe (f???? t?p????), to preserve some part of the terminology of the old gentile system. The third and last member of the territorial series was the Athenian commonwealth or state, consisting of ten local tribes or districts. It was an organized body politic, embracing the aggregate of Athenian citizens. It was represented by a senate, an ecclesia, the court of Areopagus, the archons, and judges, and the body of elected military and naval commanders. Thus the Athenians founded the second great plan of government upon territory and upon property. They substituted a series of territorial aggregates in the place of an ascending series of aggregates of persons. As a plan of government it rested upon territory which was necessarily permanent, and upon property which was more or less localized; and it dealt with its citizens, now localized in demes through their territorial relations. To be a citizen of the state it was necessary to be a citizen of a deme. The person voted and was taxed in his deme, and he was called into the military service from his deme. In like manner he was called by election into the senate, and to the command of a division of the army or navy from the larger district of his local tribe. His relations to a gens or phratry ceased to govern his duties as a citizen. The contrast between the two systems is as marked as their difference was fundamental. A coalescence of the people into bodies politic in territorial areas now became complete. The territorial series enters into the plan of government of modern civilized nations. Among ourselves, for example, we have the township, the county, the state, and the United States; the inhabitants of each of which are an organized body politic with powers of local self-government. Each organization is in full vitality and performs its functions within a definite sphere in which it is supreme. France has a similar series in the commune, the arrondissement, the department, and the empire, now the republic. In Great Britain the series is the parish, the shire, the kingdom, and the three kingdoms. In the Saxon period the hundred seems to have been the analogue of the town As a consequence of the legislation of Cleisthenes, the gentes, phratries and tribes were divested of their influence, because their powers were taken from them and vested in the deme, the local tribe and the state, which became from thenceforth the sources of all political power. They were not dissolved, however, even after this overthrow, but remained for centuries as a pedigree and lineage, and as fountains of religious life. In certain orations of Demosthenes, where the cases involved personal or property rights, descents or rights of sepulture, both the gens and phratry appear as living organizations in his time. Solon is usually regarded as the founder of Athenian democracy, while some writers attribute a portion of the work to Cleisthenes and Theseus. We shall draw nearer the truth of the matter by regarding Theseus, Solon and Cleisthenes as standing connected with three great movements of the Athenian people, not to found a democracy, for Athenian democracy was older than either, but to change the plan of government from a gentile into a political organization. Neither sought to change the existing principles of democracy which had been inherited from the gentes. They contributed in their respective times to the great movement for the formation of a state, which required the substitution of a political in the place of gentile society. The invention of a township, and the organization of its inhabitants Recurring for a moment to the basileus, the office tended to make the man more conspicuous than any other in their affairs. He was the first person to catch the mental eye of the historian by whom he has been metamorphosed into a king, notwithstanding he was made to reign, and by divine right, over a rude democracy. As a general in a military democracy, the basileus becomes intelligible, and without violating the institutions that actually existed. The introduction of this office did not change the principles of the gentes, phratries and tribes, which in their organization were essentially democratical, and which of necessity impressed that character on their gentile system. Evidence is not wanting that the popular element was constantly The government as reconstituted by Cleisthenes contrasted strongly with that previous to the time of Solon. But the transition was not only natural but inevitable if the people followed their ideas to their logical results. It was a change of plan, but not of principles nor even of instrumentalities. The council of chiefs remained in the senate, the agora in the ecclesia; the three highest archons were respectively ministers of state, of religion, and of justice as before, while the six inferior archons exercised judicial functions in connection with the courts, and the large body of dicasts now elected annually for judicial service. No executive officer existed under the system, which is one of its striking peculiarities. The nearest approach to it was the president of the senate, who was elected by lot for a single day, without the possibility of a re-election during the year. For a single day he presided over the popular assembly, and held the keys of the citadel and of the treasury. Under the new government the popular assembly held the substance of power, and guided the destiny of Athens. The new element which gave stability and order to the state was the deme or township, with its complete autonomy, and local self-government. A hundred demes similarly organized would determine the general movement of the commonwealth. As the unit, so the compound. It is here that the people, as before remarked, must begin if they would learn the art of self-government, and maintain equal laws, and equal rights and privileges. They must retain in their hands all the powers of Athens rose rapidly into influence and distinction under the new political system. That remarkable development of genius and intelligence, which raised the Athenians to the highest eminence among the historical nations of mankind, occurred under the inspiration of democratic institutions. With the institution of political society under Cleisthenes, the gentile organization was laid aside as a portion of the rags of barbarism. Their ancestors had lived for untold centuries in gentilism, with which they had achieved all the elements of civilization, including a written language, as well as entered upon a civilized career. The history of the gentile organization will remain as a perpetual monument of the anterior ages, identified as it has been with the most remarkable and extended experience of mankind. It must ever be ranked as one of the most remarkable institutions of the human family. In this brief and inadequate review the discussion has been confined to the main course of events in Athenian history. Whatever was true of the Athenian tribes will be found substantially true of the remaining Grecian tribes, though not exhibited on so broad or so grand a scale. The discussion tends to render still more apparent one of the main propositions advanced—that the idea of government in all the tribes of mankind has been a growth through successive stages of development. CHAPTER XI. - THE ROMAN GENS.Italian Tribes Organized in Gentes.—Founding of Rome.—Tribes Organized into a Military Democracy.—The Roman Gens.—Definition of a Gentilis by Cicero.—By Festus.—By Varro.—Descent in Male Line.—Marrying out of the Gens.—Rights and Obligations of the Members of a Gens.—Democratic Constitution of Ancient Latin Society.—Number of Persons in a Gens. When the Latins, and their congeners the Sabellians, the Oscans and the Umbrians, entered the Italian peninsula probably as one people, they were in possession of domestic animals, and probably cultivated cereals and plants. The traditionary history of the Latin tribes, prior to the time of Romulus, is much more scanty and imperfect than that of the Grecian, whose earlier relative literary culture and stronger literary proclivities enabled them to preserve a larger proportion of their traditionary accounts. Concerning their anterior experience, tradition did not reach beyond their previous life on the Alban hills, and the ranges of the Appenines eastward from the site of Rome. For tribes so far advanced in the arts of life it would have required a long occupation of Italy to efface all knowledge of the country from which they came. In the time of Romulus Roman history has touched but slightly the particulars of a vast experience anterior to the founding of Rome (about 753 The Etruscan tribes were confederated; and the same was probably true of the Sabellian, Oscan and Umbrian tribes. While the Latin tribes possessed numerous fortified towns and country strongholds, they were spread over the surface of the country for agricultural pursuits, and for the maintenance of their flocks and herds. Concentration and coalescence had not occurred to any marked extent until the great movement ascribed to Romulus which resulted in the foundation of Rome. These loosely united Latin tribes furnished the principal materials from which the new city was to draw its strength. The accounts of these tribes from the time of the supremacy of the chiefs of Alba down to the time of Servius Tullius, were made up to a great extent of fables and traditions; but certain facts remained in the institutions and social usages transmitted to the historical period which tend, in a remarkable manner, to illustrate their previous condition. They are even more important than an outline history of actual events. Among the institutions of the Latin tribes existing at the commencement of the historical period were the gentes, curiÆ and tribes upon which Romulus and his successors established the Roman power. The new government was not in all respects a natural growth; but modified in the upper members of the organic series by legislative procurement. The gentes, however, which formed the basis of the organization, were natural growths, and in the main either of common or cognate lin Romulus had the sagacity to perceive that a confederacy of tribes, composed of gentes and occupying separate areas, had neither the unity of purpose nor sufficient strength to accomplish more than the maintenance of an independent existence. The tendency to disintegration counteracted the advantages of the federal principle. Concentration and coalescence were the remedy proposed by Romulus and the wise men of his time. It was a remarkable movement for the period, and still more remarkable in its progress from the epoch of Romulus to the institution of political society under Servius Tullius. Following the course of the Athenian tribes and concentrating in one city, they wrought out in five generations a similar and complete change in the plan of government, from a gentile into a political organization. It will be sufficient to remind the reader of the general facts that Romulus united upon and around the Palatine Hill a hundred Latin gentes, organized as a tribe, the Ramnes; that by a fortunate concurrence of circumstances a large body of Sabines were added to the new community whose gentes, afterwards increased to one hundred, were organized as a second tribe, the Tities; and that in the time of Tarquinius Priscus a third tribe, the Luceres, had been formed, composed of a hundred gentes drawn from surrounding tribes, including the Etruscans. Three hundred gentes, in about the space of a hundred years, were thus gathered at Rome, and completely organized under a council of chiefs now called the Roman Senate, an assembly of the people now called the comitia curiata, and one military commander, the rex; and with one purpose, that of gaining a military ascendency in Italy. Under the constitution of Romulus, and the subsequent leg In its main features the new organization was a masterpiece of wisdom for military purposes. It soon carried them entirely beyond the remaining Italian tribes, and ultimately into supremacy over the entire peninsula. The organization of the Latin and other Italian tribes into gentes has been investigated by Niebuhr, Hermann, Mommsen, Long and others; but their several accounts fall short of a clear and complete exposition of the structure and principles of the Italian gens. This is due in part to the obscurity in which portions of the subject are enveloped, and to the absence of minute details in the Latin writers. It is also in part due to a misconception, by some of the first named writers, of the relations of the family to the gens. They regard the gens as composed of families, whereas it was composed of parts of families; so that the gens and not the family was the unit of the social system. It may be difficult to carry the investigation much beyond the point where they have left it; but information drawn from the archaic constitution of the gens may serve to elucidate some of its characteristics which are now obscure. Concerning the prevalence of the organization into gentes among the Italian tribes, Niebuhr remarks as follows: “Should any one still contend that no conclusion is to be drawn from the character of the Athenian genne**tes to that of the Roman gentiles, he will be bound to show how an institution which Besides the existence of the Roman gens, it is desirable to know the nature of the organization; its rights, privileges and obligations, and the relations of the gentes to each other, as members of a social system. After these have been considered, their relations to the curiÆ, tribes, and resulting people of which they formed a part, will remain for consideration in the next ensuing chapter. After collecting the accessible information from various sources upon these subjects it will be found incomplete in many respects, leaving some of the attributes and functions of the gens a matter of inference. The powers of the gentes were withdrawn, and transferred to new political bodies before historical composition among the Romans had fairly commenced. There was, therefore, no practical necessity resting upon the Romans for preserving the special features of a system substantially set aside. Gaius, who wrote his Institutes in the early part of the second century of our era, took occasion to remark that the whole jus gentilicium had fallen into desuetude, and that it was then superfluous to treat the subject. The Roman definition of a gens and of a gentilis, and the line in which descent was traced should be presented before the characteristics of the gens are considered. In the Topics of Cicero a gentilis is defined as follows: Those are gentiles who are of the same name among themselves. This is insufficient. Who were born of free parents. Even that is not sufficient. No one of whose ancestors has been a slave. Something still is wanting. Who have never suffered capital Cicero does not attempt to define a gens, but rather to furnish certain tests by which the right to the gentile connection might be proved, or the loss of it be detected. Neither of these definitions show the composition of a gens; that is, whether all, or a part only, of the descendants of a supposed genarch were entitled to bear the gentile name; and, if a part only, what part. With descent in the male line the gens would include those only who could trace their descent though males exclusively; and if in the female line, then through females only. If limited to neither, then all the descendants would be included. These definitions must have assumed that descent in the male line was a fact known to all. From other sources it appears that those only belonged to the gens who could trace their descent through its male members. Roman genealogies supply this proof. Cicero omitted the material fact that those were gentiles who could trace their descent through males exclusively from an acknowledged ancestor within the gens. It is in part supplied by Festus and Varro. From an Aemilius, the latter remarks, men are born Aemilii, and gentiles; each must be born of a male bearing the gentile name. But Cicero’s definition also shows that a gentilis must bear the gentile name. In the address of the Roman tribune Canuleius (445 B. C.), on his proposition to repeal an existing law forbidding intermarriage between patricians and plebeians, there is a statement implying descent in the male line. For what else is there in the matter, he remarks, if a patrician man shall wed a plebeian woman, or a plebeian man a patrician woman? What right in the end is thereby changed? The children surely follow the father, (nempe patrem sequuntur liberi.) A practical illustration, derived from transmitted gentile names, will show conclusively that descent was in the male line. Julia, the sister of Caius Julius Caesar, married Marcus Attius Balbus. Her name shows that she belonged to the Julian gens. In the Roman gens descent was in the male line from Augustus back to Romulus, and for an unknown period back of the latter. None were gentiles except such as could trace their descent through males exclusively from some acknowledged ancestor within the gens. But it was unnecessary, because impossible, that all should be able to trace their descent from the same common ancestor; and much less from the eponymous ancestor. It will be noticed that in each of the above cases, to which a large number might be added, the persons married out of the gens. Such was undoubtedly the general usage by customary law. The Roman gens was individualized by the following rights, privileges and obligations:
These several characteristics will be considered in the order named. I. Mutual rights of succession to the property of deceased gentiles. When the law of the Twelve Tables was promulgated (451 B. C.), the ancient rule, which presumptively distributed the inheritance among the gentiles, had been superseded by more advanced regulations. The estate of an intestate now passed, first, to his sui heredes, that is, to his children; and, in default of children, to his lineal descendants through males. A female, by her marriage, suffered what was technically called a loss of franchise or capital diminution (deminutio capitis), by which she forfeited her agnatic rights. Here again the reason is apparent. If after her marriage she could inherit as an agnate it would transfer the property inherited from her own gens to that of her husband. An unmarried sister could inherit, but a married sister could not. With our knowledge of the archaic principles of the gens, we are enabled to glance backward to the time when descent in the Latin gens was in the female line, when property was inconsiderable, and distributed among the gentiles; not necessarily within the life-time of the Latin gens, for its existence reached back of the period of their occupation of Italy. That the Roman gens had passed from the archaic into its historical “The right of succeeding to the property of members who died without kin and intestate,” Niebuhr remarks, “was that which lasted the longest; so long indeed, as to engage the attention of the jurists, and even—though assuredly not as anything more than a historical question—that of Gaius, the manuscript of whom is unfortunately illegible in this part.” II. A common burial place. The sentiment of gentilism seems to have been stronger in the Upper Status of barbarism than in earlier conditions, through a higher organization of society, and through mental and moral advancement. Each gens usually had a burial place for the exclusive use of its members as a place of sepulture. A few illustrations will exhibit Roman usages with respect to burial. Appius Claudius, the chief of the Claudian gens, removed from Regili, a town of the Sabines, to Rome in the time of Romulus, where in due time he was made a senator, and thus a patrician. He brought with him the Claudian gens, and such a number of clients that his accession to Rome was regarded as an important event. Suetonius remarks that the gens received from the state lands upon the Anio for their clients, and . The family tomb had not entirely superseded that of the gens in the time of Julius Caesar, as was illustrated by the case of Quintilius Varus, who, having lost his army in Germany, destroyed himself, and his body fell into the hands of the enemy. The half-burned body of Varus, says Paterculus, was mangled by the savage enemy; his head was cut off, and brought to Maroboduus, and by him having been sent to Caesar, was at length honored with burial in the gentile sepulchre. In his treatise on the laws, Cicero refers to the usages of his own times in respect to burial in the following language: now the sacredness of burial places is so great that it is affirmed to be wrong to perform the burial independently of the sacred rites of the gens. Thus in the time of our ancestors A. Torquatus decided respecting the Popilian gens. III. Common sacred rites; sacra gentilicia. The Roman sacra embody our idea of divine worship, and were either public or private. Religious rites performed by a gens were called sacra privata, or sacra gentilicia. They were performed regularly at stated periods by the gens. The religious rites of the Romans seem to have had their primary connection with the gens rather than the family. A college of pontiffs, of curiones, and of augurs, with an elaborate system of worship under these priesthoods, in due time grew into form and became established; but the system was tolerant and free. The priesthood was in the main elective. In the early days of Rome many gentes had each their own sacellum for the performance of their religious rites. Several gentes had each special sacrifices to perform, which had been IV. The obligation not to marry in the gens. Gentile regulations were customs having the force of law. The obligation not to marry in the gens was one of the number. It does not appear to have been turned, at a later day, into a legal enactment; but evidence that such was the rule of the gens appears in a number of ways. The Roman genealogies show that marriage was out of the gens, of which instances have been given. This, as we have seen, was the archaic rule for reasons of consanguinity. A woman by her marriage forfeited her agnatic rights, to which rule there was no exception. It was to prevent the transfer of property by marriage from one gens to another, from the gens of her birth to the gens of her husband. The exclusion of the children of a female from all rights of inheritance from a maternal uncle or maternal grandfather, which followed, was for the same reason. As the female was required to marry out of her gens her children would be of the gens of their father, and there could be no privity of inheritance between members of different gentes. V. The possession of lands in common. The ownership of lands in common was so general among barbarous tribes that the existence of the same tenure among the Latin tribes is no occasion for surprise. A portion of their lands seems to have been held in severalty by individuals from a very early period. No time can be assigned when this was not the case; but at first it was probably the possessory right to lands in actual occupation, so often before referred to, which was recognized as far back as the Lower Status of barbarism. Among the rustic Latin tribes, lands were held in common by each tribe, other lands by the gentes, and still other by households. Allotments of lands to individuals became common at Rome in the time of Romulus, and afterwards quite general. Varro and Dionysius both state that Romulus allotted two jugera (about two and a quarter acres) to each man. Mommsen remarks that “the Roman territory was divided in the earliest times into a number of clan-districts, which were subsequently employed in the formation of the earliest rural wards (tribus rusticÆ).... These names are not, like those of the districts added at a later period, derived from the localities, but are formed without exception from the names of the clans.” VI. Reciprocal obligations of help, defense and redress of injuries. During the period of barbarism the dependence of the gentiles upon each other for the protection of personal rights would be constant; but after the establishment of political society, the gentilis, now a citizen, would turn to the law and to the state for the protection before administered by his gens. This feature of the ancient system would be one of the first to disappear under the new. Accordingly but slight references to these mutual obligations are found in the early authors. It does not follow, however, that the gentiles did not practice these duties to each other in the previous period; on the contrary, the inference that they did is a necessary one from the principles of the gentile organization. Remains of these special usages appear, under special circumstances, well down in the historical period. When Appius Claudius was cast into prison (about 432 B. C.), Caius Claudius, then at enmity with him, put on mourning, as well as the whole Claudian gens. VII. The right to bear the gentile name. This followed necessarily from the nature of the gens. All such persons as were born sons or daughters of a male member of the gens were themselves members, and of right entitled to bear the gentile name. In the lapse of time it was found impossible for the members of a gens to trace their descent back to the founder, and, consequently, for different families within the gens to find their connection through a later common ancestor. Whilst this inability proved the antiquity of the lineage, it was no evidence that these families had not sprung from a remote common ancestor. The fact that persons were born in the gens, and that each could trace his descent through a series of acknowledged members of the gens, was sufficient evidence of gentile descent, and strong evidence of the blood connection of all the gentiles. But some investigators, Niebuhr among the number, After descent was changed to the male line the ancient names of the gentes, which not unlikely were taken from animals, Elsewhere I have called attention to the fact that the gens came in with a system of consanguinity which reduced all consanguinei to a small number of categories, and retained their descendants indefinitely in the same. The relationships of persons were easily traced, no matter how remote their actual After the decadence of the gentile organization commenced, new gentes ceased to form by the old process of segmentation; and some of those existing died out. This tended to enhance the value of gentile descent as a lineage. In the times of the empire, new families were constantly establishing themselves in Rome from foreign parts, and assuming gentile names to gain social advantages. This practice being considered an abuse, the Emperor Claudius (A. D. 40-54), prohibited foreigners from assuming Roman names, especially those of the ancient gentes. All the members of a gens were free, and equal in their rights and privileges, the poorest as well as the richest, the distinguished as well as the obscure; and they shared equally in whatever dignity the gentile name conferred which they inherited as a birthright. Liberty, equality and fraternity were cardinal principles of the Roman gens, not less certainly than of the Grecian, and of the American Indian. VIII. The right of adopting strangers in blood into the gens. In the times of the republic, and also of the empire, adoption into the family, which carried the person into the gens of the family, was practiced; but it was attended with formalities which rendered it difficult. A person who had no children, and who was past the age to expect them, might adopt a son IX. The right of electing and deposing its chiefs; query. The incompleteness of our knowledge of the Roman gentes is shown quite plainly by the absence of direct information with respect to the tenure of the office of chief (princeps). Before the institution of political society each gens had its chief, and probably more than one. When the office became vacant it was necessarily filled, either by the election of one of the gentiles, as among the Iroquois, or taken by hereditary right. But the absence of any proof of hereditary right, and the presence of the elective principle with respect to nearly all offices under the republic, and before that, under the reges, leads to the inference that hereditary right was alien to the institutions of the Latin tribes. The highest office, that of rex, was elective, the office of senator was elective or by appointment, and that of consuls and of inferior magistrates. It varied with respect to the college of pontiffs instituted by Numa. At first the pontiffs themselves filled vacancies by election. Livy speaks of the election of a pontifex maximus by the comitia about 212 B. C. The active presence of the elective principle among the Latin gentes when they first come under historical notice, and from that time through the period of the republic, furnishes strong grounds for the inference that the office of chief was elective in tenure. The democratic features of their social system, which present themselves at so many points, were inherited from the gentes. It would require positive evidence that the office of chief passed by hereditary right to overcome the presumption against it. The right to elect carries with it the right to depose from office, where the tenure is for life. These chiefs, or a selection from them, composed the council of the several Latin tribes before the founding of Rome, which was the principal instrument of government. Traces of the three powers co-ordinated in the government appear among the Latin tribes as they did in the Grecian, namely: the council of chiefs, the assembly of the people, to which we must suppose the more important public measures were submitted for adoption or rejection, and the military commander. Mommsen remarks that “All of these cantons [tribes] were in primitive times politically sovereign, and each of them was governed by its prince, and the co-operation of the council of elders, and the assembly of the warriors.” With respect to the number of persons in a Roman gens, we are fortunately not without some information. About 474 B. C. the Fabian gens proposed to the senate to undertake the Veientian war as a gens, which they said required a constant rather than a large force. Although the rights, obligations and functions of the Roman gens have been inadequately presented, enough has been adduced to show that this organization was the source of their social, governmental and religious activities. As the unit of their social system it projects its character upon the higher organizations into which it entered as a constituent. A much fuller knowledge of the Roman gens than we now possess is essential to a full comprehension of Roman institutions in their origin and development. CHAPTER XII. - THE ROMAN CURIA, TRIBE AND POPULUS.Roman Gentile Society.—Four Stages of Organization—1. The Gens; 2. The Curia, consisting of Ten Gentes; 3. The Tribe, composed of Ten CuriÆ; 4. The Populus Romanus, composed of Three Tribes.—Numerical Proportions—How Produced.—Concentration of Gentes at Rome.—The Roman Senate.—Its Functions.—The Assembly of the People.—Its Powers.—The People Sovereign.—Office of Military Commander (Rex).—Its Powers and Functions.—Roman Gentile Institutions essentially Democratical. Having considered the Roman gens, it remains to take up the curia composed of several gentes, the tribe composed of several curiÆ, and lastly the Roman people composed of several tribes. In pursuing the subject the inquiry will be limited to the constitution of society as it appeared from the time of Romulus to that of Servius Tullius, with some notice of the changes which occurred in the early period of the republic while the gentile system was giving way, and the new political system was being established. It will be found that two governmental organizations were in existence for a time, side by side, as among the Athenians, one going out and the other coming in. The first was a society (societas), founded upon the gentes; and the other a state (civitas), founded upon territory and upon property, which was gradually supplanting the former. A government in a transitional stage is necessarily complicated, and therefore difficult to be understood. These changes were not violent but gradual, commencing with Romulus and substantially complet Gentile society among the Romans exhibits four stages of organization: first, the gens, which was a body of consanguinei and the unit of the social system; second, the curia, analogous to the Grecian phratry, which consisted of ten gentes united in a higher corporate body; third, the tribe, consisting of ten curiÆ, which possessed some of the attributes of a nation under gentile institutions; and fourth, the Roman people (Populus Romanus), consisting, in the time of Tullus Hostilius, of three such tribes united by coalescence in one gentile society, embracing three hundred gentes. There are facts warranting the conclusion that all the Italian tribes were similarly organized at the commencement of the historical period; but with this difference, perhaps, that the Roman curia was a more advanced organization than the Grecian phratry, or the corresponding phratry of the remaining Italian tribes; and that the Roman tribe, by constrained enlargement, became a more comprehensive organization than in the remaining Italian stocks. Some evidence in support of these statements will appear in the sequel. Before the time of Romulus the Italians, in their various branches, had become a numerous people. The large number of petty tribes, into which they had become subdivided, reveals that state of unavoidable disintegration which accompanies gentile institutions. But the federal principle had asserted itself among the other Italian tribes as well as the Latin, although it did not result in any confederacy that achieved important results. Whilst this state of things existed, that great movement ascribed to Romulus occurred, namely: the concentration of a hundred Latin gentes on the banks of the Tiber, which was followed by a like gathering of Sabine, Latin and Etruscan and other gentes, to the additional number of two hundred, ending It is immaterial whether either of the seven so-called kings of Rome were real or mythical persons, or whether the legislation ascribed to either of them is fabulous or true, so far as this investigation is concerned: because the facts with respect to the ancient constitution of Latin society remained incorporated in Roman institutions, and thus came down to the historical period. It fortunately so happens that the events of human progress embody themselves, independently of particular men, in a material record, which is crystallized in institutions, usages and customs, and preserved in inventions and discoveries. Historians, from a sort of necessity, give to individuals great prominence in the production of events; thus placing persons, who are transient, in the place of principles, which are enduring. The work of society in its totality, by means of which all progress occurs, is ascribed far too much to individual men, and far too little to the public intelligence. It will be recognized generally that the substance of human history is bound up in the growth of ideas, which are wrought out by the people and expressed in their institutions, usages, inventions and discoveries. The numerical adjustment, before adverted to, of ten gentes to a curia, ten curiÆ to a tribe, and three tribes of the Roman people, was a result of legislative procurement not older, in the first two tribes, than the time of Romulus. It was made possible by the accessions gained from the surrounding tribes, by solicitation or conquest; the fruits of which were chiefly incorporated in the Tities and Luceres, as they were successively formed. But such a precise numerical adjustment could not be permanently maintained through centuries, especially with respect to the number of gentes in each curia. We have seen that the Grecian phratry was rather a religious and social than a governmental organization. Holding an intermediate position between the gens and the tribe, it would be less important than either, until governmental functions were superadded. It appears among the Iroquois in a rudimentary form, its social as distinguished from its governmental character being at that early day equally well marked. But the Roman curia, whatever it may have been in the previous period, grew into an organization more integral and governmental than the phratry of the Greeks; more is known, however, of the former than of the latter. It is probable that the gentes comprised in each curia were, in the main, related gentes; and that their reunion in a higher organization was further cemented by intermarriages, the gentes of the same curia furnishing each other with wives. The early writers give no account of the institution of the curia; but it does not follow that it was a new creation by Romulus. It is first mentioned as a Roman institution in connection with his legislation, the number of curiÆ in two of the tribes having been established in his time. The organization, as a phratry, had probably existed among the Latin tribes from time immemorial. Livy, speaking of the favor with which the Sabine women were regarded after the establishment of peace between the Sabines and Latins through their intervention, remarks that Romulus, for this reason, when he had divided the people into thirty curiÆ bestowed upon them their names. Niebuhr, who was the first to gain a true conception of the institutions of the Romans in this period, who recognized the fact that the people were sovereign, that the so-called kings exercised a delegated power, and that the senate was based on the principle of representation, each gens having a senator, became at variance with the facts before him in stating in connection with this graduated scale, that “such numerical proportions are an irrefragible proof that the Roman houses [gentes] The members of the ten gentes united in a curia were called curiales among themselves. They elected a priest, curio, who was the chief officer of the fraternity. Each curia had its sacred rites, in the observance of which the brotherhood participated; its sacellum as a place of worship, and its place of assembly where they met for the transaction of business. Besides the curio, who had the principal charge of their religious affairs, the curiales also elected an assistant priest, flamen curialis, who had the immediate charge of these observances. The curia gave its name to the assembly of the gentes, the comitia curiata which was the sovereign power in Rome to a greater degree than the senate under the gentile system. Such, in general terms, was the organization of the Roman curia or phratry. Next in the ascending scale was the Roman tribe, composed of ten curiÆ and a hundred gentes. When a natural growth, uninfluenced externally, a tribe would be an aggregation of such gentes as were derived by segmentation from an original gens or pair of gentes; all the members of which would speak Prior to the time of Romulus each tribe elected a chief officer whose duties were magisterial, military and religious. An assembly of the tribe must also have existed, from a remote antiquity. Before the founding of Rome each Italian tribe was practically independent, although the tribes were more or less united in confederate relations. As a self-governing body each of these ancient tribes had its council of chiefs (who were doubtless the chiefs of the gentes), its assembly of the people, and its chiefs who commanded its military bands. These three elements in the organization of the tribe; namely, the council, the tribal chief, and the tribal assembly, were the types upon which were afterwards modeled the Roman senate, the Roman rex, and the comitia curiata. The tribal chief was in all probability called by the name The fourth and last stage of organization was the Roman nation or people, formed, as stated, by the coalescence of three tribes. Externally the ultimate organization was manifested by a senate (senatus), a popular assembly (comitia curiata), and a general military commander (rex). It was further manifested by a city magistracy, by an army organization, and by a common national priesthood of different orders. A powerful city organization was from the first the central idea of their governmental and military systems, to which all areas beyond Rome remained provincial. Under the military democracy of Romulus, under the mixed democratical and aristocratical organization of the republic, and under the later imperialism it was a government with a great city in its centre, a perpetual nucleus, to which all additions by conquest were added as increments, instead of being made, with the city, common constituents of the government. Nothing precisely like this Roman organization, this Roman power, and the career of the Roman race, has appeared in the experience of mankind. It will ever remain the marvel of the ages. As organized by Romulus they styled themselves the Roman People (Populus Romanus), which was perfectly exact. They had formed a gentile society and nothing more. But the rapid increase of numbers in the time of Romulus, and the still greater increase between this period and that of Servius Tullius, demonstrated the necessity for a fundamental change in Selecting a magnificent situation upon the Tiber, where, after leaving the mountain range it had entered the campagna, Romulus occupied the Palatine Hill, the site of an ancient fortress, with a tribe of the Latins of which he was the chief. Tradition derived his descent from the chiefs of Alba, which is a matter of secondary importance. The new settlement grew with marvelous rapidity, if the statement is reliable that at the close of his life the military forces numbered 46,000 foot and 1,000 horse, which would indicate some 200,000 people in the city and in the surrounding region under its protection. Livy remarks that it was an ancient device (vetus consilium) of the founders of cities to draw to themselves an obscure and humble multitude, and then set up for their progeny the autocthonic claim. Passing over Numa Pompilius, the successor of Romulus, who established upon a broader scale the religious institutions of the Romans, his successor, Tullus Hostilius, captured the Latin city of Alba and removed its entire population to Rome. They occupied the Coelian Hill, with all the privileges of Roman citizens. The number of citizens was now doubled, Livy remarks; By these and other means three hundred gentes were gathered at Rome and there organized in curiÆ and tribes, differing somewhat in tribal lineage; for the Ramnes, as before remarked, were Latins, the Tities were in the main Sabines and the Luceres were probably in the main Latins with large accessions from other sources. The Roman people and organization thus grew into being by a more or less constrained aggregation of gentes into curiÆ, of curiÆ into tribes, and of tribes into one gentile society. But a model for each integral organization, excepting the last, had existed among them and their ancestors from time immemorial; with a natural basis for each curia in the kindred gentes actually united in each, and a similar basis for each tribe in the common lineage of a greater part of the gentes united in each. All that was new in organization was the numerical proportions of gentes to a curia, of curiÆ to a tribe, and the coalescence of the latter into one people. It may be called a growth under legislative constraint, because the tribes thus formed were not entirely free from the admixture of foreign elements; whence arose the new name tribus=a third part of the people, which now came in to distinguish this organism. The Latin language must have Our knowledge of the previous constitution of Latin society is mainly derived from the legislation ascribed to Romulus, since it brings into view the anterior organization of the Latin tribes, with such improvements and modifications as the wisdom of the age was able to suggest. It is seen in the senate as a council of chiefs, in the comitia curiata as an assembly of the the people by curiÆ, in the office of a general military commander, and in the ascending series of organizations. It is seen more especially in the presence of the gentes, with their recognized rights, privileges and obligations. Moreover, the government instituted by Romulus and perfected by his immediate successors presents gentile society in the highest structural form it ever attained in any portion of the human family. The time referred to was immediately before the institution of political society by Servius Tullius. The first momentous act of Romulus, as a legislator, was the institution of the Roman senate. It was composed of a hundred members, one from each gens, or ten from each curia. A council of chiefs as the primary instrument of government was not a new thing among the Latin tribes. From time immemorial they had been accustomed to its existence and to its authority. But it is probable that prior to the time of Romulus it had become changed, like the Grecian councils, into a pre-considering body, obligated to prepare and submit to an assembly of the people the most important public measures for adoption or rejection. This was in effect a resumption by the people of powers before vested in the council of chiefs. Since no public measure of essential importance could become operative until it received the sanction of the popular assembly, this fact alone shows that the people were sovereign, and not the council, nor the military commander. It reveals also the extent to which democratic principles had penetrated their so After the union of the Sabines the senate was increased to two hundred by the addition of a hundred senators The powers of the senate were real and substantial. All public measures originated in this body—those upon which they could act independently, as well as those which must be submitted to the popular assembly and be adopted before they could become operative. It had the general guardianship of the public welfare, the management of their foreign relations, the levying of taxes and of military forces, and the general control of revenues and expenditures. Although the administration of religious affairs belonged to the several colleges of priests, the senate had the ultimate power over religion as well. From its functions and vocation it was the most influential body which ever existed under gentile institutions. The assembly of the people, with the recognized right of acting upon important public measures to be discussed by them and adopted or rejected, was unknown in the Lower, and probably in the Middle Status of barbarism; but it existed in the Upper Status, in the agora of the Grecian tribes, and attained This assembly among the Romans was called the comitia curiata, because the members of the gentes of adult age met in one assembly by curiÆ, and voted in the same manner. Each curia had one collective vote, the majority in each was ascertained separately, and determined what that vote should be. The assembly had no power to convene itself; but it is said to have met on the summons of the rex, or, in his absence, on that of the praefect (praefectus urbi). In the time of the republic it was convened by the consuls, or, in their absence, by the praetor; and in all cases the person who convened the assembly presided over its deliberations. In another connection the office of rex has been considered. The rex was a general and also a priest, but without civil functions, as some writers have endeavored to imply. In his capacity of chief priest the rex took the auspices on important occasions, which was one of the highest acts of the Roman religious system, and in their estimation quite as necessary in the field on the eve of a battle as in the city. He performed other religious rites as well. It is not surprising that in those times priestly functions are found among the Romans, as among the Greeks, attached to or inherent in the highest military office. When the abolition of this office occurred, it was found necessary to vest in some one the religious functions appertaining to it, which were evidently special; whence the creation of the new office of rex sacrificulus, or rex sacrorum, the incumbent of which performed the religious duties in question. Among the Athenians the same idea re Thus stood Roman gentile society from the time of Romulus to the time of Servius Tullius, through a period of more than two hundred years, during which the foundations of Roman power were laid. The government, as before remarked, consisted of three powers, a senate, an assembly of the people, and a military commander. They had experienced the necessity for definite written laws to be enacted by themselves, as a substitute for usages and customs. In the rex they had the germinal idea of a chief executive magistrate, which necessity pressed upon them, and which was to advance into a more complete form after the institution of political society. But they found it a dangerous office in those times of limited experience in the higher conceptions of government, because the powers of the rex were, in the main, undefined, as well as difficult of definition. It is not surprising that when a serious controversy arose between the people and Tarquinius Superbus, they deposed the man and abolished the office. As soon as something like the irresponsible power of a king met them face to face it was found incompatible with liberty and the latter gained the victory. They were willing, however, to admit into the system of government a limited executive, and they created the office in a dual form in the two consuls. This occurred after the institution of political society. No direct steps were taken, prior to the time of Servius Tullius, to establish a state founded upon territory and upon property; but the previous measures were a preparation for that event. In addition to the institutions named, they had created a city magistracy, and a complete military system, including the institution of the equestrian order. Under institutions purely gentile Rome had become, in the time of Servius Tullius, the strongest military power in Italy. Among the new magistrates created, that of warden of the city (custos urbis) was the most important. This officer, who was chief of the senate (princeps senatus), was, in the first instance, according to Dionysius, appointed by Romulus. A knowledge of the tenure of the office of chief, and of the functions of the council of chiefs, before the time of Romulus, could they be ascertained, would reflect much light upon the condition of Roman gentile society in the time of Romulus. Moreover, the several periods should be studied separately, because the facts of their social condition were changing with their advancement in intelligence. The Italian period prior to Romulus, the period of the seven reges, and the subsequent periods of the republic and of the empire are marked by great differences in the spirit and character of the government. But the institutions of the first period entered into the second, and these again were transmitted into the third, and remained with modifications in the fourth. The growth, development and fall As the Roman government existed at the death of Romulus, it was social, and not political; it was personal, and not territorial. The three tribes were located, it is true, in separate and distinct areas within the limits of the city; but this was the prevailing mode of settlement under gentile institutions. Their relations to each other and to the resulting society, as gentes, curiÆ and tribes, were wholly personal, the government dealing with them as groups of persons, and with the whole as the Roman people. Localized in this manner within inclosing ramparts, the idea of a township or city ward would suggest itself when the necessity for a change in the plan of government was forced upon them by the growing complexity of affairs. It was a great change that was soon to be required of them, to be wrought out through experimental legislation—precisely the same which the Athenians had entered upon shortly before the time of Servius Tullius. Rome was founded, and its first victories were won under institutions purely gentile; but the fruits The Populus.—The Plebeians.—The Clients.—The Patricians.—Limits of the Order.—Legislation of Servius Tullius.—Institution of Property Classes.—Of the Centuries.—Unequal Suffrage.—Comitia Centuriata.—Supersedes Comitia Curiata.—Classes Supersede the Gentes.—The Census.—Plebeians made Citizens.—Institution of City Wards.—Of Country Townships.—Tribes Increased To Four.—Made Local instead of Consanguine.—Character of New Political System.—Decline and Disappearance of Gentile Organization.—The Work it Accomplished. Servius Tullius, the sixth chief of the Roman military democracy, came to the succession about one hundred and thirty-three years after the death of Romulus, as near as the date can be ascertained. From the time of Romulus to that of Servius Tullius the Romans consisted of two distinct classes, the populus and the plebeians. Both were personally free, and both entered the ranks of the army; but the former alone were organized in gentes, curiÆ and tribes, and held the powers of the government. The plebeians, on the other hand, did not belong to any gens, curia or tribe, and consequently were without the The origin both of the plebeians and of the patricians, and their subsequent relations to each other, have been fruitful themes of discussion and of disagreement. A few suggestions may be ventured upon each of these questions. A person was a plebeian because he was not a member of a gens, organized with other gentes in a curia and tribe. It is easy to understand how large numbers of persons would have become detached from the gentes of their birth in the unsettled times which preceded and followed the founding of Rome. The adventurers who flocked to the new city from the surrounding tribes, the captives taken in their wars and afterwards set free, and the unattached persons mingled with the gentes transplanted to Rome, would rapidly furnish such a class. It might also well happen that in filling up the hundred gentes of each tribe, fragments of gentes, and gentes having less than a prescribed number of persons, were excluded. These unat The next question is one of extreme difficulty, namely: the origin and extent of the patrician class—whether it originated with the institution of the Roman Senate, and was limited to the senators, and to their children and descendants; or included the entire populus, as distinguished from the plebeians. It is claimed by the most eminent modern authorities that the entire populus were patricians. Niebuhr, who is certainly the first on Roman questions, adopts this view, It is not improbable that the chiefs of the gentes were called fathers before the time of Romulus, to indicate the paternal character of the office; and that the office may have conferred a species of recognized rank upon their posterity. But we have no direct evidence of the fact. Assuming it to have been the case, and further, that the senate at its institution did not include all the principal chiefs, and further still, that when vacancies in the senate were subsequently filled, the selection was made on account of merit and not on account of gens, a foundation for a patrician class might have previously existed independently of the senate. These assumptions might be used to explain the peculiar language of Cicero, namely that Romulus desired that the senators might be called Fathers, possibly because this was already the honored title of the chiefs of the gentes. In this way a limited foundation for a patrician class may be found independent of the senate; but it would not be broad enough to include all the recognized gentes. It was in connection with the It follows that there could be no patrician gens and no plebeian gens, although particular families in one gens might be patricians, and in another plebeians. There is some confusion also upon this point. All the adult male members of the Fabian gens, to the number of three hundred and six, were patricians. The patrician class were necessarily numerous, because the senators, rarely less than three hundred, were chosen as often as vacancies occurred, thus constantly including new families; and because it conferred patrician rank on their posterity. Others were from time to time made patricians by act of the state. When the gentes had ceased to be organizations for governmental purposes under the new political system, the populus no longer remained as distinguished from the plebeians; but the shadow of the old organization and of the old distinction remained far into the republic. From Romulus to Servius Tullius the Roman organization, as before stated, was simply a gentile society, without relation to territory or to property. All we find is a series of aggregates of persons, in gentes, curiÆ and tribes, by means of which the people were dealt with by the government as groups of persons forming these several organic unities. Their condition was precisely like that of the Athenians prior to the time of Solon. But they had instituted a senate in the place of the Numa, the successor of Romulus, made the first significant movement, because it reveals the existence of an impression, that a great power could not rest upon gentes as the basis of a system. He attempted to traverse the gentes, as Theseus did, by dividing the people into classes, some eight in number, according to their arts and trades. Servius Tullius instituted the new system, and placed it upon a foundation where it remained to the close of the republic, although changes were afterwards made in the nature of improvements. His period (about 576-533 B. C.) follows closely that of Solon (596 B. C.), and precedes that of Cleisthenes (509 B. C.). The legislation ascribed to him, and which was obviously modeled upon that of Solon, may be accepted as having occurred as early as the time named, because the system was in practical operation when the republic was established 509 B. C., within the historical period. Moreover, the new political system may as properly be ascribed to him as great measures have been attributed to other men, although in both cases the legislator does little more than formulate what experience had already suggested and pressed upon his attention. The three principal changes which set aside the gentes and inaugurated political society based upon territory and upon property, were: first, the substitution of classes, formed upon the measure of individual wealth, in the place of the gentes; second, the institution of the comitia centuriata, as the new popular assembly, in the place of the comitia curiata, the assembly of the gentes, with a transfer of the substantial powers of the latter to the former; and third, the creation of four city wards, in the nature of townships, circumscribed by metes and bounds and named as territorial areas, in which the residents of each ward were required to enroll their names and register their property. Imitating Solon, with whose plan of government he was doubtless familiar, Servius divided the people into five classes, according to the value of their property, the effect of which It will be noticed that the control of the government, so far as the assembly of the people could influence its action, was placed in the hands of the first class, and the equites. They held together ninety-eight votes, a majority of the whole. Each century agreed upon its vote separately when assembled in the comitia centuriata, precisely as each curia had been accustomed to do in the comitia curiata. In taking a vote upon any public question, the equites were called first, and then the first class. The powers formerly exercised by the comitia curiata, now transferred to the comitia centuriata, were enlarged in some slight particulars in the subsequent period. It elected all officers and magistrates on the nomination of the senate; it enacted or rejected laws proposed by the senate, no measure becoming a law without its sanction; it repealed existing laws on the proposition of the same body, if they chose to do so; and it declared war on the same recommendation. But the senate concluded peace without consulting the assembly. An appeal in all cases involving life could be taken to this assembly as the highest judicial tribunal of the state. These powers were substantial, but limited—control over the finances being excluded. A majority of the votes, however, were lodged with the first class, including the equites, which embraced the body of the patricians, as must be supposed, and the wealthiest citizens. Property and not numbers controlled the government. They were able, however, to create a body of laws in the course of time which afforded equal protection to all, and thus tended to redeem the worst effects of the inequalities of the system. The meetings of the comitia were held in the Campus Martius annually for the election of magistrates and officers, and at other times when the public necessities required. The people assembled by centuries, and by classes under their officers, organized as an army (exercitus); for the centuries and classes were designed to subserve all the purposes of a military as well as a civil organization. At the first muster under Servius Tullius, eighty thousand citizen soldiers appeared in the Campus Martius under arms, each man in his proper century, each century in its class, and each class by itself. Such a government appears to us, in the light of our more advanced experience, both rude and clumsy; but it was a sensible improvement upon the previous gentile government, defective and illiberal as it appears. Under it, Rome became mistress of the world. The element of property, now rising into commanding importance, determined its character. It had brought aristocracy and privilege into prominence, which seized the opportunity to withdraw the control of the government in a great measure from the hands of the people, and bestow it upon the men of property. It was a movement in the opposite direction from that to which the democratic principles inherited from the gentes naturally tended. Against the new elements of aristocracy and privilege now incorporated in their governmental institutions, the Roman plebeians contended throughout the period of the republic, and at times with some measure of success. But patrician rank and property possessed by the higher classes, were too powerful for the wiser and grander doctrines of equal rights and equal privileges represented by the plebeians. It was even then far too heavy a tax upon Roman society to carry a privileged class. Cicero, patriot and noble Roman as he was, approved and commended this gradation of the people into classes, with the The property classes subserved the useful purpose of breaking up the gentes, as the basis of a governmental system, by transferring their powers to a different body. It was evidently the principal object of the Servian legislation to obtain a deliverance from the gentes, which were close corporations, and to give the new government a basis wide enough to include all the inhabitants of Rome, with the exception of the slaves. After the classes had accomplished this work, it might have been expected that they would have died out as they did at Athens; and that city wards and country townships, with their inhabitants organized as bodies politic, would have become the basis of the new political system, as they rightfully and logic This legislator is said to have instituted the comitia tributa, a separate assembly of each local tribe or ward, whose chief duties related to the assessment and collection of taxes, and to furnishing contingents of troops. At a later day this assembly elected the tribunes of the people. The ward was the natural unit of their political system, and the centre where local self-government should have been established had the Roman people wished to create a democratic state. But the senate and the property classes had forestalled them from that career. One of the first acts ascribed to Servius was the institution of the census. Livy pronounces the census a most salutary measure for an empire about to become so great, according to which the duties of peace and of war were to be performed, not individually as before, but according to the measure of personal wealth. In like manner, the surrounding country under the government of Rome was organized in townships (tribus rusticae), the number of which is stated at twenty-six by some writers, and at thirty-one by others; making, with the four city wards, a total of thirty in one case, and of thirty-five in the other. As finally established under the Servian constitution, the government was cast in the form in which it remained during the existence of the republic; the consuls taking the place of the previous military commanders. It was not based upon territory in the exclusive sense of the Athenian government, or in the modern sense; ascending from the township or ward, the unit of organization, to the county or arrondissement, and from the latter to the state, each organized and invested with governmental functions as constituents of a whole. The central government overshadowed and atrophied the parts. It rested more upon property than upon territory, this being made the commanding element, as is shown by the lodgment of the controlling power of the government in the highest property classes. It had, nevertheless, a territorial basis as well, since it recognized and used territorial subdivisions for citizenship, and for financial and military objects, in which the citizen was dealt with through his territorial relations. The Romans were now carried fairly out of gentile society into and under the second great plan of government, founded upon territory and upon property. They had left gentilism and barbarism behind them, and entered upon a new career of As a whole, the Roman government was anomalous. The overshadowing municipality of Rome, made the centre of the state in its plan of government, was one of the producing causes of its novel character. The primary organization of the people into an army with the military spirit it fostered created the cohesive force which held the republic together, and afterwards the empire. With a selective senate holding office for life, and possessing substantial powers; with a personal rank When the new political system became established, the old one did not immediately disappear. The functions of the senate and of the military commander remained as before; but the property classes took the place of the gentes, and the assembly of the classes took the place of the assembly of the gentes. Radical as the changes were, they were limited, in the main, to these particulars, and came in without friction or violence. The old assembly (comitia curiata) was allowed to retain a portion of its powers, which kept alive for a long period of time the organizations of the gentes, curiÆ and consanguine tribes. It still conferred the imperium upon all the higher magistrates after their election was completed, though in time it became a matter of form merely; it inaugurated certain priests, and regulated the religious observances of the curiÆ. This state of things continued down to the time of the first Punic war, after which the comitia curiata lost its importance and soon fell into oblivion. Both the assembly and the curiÆ were superseded rather than abolished, and died out from inanition; but the gentes remained far into the empire, not as an organization, for that also died out in time, but as a pedigree and a lineage. Thus the transition from gentile into political society was gradually but effectually accomplished, and the second great plan of human government was substituted by the Romans in the place of the first which had prevailed from time immemorial. After an immensely protracted duration, running back of the separate existence of the Aryan family, and received by the Latin tribes from their remote ancestors, the gentile organization finally surrendered its existence, among the Romans, to to the demands of civilization. It had held exclusive possession of society through these several ethnical periods, and until it had won by experience all the elements of civilization, which it then proved unable to manage. Mankind owe a debt of gratitude to their savage ancestors for devising an institution able to carry the advancing portion of the human race out of savagery into barbarism, and through the successive stages of the latter into civilization. It also accumulated by experience the intelligence and knowledge necessary to devise political society while the institution yet remained. It holds a position on the great chart of human progress second to none in its influence, in its achievements and in its history. As a plan of government, the gentile organization was unequal to the wants of civilized man; but it is something to be said in its remembrance that it developed from the germ the principal governmental institutions of modern civilized states. Among others, as before stated, out of the ancient council of chiefs came the modern senate; out of the ancient assembly of the people came the modern representative assembly, the two together constituting the modern legislature; out of the ancient general military commander came the modern chief magistrate, whether a feudal or constitutional king, an emperor or a president, the latter being the natural and logical result; and out of the ancient custos urbis, by a circuitous derivation, came the Roman praetor and the modern judge. Equal rights and privileges, personal freedom and the cardinal principles of democracy were also inherited from the gentes. When property had become created in masses, and its influence and power began to be felt in society, slavery came in; an institution violative of all these principles, but sustained by the selfish and delusive consideration that the person made a slave was a stranger in blood and a captive enemy. With property also came in gradually the principle of aristocracy, striving for the creation of privileged classes. The element of property, which has con An American, educated in the principles of democracy, and profoundly impressed with the dignity and grandeur of those great conceptions which recognize the liberty, equality and fraternity of mankind, may give free expression to a preference for self-government and free institutions. At the same time the equal rights of every other person must be recognized to accept and approve any form of government, whether imperial or monarchical, that satisfies his preferences. CHAPTER XIV. - CHANGE OF DESCENT FROM THE FEMALE TO THE MALE LINE.How the change might have been made.—Inheritance of property the Motive.—descent in the Female Line among the Lycians.—The Cretans.—The Etruscans.—Probably among the Athenians in the time of Cecrops.—The Hundred Families of the Locrians.—Evidence from Marriages.—Turanian System of Consanguinity among Grecian Tribes.—Legend of the DanaidÆ. An important question remains to be considered, namely: whether any evidence exists that descent was anciently in the female line in the Grecian and Latin gentes. Theoretically, this must have been the fact at some anterior period among their remote ancestors; but we are not compelled to rest the question upon theory alone. Since a change to the male line involved a nearly total alteration of the membership in a gens, a method by which it might have been accomplished should be pointed out. More than this, it should be shown, if possible, that an adequate motive requiring the change was certain to arise, with the progress of society out of the condition in which this form of descent originated. And lastly, the existing evidence of ancient descent in the female line among them should be presented. A gens in the archaic period, as we have seen, consisted of a supposed female ancestor and her children, together with the children of her daughters, and of her female descendants through females in perpetuity. The children of her sons, and of her male The method was simple and natural, provided the motive to make the change was general, urgent and commanding. When done at a given time, and by preconcerted determination, it was only necessary to agree that all the present members of the gens should remain members, but that in future all children, whose fathers belonged to the gens, should alone remain in it and bear the gentile name, while the children of its female members should be excluded. This would not break or change the kinship or relations of the existing gentiles; but thereafter it would retain in the gens the children it before excluded, and exclude those it before retained. Although it may seem a hard problem to solve, the pressure of an adequate motive would render it easy, and the lapse of a few generations would make it complete. As a practical question, it has been changed from the female line to the male among the American aborigines in a number of instances. Thus, among the Ojibwas descent is now in the male line, while among their congeners, the Delawares and Mohegans, it is still in the female line. Originally, without a doubt, descent was in the female line in the entire Algonkin stock. Since descent in the female line is archaic, and more in accordance with the early condition of ancient society than descent in the male line, there is a presumption in favor of its ancient prevalence in the Grecian and Latin gentes. Moreover, when the archaic form of any transmitted organization has been discovered and verified, it is impossible to conceive of its origination in the later more advanced form. Assuming a change of descent among them from the female When descent was in the female line in the Grecian and Latin gentes, the gens possessed the following among other characteristics: 1. Marriage in the gens was prohibited; thus placing children in a different gens from that of their reputed father. 2. Property and the office of chief were hereditary in the gens; thus excluding children from inheriting the property or succeeding to the office of their reputed father. This state of things would continue until a motive arose sufficiently general and commanding to establish the injustice of this exclusion in the face of their changed condition. The natural remedy was a change of descent from the female line to the male. All that was needed to effect the change was an adequate motive. After domestic animals began to be reared in flocks and herds, becoming thereby a source of subsistence as well as objects of individual property, and after tillage had led to the ownership of houses and lands in severalty, an antagonism would be certain to arise against the prevailing form of gentile inheritance, because it excluded the owner’s children, whose paternity was becoming more assured, and gave his property to his gentile kindred. A contest for a new rule of inheritance, shared in by fathers and their children, would furnish a motive sufficiently powerful to effect the change. With property accumulating in masses and assuming permanent forms, and with an increased proportion of it held by individual ownership, descent in the female line was certain of overthrow, and the substitution of the male line equally assured. Such a change would leave the inheritance in the gens as before, but it would Such had the law of inheritance become in the Athenian gens in the time of Solon or shortly after; when the property passed to the sons equally, subject to the obligation of maintaining the daughters, and of apportioning them in marriage; and in default of sons, to the daughters equally. If there were no children, then the inheritance passed to the agnatic kindred, and in default of the latter, to the gentiles. The Roman law of the Twelve Tables was substantially the same. It seems probable further, that when descent was changed to the male line, or still earlier, animal names for the gentes were laid aside and personal names substituted in their place. The individuality of persons would assert itself more and more with the progress of society, and with the increase and individual ownership of property, leading to the naming of the gens after some ancestral hero. Although new gentes were being formed from time to time by the process of segmentation, and others were dying out, the lineage of a gens reached back through hundreds not to say thousands of years. After the supposed substitution, the eponymous ancestor would have been a shifting person, at long intervals of time, some later person distinguished in the history of the gens being put in his place, when the knowledge of the former person became obscured, and faded from view in the misty past. That the more celebrated Grecian gentes made the change of names, and made it gracefully, is shown by the fact, that they retained the name of the mother of their gentile father, and ascribed his birth to her embracement by some particular god. Thus Eumolpus, the eponymous ancestor of the Attic EumolpidÆ, was the reputed son of Neptune and Chione; but even the Grecian gens was older than the conception of Neptune. Recurring now to the main question, the absence of direct proof of ancient descent in the female line in the Grecian and Latin gentes would not silence the presumption in its favor; but it so happens that this form of descent remained in some tribes nearly related to the Greeks with traces of it in a number of Grecian tribes. The inquisitive and observing Herodotus found one nation, the Lycians, Pelasgian in lineage, but Grecian in affiliation, among whom in his time (440 B. C.), descent was in the female line. After remarking that the Lycians were sprung from Crete, and stating some particulars of their migration to Lycia under Sarpedon, he proceeds as follows: “Their customs are partly Cretan and partly Carian. They have, however, one singular custom in which they differ from every other nation in the world. Ask a Lycian who he is, and he answers by giving his own name, that of his mother, and so on in the female line. Moreover, if a free woman marry a man who is a slave, their children are free citizens; but if a free man marry a foreign woman, or cohabit with a concubine, even though he be the first person in the state, the children forfeit all the rights of citizenship.” Among the Etruscans also the same rule of descent prevailed. “It is singular enough,” observes Cramer, “that two customs peculiar to the Etruscans, as we discover from their monuments, should have been noticed by Herodotus as characteristic of the Lycians and Caunians of Asia Minor. The first is, that the Etruscans invariably describe their parentage and family with reference to the mother, and not the father. The other, that they admitted their wives to their feasts and banquets.” Curtius comments on Lycian, Etruscan and Cretan descent in the female line in the following language: “It would be an error to understand the usage in question as an homage to the female sex. It is rather rooted in primitive conditions of society, in which monogamy was not yet established with sufficient certainty to enable descent upon the father’s side to be affirmed with assurance. Accordingly the usage extends far beyond the territory commanded by the Lycian nationality. It occurs, even to this day, in India; it may be demonstrated to have existed among the ancient Egyptians; it is mentioned by Sanchoniathon (p. 16, Orell), where the reasons for its existence are stated with great freedom; and beyond the confines of the East it appears among the Etruscans, among the Cretans, who were so closely connected with the Lycians, and who called their father-land mother-land; and among the Athenians, consult Bachofen, etc. Accordingly, if Herodotus regards the usage in question as thoroughly peculiar to the Lycians, it must have maintained itself longest among them of all the nations related to the Greeks, as is also proved by the Lycian inscriptions. Hence we must in general regard the employment of the maternal name for a designation of descent as the remains of an imperfect condition of social life and family law, which, as life becomes more regulated, was relinquished in favor of usages, afterwards universal in Greece, of naming children after the father. This diversity of usages, which is ex In a work of vast research, Bachofen has collected and discussed the evidence of female authority (mother-right) and of female rule (gyneocracy) among the Lycians, Cretans, Athenians, Lemnians, Ægyptians, Orchomenians, Locrians, Lesbians, Mantineans, and among eastern Asiatic nations. Monogamy was not probably established among the Grecian tribes until after they had attained the Upper Status of barbarism; and we seem to arrive at chaos in the marriage relation within this period, especially in the Athenian tribes. Concerning the latter, Bachofen remarks: “For before the time of Cecrops the children, as we have seen, had only a mother, no father; they were of one line. Bound to no man exclusively, the woman brought only spurious children into the world. Cecrops first made an end of this condition of things; led the lawless union of the sexes back to the exclusiveness of marriage; gave to the children a father and mother, and thus from being of one line (unilateres) made them of two lines (bilateres).” There is an interesting reference by Polybius to the hundred families of the Locrians of Italy. “The Locrians themselves,” Evidence of ancient descent in the female line among the Grecian tribes is found in particular marriages which occurred in the traditionary period. Thus Salmoneus and Kretheus were own brothers, the sons of Æolus. The former gave his daughter Tyro in marriage to her uncle. With descent in the male line, Kretheus and Tyro would have been of the same gens, and could not have married for that reason; but with descent in the female line, they would have been of different gentes, and therefore not of gentile kin. Their marriage in that case would not have violated strict gentile usages. It is immaterial that the persons named are mythical, because the legend would apply gentile usages correctly. This marriage is explainable on the hypothesis of descent in the female line, which in turn The same fact is revealed by marriages within the historical period, when an ancient practice seems to have survived the change of descent to the male line, even though it violated the gentile obligations of the parties. After the time of Solon a brother might marry his half-sister, provided they were born of different mothers, but not conversely. With descent in the female line, they would be of different gentes, and, therefore, not of gentile kin. Their marriage would interfere with no gentile obligation. But with descent in the male line, which was the fact when the cases about to be cited occurred, they would be of the same gens, and consequently under prohibition. Cimon married his half-sister, Elpinice, their father being the same, but their mothers different. In the Eubulides of Demosthenes we find a similar case. “My grandfather,” says Euxithius, “married his sister, she not being his sister by the same mother.” Descent in the female line presupposes the gens to distinguish the lineage. With our present knowledge of the ancient and modern prevalence of the gentile organization upon five continents, including the Australian, and of the archaic constitution of the gens, traces of descent in the female line might be expected to exist in traditions, if not in usages coming down to historical times. It is not supposable, therefore, that the Lycians, the Cretans, the Athenians and the Locrians, if the evidence is sufficient to include the last two, invented a usage so remarkable as descent in the female line. The hypothesis that it was the ancient law of the Latin, Grecian, and other GrÆco-Italian gentes affords a more rational as well as satisfactory explanation of the facts. The influence of property and It may be inferred that marrying out of the gens was the rule among the Athenians, before as well as after the time of Solon, from the custom of registering the wife, upon her marriage, in the phratry of her husband, and the children, daughters as well as sons, in the gens and phratry of their father. A system of consanguinity came in with the gens, distinguished as the Turanian in Asia, and as the GanowÁnian in America, which extended the prohibition of intermarriage as far as the relationship of brother and sister extended among collaterals. This system still prevails among the American aborigines, in portions of Asia and Africa, and in Australia. It unquestionably prevailed among the Grecian and Latin tribes in the same anterior period, and traces of it remained down to the traditionary period. One feature of the Turanian system may be restated as follows: the children of brothers are themselves brothers and sisters, and as such could not intermarry; the children of sisters stood in the same relationship, and were under the same prohibition. It may serve to explain the celebrated legend of the DanaidÆ, one version of which furnished to Aeschylus his subject for the tragedy of the Suppliants. The reader will remember that Danaus and Ægyptus were brothers, and descendants of Argive Io. The former by different wives had fifty daughters, and the latter by different wives had fifty sons; and in due time the sons of Ægyptus sought the daughters of Danaus in marriage. Under the system of consanguinity appertaining to the gens in its archaic form, and which remained until superseded by the system introduced by monogamy, they were brothers and sisters, and for that reason could not marry. If descent at the time was in the male line, the children of Danaus and Ægyptus would have been of the same gens, which would have interposed an additional objection to their marriage, and of equal weight. Nevertheless the sons of Ægyptus sought to overstep these barriers and enforce wedlock upon the DanaidÆ; whilst the latter, crossing the sea, fled from Egypt to Argos to escape what they pronounced an unlawful and incestuous union. In the Prometheus of the same author, this event is foretold to Io by Prometheus, namely: that in the fifth generation from her future son Epaphus, a band of fifty virgins should come to Argos, not voluntarily, but fleeing from incestuous wedlock with the sons of Ægyptus. The tragedy of the Suppliants is founded upon the incident of their flight over the sea to Argos, to claim the protection of their Argive kindred against the proposed violence of the sons Upon the evidence adduced it seems probable that among the Pelasgian, Hellenic and Italian tribes descent was originally in the female line, from which, under the influence of prop The length of the traditionary period of these tribes is of course unknown in the years of its duration, but it must be measured by thousands of years. It probably reached back of the invention of the process of smelting iron ore, and if so, passed through the Later Period of barbarism and entered the Middle Period. Their condition of advancement in the Middle Period must have at least equaled that of the Aztecs, Mayas and Peruvians, who were found in the status of the Middle Period; and their condition in the Later Period must have surpassed immensely that of the Indian tribes named. The vast and varied experience of these European tribes in the two great ethnical periods named, during which they achieved the remaining elements of civilization, is entirely lost, excepting as it is imperfectly disclosed in their traditions, and more fully by their acts of life, their customs, language and institutions, as revealed to us by the poems of Homer. Empires and kingdoms were necessarily unknown in these periods; but tribes and inconsiderable nations, city and village life, the growth and development of the arts of life, and physical, mental and moral improvement, were among the particulars of that progress. The loss of the events of these great periods to human knowledge was much greater than can easily be imagined. CHAPTER XV. - GENTES IN OTHER TRIBES OF THE HUMAN FAMILY.The Scottish Clan.—The Irish Sept.—Germanic Tribes.—Traces of a prior Gentile System.—Gentes in Southern Asiatic Tribes.—In Northern.—In Uralian Tribes.—Hundred Families of Chinese.—Hebrew Tribes.—Composed of Gentes and Phratries Apparently.—Gentes in African Tribes.—In Australian Tribes.—Subdivisions of Fejees And Pewas.—Wide Distribution of Gentile Organization. Having considered the organization into gentes, phratries and tribes in their archaic as well as later form, it remains to trace the extent of its prevalence in the human family, and particularly with respect to the gens, the basis of the system. The Celtic branch of the Aryan family retained, in the Scottish clan and Irish sept, the organization into gentes to a later period of time than any other branch of the family, unless the Aryans of India are an exception. The Scottish clan in particular was existing in remarkable vitality in the Highlands of Scotland in the middle of the last century. It was an excellent type of the gens in organization and in spirit, and an extraordinary illustration of the power of the gentile life over its members. The illustrious author of Waverley has perpetuated a number of striking characters developed under clan life, and stamped with its peculiarities. Evan Dhu, Torquil, Rob Roy and many others rise before the mind as illustrations of the influence of the gens in molding the character of individuals. If Sir Walter exaggerated these characters in some respects to suit the emer We shall pass over the Irish sept, the phis or phrara of the Albanians, which embody the remains of a prior gentile organization, and the traces of a similar organization in Dalmatia and Croatia; and also the Sanskrit ganas, the existence of which term in the language implies that this branch of the Aryan family formerly possessed the same institution. The communities of Villeins on French estates in former times, noticed by Sir Henry Maine in his recent work, may prove to be, as he intimates, remains of ancient Celtic gentes. “Now that the explanation has once been given,” he remarks, “there can be no doubt that these associations were not really voluntary partnerships, but groups of kinsmen; not, however, so often organized on the ordinary type of the Village-Community as on that of the House-Community, which has recently been examined in Dalmatia and Croatia. Each of them was what the Hindus call a Joint-Undivided family, a collection of assumed descendants from a common ancestor, preserv A brief reference should be made to the question whether any traces of the gentile organization remained among the German tribes when they first came under historical notice. That they inherited this institution, with other Aryan tribes, from the common ancestors of the Aryan family, is probable. When first known to the Romans, they were in the Upper Status of barbarism. They could scarcely have developed the idea of government further than the Grecian and Latin tribes, who were in advance of them, when each respectively became known. While the Germans may have acquired an imperfect conception of a state, founded upon territory and upon property, it is not probable that they had any knowledge of the second great plan of government which the Athenians were first among Aryan tribes to establish. The condition and mode of life of the German tribes, as described by CÆsar and Tacitus, tend to the conclusion that their several societies were held together through personal relations, and with but slight reference to territory; and that their government was through these relations. Civil chiefs and military commanders acquired and held office through the elective principle, and constituted the council which was the chief instrument of government. On lesser affairs, Tacitus remarks, the chiefs consult, but on those of greater importance the whole community. While the final decision of all important questions belonged to the people, they were first maturely considered by the chiefs. CÆsar remarks that the Germans were not studious of agriculture, the greater part of their food consisting of milk, cheese and meat; nor had anyone a fixed quantity of land, or his own individual boundaries, but the magistrates and chiefs each year assigned to the gentes and kinsmen who Tacitus refers to a usage of the German tribes in the arrangement of their forces in battle, by which kinsmen were placed side by side. It would have no significance, if kinship were limited to near consanguinei. And what is an especial incitement of their courage, he remarks, neither chance nor a fortuitous gathering of the forces make up the squadron of horse, or the infantry wedge; but they were formed according to families and kinships (familiÆ et propinquitates). The German tribes, for the purpose of military levies, had the mark (markgenossenschaft), which also existed among the English Saxons, and a larger group, the gau, to which CÆsar and Tacitus gave the name of pagus. We naturally turn to the Asiatic continent, where the types of mankind are the most numerous, and where, consequently, the period of human occupation has been longest, to find the earliest traces of the gentile organization. But here the transformations of society have been the most extended, and the influence of tribes and nations upon each other the most constant. The early development of Chinese and Indian civilization and the overmastering influence of modern civilization have wrought such changes in the con Descent in the female line is still very common in the ruder Asiatic tribes; but there are numerous tribes among whom it is traced in the male line. It is the limitation of descent to one line or the other, followed by the organization of the body of consanguinei, thus separated under a common name which indicates a gens. In the Magar tribe of Nepaul, Latham remarks, “there are twelve thums. All individuals belonging to the same thum are supposed to be descended from the same male ancestor; descent from the same mother being by no means necessary. So husband and wife must belong to different thums. Within one and the same there is no marriage. Do you wish for a wife? If so, look to the thum of your neighbor; at any rate look beyond your own. This is the first time I have found occasion to mention this practice. It will not be the last; on the contrary, the principle it suggests is so common as to be almost universal. We shall find it in Australia; we shall find it in North and South America; we shall find it in Africa; we shall find it in Europe; we shall suspect and infer it in many places where the actual evidence of its existence is incomplete.” “The Munnieporees, and the following tribes inhabiting the hills round Munniepore—the Koupooes, the Mows, the Murams, and the Murring—are each and all divided into four families—Koomul, Looang, Angom, and NingthajÀ. A member of any of these families may marry a member of any other, but the intermarriage of members of the same family is strictly prohibited.” Among the Bengalese “the four castes are subdivided into many different sects or classes, and each of these is again subdivided; for instance, I am of Nundy tribe [gens?], and if I were a heathen I could not marry a woman of the same tribe, although the caste must be the same. The children are of the tribe of their father. Property descends to the sons. In case the person has no sons, to his daughters; and if he leaves neither, to his nearest relatives. Castes are subdivided, such as Shuro, which is one of the first divisions; but it is again subdivided, such as Khayrl, Tilly, Tamally, Tanty, Chomor, Kari, etc. A man belonging to one of these last-named subdivisions cannot marry a woman of the same.” Mr. Tyler remarks, that “in India it is unlawful for a Brahman to marry a wife whose clan-name or ghotra (literally ‘cow-stall’) is the same as his own, a prohibition which bars marriage among relatives in the male line indefinitely. This law appears in the code of Manu as applying to the first three castes, and connexions on the female side are also forbidden to marry within certain wide limits.” The Mongolians approach the American aborigines quite Sir John Lubbock remarks of the Kalmucks that according to De Hell, they “are divided into hordes, and no man can marry a woman of the same horde;” and of the Ostiaks, that they “regard it as a crime to marry a woman of the same family or even of the same name;” and that “when a Jakut (Siberia) wishes to marry, he must choose a girl from another clan.” A peculiar family system prevails among the Chinese which seems to embody the remains of an ancient gentile organization. Mr. Robert Hart, of Canton, in a letter to the author remarks, “that the Chinese expression for the people is Pih-sing, which means the Hundred Family Names; but whether this is mere word-painting, or had its origin at a time when the Chinese general family consisted of one hundred subfamilies or tribes [gentes?] I am unable to determine. At the present day there are about four hundred The family here described appears to be a gens, analogous to the Roman in the time of Romulus; but whether it was reintegrated, with other gentes of common descent, in a phratry does not appear. Moreover, the gentiles are still located as an independent consanguine body in one area, as the Roman gentes were localized in the early period, and the names of the gentes are still of the archaic type. Their increase to four hundred by segmentation might have been expected; but their maintenance to the present time, after the period of barbarism has long passed away, is the remarkable fact, and an additional proof of their immobility as a people. It may be suspected also that the monogamian family in these villages has not attained its full development, and that communism in living, and in wives as well, may not be unknown among them. Among the wild aboriginal tribes, who still inhabit the mountain regions of In like manner the tribes of Afghanistan are said to be subdivided into clans; but whether these clans are true gentes has not been ascertained. Not to weary the reader with further details of a similar character, a sufficient number of cases have been adduced to create a presumption that the gentile organization prevailed very generally and widely among the remote ancestors of the present Asiatic tribes and nations. The twelve tribes of the Hebrews, as they appear in the Book of Numbers, represent a reconstruction of Hebrew society by legislative procurement. The condition of barbarism had then passed away, and that of civilization had commenced. The principle on which the tribes were organized, as bodies of consanguinei, presuppose an anterior gentile system, which had remained in existence and was now systematized. At this time they had no knowledge of any other plan of government than a gentile society formed of consanguine groups united through personal relations. Their subsequent localization in Palestine by consanguine tribes, each district named after one of the twelve sons of Jacob, with the exception of the tribe of Levi, is a practical recognition of the fact that they were organized by lineages and not into a community of citizens. The history of the most remarkable nation of the Semitic family has been concentrated around the names of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the twelve sons of the latter. Hebrew history commences essentially with Abraham, the account of whose forefathers is limited to a pedigree barren of details. A few passages will show the extent of the progress then made, and the status of advancement in which Abraham appeared. He is described as “very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.” Early Hebrew marriage customs indicate the presence of the gens, and in its archaic form. Abraham, by his servant, seemingly purchased Rebekah as a wife for Isaac; the “precious things” being given to the brother, and to the mother of the bride, but not to the father. In this case the presents went to the gentile kindred, provided a gens existed, with descent in the female line. Again, Abraham married his half-sister Sarah. “And yet indeed,” he says, “she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother: and she became my wife.” With an existing gens and descent in the female line Abraham and Sarah would have belonged to different gentes, and although of blood kin they were not of gentile kin, and When the Mosaic legislation was completed the Hebrews were a civilized people, but not far enough advanced to institute political society. The scripture account shows that they were organized in a series of consanguine groups in an ascending scale, analogous to the gens, phratry and tribe of the Greeks. In the muster and organization of the Hebrews, both as a society and as an army, while in the Sinaitic peninsula, repeated references are made to these consanguine groups in an ascending series, the seeming equivalents of a gens, phratry and tribe. Thus, the tribe of Levi consisted of eight gentes, organized in three phratries, as follows:
I. Gershonite Phratry. “Number the children of Levi after the house of their fathers, by their families.... And these were the sons of Levi by their names; Gershon, and Kohath, and Merari. And these were the names of the sons of Gershon by their families; Libni, and Shimei. And the sons of Kohath by their families; Amram, and Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel. And the sons of Merari by their families; Mahli, and Mushi. These are the families of the Levites by the house of their fathers.” The description of these groups sometimes commences with the upper member of the series, and sometimes with the lower or the unit. Thus: “Of the children of Simeon, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers.” With respect to the first and smallest of these groups, “the house of the father,” it must have numbered several hundred persons from the figures given of the number in each phratry. The Hebrew term beth’ ab, signifies paternal house, house of the father, and family house. If the Hebrews possessed the gens, it was this group of persons. The use of two terms to describe it would leave a doubt, unless individual families under monogamy had then become so numerous and so prominent that this circumlocution was necessary to cover the kindred. We have literally, the house of Amram, of Izhar, of Hebron, and of Uzziel; Very few particulars are given respecting the rights, privileges and obligations of the members of these bodies of consanguinei. The idea of kin which united each organization from the house of the father to the tribe, is carried out in a form much more marked and precise than in the corresponding organizations of Grecian, Latin or American Indian tribes. While the Athenian traditions claimed that the four tribes were derived from the four sons of Ion, they did not pretend to explain the origin of the gentes and phratries. On the contrary, the Hebrew account not only derives the twelve tribes genealogically from the twelve sons of Jacob, but also the gentes and phratries from the children and descendants of each. Human experience furnishes no parallel of the growth of gentes and phratries precisely in this way. The account must be explained as a classification of existing consanguine groups, according to the knowledge preserved by tradition, in doing which minor obstacles were overcome by legislative constraint. The Hebrews styled themselves the “People of Israel,” In Africa we encounter a chaos of savagery and barbarism. Original arts and inventions have largely disappeared, through fabrics and utensils introduced from external sources; but savagery in its lowest forms, cannibalism included, and barbarism in its lowest forms prevail over the greater part of the continent. Among the interior tribes, there is a nearer approach to an indigenous culture and to a normal condition; but Africa, in the main, is a barren ethnological field. Although the home of the Negro race, it is well known that their numbers are limited and their areas small. Latham significantly remarks that “the negro is an exceptional African.” All the elements of a true gens are embodied in the foregoing particulars, namely, descent is limited to one line, in this case the female, which gives the gens in its archaic form. Moreover, descent is in the female line with respect to office and to property, as well as the gentile name. The office of chief passes from brother to brother, or from uncle to nephew, that nephew being the son of a sister, as among the American aborigines; whilst the sons are excluded because not members of the gens of the deceased chief. Marriage in the gens is also forbidden. The only material omission in these precise statements is the names of some of the gentes. The hereditary feature requires further explanation. Among the Banyai of the Zambezi river, who are a people of higher grade than the negroes, Dr. Livingstone observed the following usages: “The government of the Banyai is rather peculiar, being a sort of feudal republicanism. The chief is elected, and they choose the son of a deceased chief’s sister in preference to his own offspring. When dissatisfied with one candidate, they even go to a distant tribe for a successor, who is usually of the family of the late chief, a brother, or a sister’s son, but never his own son or daughter.... All the wives, goods, and children of his predecessor belong to him.” The numerous tribes occupying the country watered by the Zambezi, and from thence southward to Cape Colony, are regarded by the natives themselves, according to Dr. Livingstone, as one stock in three great divisions, the Bechuanas, the Basutos, and the Kafirs. Among the Australians the gentes of the Kamilaroi have already been noticed. In ethnical position the aborigines Such pictures of human life enable us to understand the condition of savagery, the grade of its usages, the degree of material development, and the low level of the mental and moral life of the people. Australian humanity, as seen in their cannibal customs, stands on as low a plane as it has been known to touch on the earth. And yet the Australians possessed an area of continental dimensions, rich in minerals, not uncongenial in climate, and fairly supplied with the means of subsistence. But after an occupation which must be measured by thousands of years, they are still savages of the grade above indicated. Left to themselves they would probably have remained for thousands of years to come, not without any, but with such slight improvement as scarcely to lighten the dark shade of their savage state. Among the Australians, whose institutions are normal and homogeneous, the organization into gentes is not confined to the Kamilaroi, but seems to be universal. The Narrinyeri of South Australia, near Lacepede Bay are organized in gentes named after animals and insects. Rev. George Taplin, writing to my friend Mr. Fison, after stating that the Narrinyeri do not marry into their own gens, and that the children were of the gens of their father, continues as follows: “There are no castes, nor are there any classes, similar to those of the Kamilaroi-speaking tribes of New Mr. Fison also writes, “that among the tribes of the Maranoa district, Queensland, whose dialect is called Urghi, according to information communicated to me by Mr. A. S. P. Cameron, the same classification exists as among the Kamilaroi-speaking tribes, both as to the class names and the totems.” With respect to the Australians of the Darling River, upon information communicated by Mr. Charles G. N. Lockwood, he further remarks, that “they are subdivided into tribes [gentes], mentioning the Emu, Wild Duck, and Kangaroo, but without saying whether there are others, and that the children take both the class name and totem of the mother.” From the existence of the gentile organization among the tribes named its general prevalence among the Australian aborigines is rendered probable; although the institution, as has elsewhere been pointed out, is in the incipient stages of its development. Our information with respect to the domestic institutions of the inhabitants of Polynesia, Micronesia and the Papuan Islands is still limited and imperfect. No traces of the gentile organization have been discovered among the Hawaiians, Samoans, Marquesas Islanders or New Zealanders. Their system of consanguinity is still primitive, showing that their institutions have not advanced as far as this organization presupposes. Around the simple ideas relating to marriage and the family, to subsistence and to government, the earliest social organizations were formed; and with them an exposition of the structure and principle of ancient society must commence. Adopting the theory of a progressive development of mankind through the experience of the ages, the insulation of the inhabitants of Oceanica, their limited local areas, and their restricted means of subsistence predetermined a slow rate of progress. They still represent a condition of mankind on the continent of Asia in times immensely remote from the present; and while peculiarities, incident to their insulation, undoubtedly exist, these island societies represent one of the early phases of the great stream of human progress. An exposition of their institutions, inventions and discoveries, and mental and moral traits, would supply one of the great needs of anthropological science. This concludes the discussion of the organization into gentes, and the range of its distribution. The organization has been found among the Australians and African Negroes, with traces of the system in other African tribes. It has been found generally prevalent among that portion of the American aborigines who when discovered were in the Lower Status of barbarism; and also among a portion of the Village Indians who were in the Middle Status of barbarism. In like manner it existed in full vitality among the Grecian and Latin tribes in the Upper Status of barbarism; with traces of it in several of the remaining branches of the Aryan family. The organization has been found, or traces of its existence, in the Turanian, Uralian and Mongolian families; in the Tungusian and Chinese stocks, and The investigation has also arrayed a sufficient body of facts to demonstrate that this remarkable institution was the origin and the basis of Ancient Society. It was the first organic principle, developed through experience, which was able to organize society upon a definite plan, and hold it in organic unity until it was sufficiently advanced for the transition into political society. Its antiquity, its substantial universality and its enduring vitality are sufficiently shown by its perpetuation upon all the continents to the present time. The wonderful adaptability of the gentile organization to the wants of mankind in these several periods and conditions is sufficiently attested by its prevalence and by its preservation. It has been identified with the most eventful portion of the experience of mankind. Whether the gens originates spontaneously in a given condition of society, and would thus repeat itself in disconnected areas; or whether it had a single origin, and was propagated from an original center, through successive migrations, over the earth’s surface, are fair questions for speculative consideration. The latter hypothesis, with a simple modification, seems to be the better one, for the following reasons: We find that two forms of marriage, and two forms of the family preceded the institution of the gens. It required a peculiar experience to attain to the second form of marriage and of the family, and to supplement this experience by the invention of the gens. This second form of the family was the final result, through natural selection, of the reduction within narrower limits of a stupendous conjugal system which enfolded savage man and held him with a powerful grasp. His final deliverance was too remarkable and too improbable, as it would seem, to be repeated many different times, and in widely separated areas. Groups of consan Assuming the unity of origin of mankind, the occupation of the earth occurred through migrations from an original center. The Asiatic continent must then be regarded as the cradle-land of the species, from the greater number of original types of man it contains in comparison with Europe, Africa and America. It would also follow that the separation of the Negroes and Australians from the common stem occurred when society was organized on the basis of sex, and when the family was punuluan; that the Polynesian migration occurred later, but with society similarly constituted; and finally, that the GanowÁnian migration to America occurred later still, and after the institution of the gentes. These inferences are put forward simply as suggestions. A knowledge of the gens and its attributes, and of the range of its distribution, is absolutely necessary to a proper comprehension of Ancient Society. This is the great subject now requiring special and extended investigation. This society among the ancestors of civilized nations attained its highest development in the last days of barbarism. But there were phases of that same society far back in the anterior ages, which must now be sought among barbarians and savages in corresponding conditions. The idea of organized society has been a growth through the entire existence of the human race; its several phases are logically connected, the one giving birth to the other in succession; and that form of it we have been contemplating originated in the gens. No other institution of mankind has held such an ancient and remarkable relation to the course of human progress. The real history of mankind is contained in the history of the growth and development of institutions, of which the gens is but one. It is, however, the basis of those which have exercised the most material influence upon human affairs.
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