Ancient society
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Title: Ancient society
or, Researches in the lines of human progress from savagery, through barbarism to civilization
Author: Lewis Henry Morgan
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ANCIENT SOCIETY
Or
Researches in the Lines of Human Progress
from Savagery, through Barbarism
to Civilization
by
LEWIS H. MORGAN, LL.D.
Member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Author of “The League of the Iroquois,” “The American Beaver and his
Works,” “Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family,”
etc.
_Nescit vox missa reverti._
HORACE.
[Illustration]
New York
Henry Holt and Company
1877
Copyright, 1877,
By Henry Holt.
TO THE REVEREND
J. H. McILVAINE, D.D.,
LATE PROFESSOR OF BELLES-LETTRES IN PRINCETON COLLEGE,
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED,
IN RECOGNITION OF HIS GENIUS AND LEARNING,
AND IN APPRECIATION OF HIS FRIENDSHIP.
Cum prorepserunt primis animalia terris,
Mutum et turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter
Unguibus et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ita porro
Pugnabant armis, quæ post fabricaverat usus:
Donec verba, quibus voces sensusque notarent,
Nominaque invenere: dehinc absistere bello,
Oppida coeperunt munire, et ponere leges,
Ne quis fur esset, neu latro, neu quis adulter.
—Horace, _Sat._, I, iii, 99.
“Modern science claims to be proving, by the most careful and
exhaustive study of man and his works, that our race began
its existence on earth at the bottom of the scale, instead
of at the top, and has been gradually working upward; that
human powers have had a history of development; that all
the elements of culture—as the arts of life, art, science,
language, religion, philosophy—have been wrought out by slow
and painful efforts, in the conflict between the soul and
the mind of man on the one hand, and external nature on the
other.”—Whitney’s _Oriental and Linguistic Studies_, p. 341.
“These communities reflect the spiritual conduct of our
ancestors thousands of times removed. We have passed through
the same stages of development, physical and moral, and are
what we are to-day because they lived, toiled, and endeavored.
Our wondrous civilization is the result of the silent efforts
of millions of unknown men, as the chalk cliffs of England are
formed by contributions of myriads of foraminifera.”—Dr. J.
Kaines, _Anthropologia_, vol. i, No. 2, p. 233.
PREFACE.
The great antiquity of mankind upon the earth has been conclusively
established. It seems singular that the proofs should have been
discovered as recently as within the last thirty years, and that the
present generation should be the first called upon to recognize so
important a fact.
Mankind are now known to have existed in Europe in the glacial period,
and even back of its commencement, with every probability of their
origination in a prior geological age. They have survived many races
of animals with whom they were contemporaneous, and passed through a
process of development, in the several branches of the human family, as
remarkable in its courses as in its progress.
Since the probable length of their career is connected with geological
periods, a limited measure of time is excluded. One hundred or two
hundred thousand years would be an unextravagant estimate of the period
from the disappearance of the glaciers in the northern hemisphere to
the present time. Whatever doubts may attend any estimate of a period,
the actual duration of which is unknown, the existence of mankind
extends backward immeasurably, and loses itself in a vast and profound
antiquity.
This knowledge changes materially the views which have prevailed
respecting the relations of savages to barbarians, and of barbarians
to civilized men. It can now be asserted upon convincing evidence that
savagery preceded barbarism in all the tribes of mankind, as barbarism
is known to have preceded civilization. The history of the human race
is one in source, one in experience, and one in progress.
It is both a natural and a proper desire to learn, if possible, how all
these ages upon ages of past time have been expended by mankind; how
savages, advancing by slow, almost imperceptible steps, attained the
higher condition of barbarians; how barbarians, by similar progressive
advancement, finally attained to civilization; and why other tribes
and nations have been left behind in the race of progress—some in
civilization, some in barbarism, and others in savagery. It is not too
much to expect that ultimately these several questions will be answered.
Inventions and discoveries stand in serial relations along the lines of
human progress, and register its successive stages; while social and
civil institutions, in virtue of their connection with perpetual human
wants, have been developed from a few primary germs of thought. They
exhibit a similar register of progress. These institutions, inventions
and discoveries have embodied and preserved the principal facts now
remaining illustrative of this experience. When collated and compared
they tend to show the unity of origin of mankind, the similarity of
human wants in the same stage of advancement, and the uniformity of the
operations of the human mind in similar conditions of society.
Throughout the latter part of the period of savagery, and the entire
period of barbarism, mankind in general were organized in gentes,
phratries and tribes. These organizations prevailed throughout
the entire ancient world upon all the continents, and were the
instrumentalities by means of which ancient society was organized and
held together. Their structure, and relations as members of an organic
series, and the rights, privileges and obligations of the members of
the gens, and of the members of the phratry and tribe, illustrate the
growth of the idea of government in the human mind. The principal
institutions of mankind originated in savagery, were developed in
barbarism, and are maturing in civilization.
In like manner, the family has passed through successive forms, and
created great systems of consanguinity and affinity which have remained
to the present time. These systems, which record the relationships
existing in the family of the period, when each system respectively
was formed, contain an instructive record of the experience of
mankind while the family was advancing from the consanguine, through
intermediate forms, to the monogamian.
The idea of property has undergone a similar growth and development.
Commencing at zero in savagery, the passion for the possession of
property, as the representative of accumulated subsistence, has now
become dominant over the human mind in civilized races.
The four classes of facts above indicated, and which extend themselves
in parallel lines along the pathways of human progress from savagery to
civilization, form the principal subjects of discussion in this volume.
There is one field of labor in which, as Americans, we have a special
interest as well as a special duty. Rich as the American continent
is known to be in material wealth, it is also the richest of all the
continents in ethnological, philological and archæological materials,
illustrative of the great period of barbarism. Since mankind were one
in origin, their career has been essentially one, running in different
but uniform channels upon all continents, and very similarly in all the
tribes and nations of mankind down to the same status of advancement.
It follows that the history and experience of the American Indian
tribes represent, more or less nearly, the history and experience of
our own remote ancestors when in corresponding conditions. Forming a
part of the human record, their institutions, arts, inventions and
practical experience possess a high and special value reaching far
beyond the Indian race itself.
When discovered, the American Indian tribes represented three distinct
ethnical periods, and more completely than they were elsewhere then
represented upon the earth. Materials for ethnology, philology and
archæology were offered in unparalleled abundance; but as these
sciences scarcely existed until the present century, and are but
feebly prosecuted among us at the present time, the workmen have been
unequal to the work. Moreover, while fossil remains buried in the earth
will keep for the future student, the remains of Indian arts, languages
and institutions will not. They are perishing daily, and have been
perishing for upwards of three centuries. The ethnic life of the Indian
tribes is declining under the influence of American civilization,
their arts and languages are disappearing, and their institutions are
dissolving. After a few more years, facts that may now be gathered with
ease will become impossible of discovery. These circumstances appeal
strongly to Americans to enter this great field and gather its abundant
harvest.
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, March, 1877.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PART I.
GROWTH OF INTELLIGENCE THROUGH INVENTIONS AND
DISCOVERIES.
CHAPTER I.
ETHNICAL PERIODS.
Progress of Mankind from the Bottom of the Scale.—Illustrated
by Inventions, Discoveries and Institutions.—Two Plans
of Government—one Gentile and Social, giving a Society
(_Societas_); the other Political, giving a State
(_Civitas_).—The former founded upon Persons and Gentilism;
the Latter upon Territory and Property.—The First, the Plan of
Government of Ancient Society.—The Second, that of Modern or
Civilized Society.—Uniformity of Human Experience.—Proposed
Ethnical Periods—I. Lower Status of Savagery; II. Middle
Status of Savagery; III. Upper Status of Savagery; IV. Lower
Status of Barbarism; V. Middle Status of Barbarism; VI. Upper
Status of Barbarism; VII. Status of Civilization. 3
CHAPTER II.
ARTS OF SUBSISTENCE.
Supremacy of Mankind over the Earth.—Control over Subsistence
the Condition.—Mankind alone gained that Control.—Successive
Arts of Subsistence—I. Natural Subsistence; II. Fish
Subsistence; III. Farinaceous Subsistence; IV. Meat and
Milk Subsistence; V. Unlimited Subsistence through Field
Agriculture.—Long Intervals of Time between them. 19
CHAPTER III.
RATIO OF HUMAN PROGRESS.
Retrospect on the Lines of Human Progress.—Principal
Contributions of Modern Civilization.—Of Ancient
Civilization.—Of Later Period of Barbarism.—Of Middle
Period.—Of Older Period.—Of Period of Savagery.—Humble
Condition of Primitive Man.—Human Progress in a Geometrical
Ratio.—Relative Length of Ethnical Periods.—Appearance of
Semitic and Aryan Families. 29
PART II.
GROWTH OF THE IDEA OF GOVERNMENT.
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. 49
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. 62
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 Thlinkeets.—Their Probable
Universality in the Tribes of the American Aborigines. 88
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. 102
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. 122
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 North-west 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. 151
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. 186
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.—Rights, Privileges and Obligations of
the Members of the Gens.—Similar to those of the Iroquois
Gens.—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 Center of Social and Religious Influence. 215
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.—Boulê, 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. 235
CHAPTER X.
THE INSTITUTION OF GRECIAN POLITICAL SOCIETY.
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 Trittyes.—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. 256
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, Privileges and Obligations of the Members of a
Gens.—Democratic Constitution of Ancient Latin Society.—Number
of Persons in a Gens. 277
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. 300
CHAPTER XIII.
THE INSTITUTION OF ROMAN POLITICAL SOCIETY.
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. 323
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. 343
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 Rewas.—Wide Distribution of
Gentile Organization. 357
PART III.
GROWTH OF THE IDEA OF THE FAMILY.
CHAPTER I.
THE ANCIENT FAMILY.
Five successive Forms of the Family.—First, the Consanguine
Family.—It created the Malayan System of Consanguinity and
Affinity.—Second, the Punaluan.—It created the Turanian
and Ganowánian System.—Third, the Monogamian.—It created
the Aryan, Semitic, and Uralian System.—The Syndyasmian
and Patriarchal Families Intermediate.— Both failed to
create a System of Consanguinity.—These Systems Natural
Growths.—Two Ultimate Forms.—One Classificatory, the other
Descriptive.—General Principles of these Systems.—Their
Persistent Maintenance. 383
CHAPTER II.
THE CONSANGUINE FAMILY.
Former Existence of this Family.—Proved by Malayan System of
Consanguinity.—Hawaiian System used as Typical.—Five Grades of
Relations.—Details of System.—Explained in its origin by the
Intermarriage of Brothers and Sisters in a Group.—Early State
of Society in the Sandwich Islands.—Nine Grades of Relations
of the Chinese.—Identical in Principle with the Hawaiian.—Five
Grades of Relations in Ideal Republic of Plato.—Table of
Malayan System of Consanguinity and Affinity. 401
CHAPTER III.
THE PUNALUAN FAMILY.
The Punaluan Family supervened upon the
Consanguine.—Transition, how Produced.—Hawaiian Custom of
Punalua.—Its probable ancient Prevalence over wide Areas.—The
Gentes originated probably in Punaluan Groups.—The Turanian
System of Consanguinity.—Created by the Punaluan Family.—It
proves the Existence of this Family when the System was
formed.—Details of System.—Explanation of its Relationships
in their Origin.—Table of Turanian and Ganowánian Systems of
Consanguinity and Affinity. 424
CHAPTER IV.
THE SYNDYASMIAN AND THE PATRIARCHAL FAMILIES.
The Syndyasmian Family.—How Constituted.—Its
Characteristics.—Influence upon it of the Gentile
Organization.—Propensity to Pair a late Development.—Ancient
Society should be Studied where the highest Exemplifications
are found.—The Patriarchal Family.—Paternal Power its
Essential Characteristic.—Polygamy subordinate.—The Roman
Family similar.—Paternal Power unknown in previous Families. 453
CHAPTER V.
THE MONOGAMIAN FAMILY.
This Family comparatively Modern.—The Term Familia.—Family
of Ancient Germans.—Of Homeric Greeks.—Of Civilized
Greeks.—Seclusion of Wives.—Obligations of Monogamy not
respected by the Males.—The Roman Family.—Wives under
Power.—Aryan System of Consanguinity.—It came in under
Monogamy.—Previous System probably Turanian.—Transition
from Turanian into Aryan.—Roman and Arabic Systems of
Consanguinity.—Details of the Former.—Present Monogamian
Family.—Table of Roman and Arabic Systems. 468
CHAPTER VI.
SEQUENCE OF INSTITUTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE FAMILY.
Sequence in part Hypothetical.—Relation of these Institutions
in the Order of their Origination.—Evidence of their
Origination in the Order named.—Hypothesis of Degradation
Considered.—The Antiquity of Mankind. 498
PART IV.
GROWTH OF THE IDEA OF PROPERTY.
CHAPTER I.
THE THREE RULES OF INHERITANCE.
Property in the Status of Savagery.—Slow Rate of
Progress.—First Rule of Inheritance.—Property Distributed
among the Gentiles.—Property in the Lower Status of
Barbarism.—Germ of Second Rule of Inheritance.—Distributed
among Agnatic Kindred.—Improved Character of Man.—Property in
Middle Status.—Rule of Inheritance imperfectly Known.—Agnatic
Inheritance Probable. 523
CHAPTER II.
THE THREE RULES OF INHERITANCE—CONTINUED.
Property in the Upper Status of Barbarism.—Slavery.—Tenure
of Lands in Grecian Tribes.—Culture of the Period.—Its
Brilliancy.—Third Rule of Inheritance.—Exclusively in
Children.—Hebrew Tribes.—Rule of Inheritance.—Daughters of
Zelophehad.—Property remained in the Phratry, and probably in
the Gens.—The Reversion.—Athenian Inheritance.—Exclusively
in Children.—The Reversion.—Inheritance remained in
the Gens.—Heiresses.—Wills.—Roman Inheritance.—The
Reversion.—Property remained in the Gens.—Appearance of
Aristocracy.—Property Career of the Human Race.—Unity of
Origin of Mankind. 537
PART I.
GROWTH OF INTELLIGENCE THROUGH INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES.
ANCIENT SOCIETY
CHAPTER I.
ETHNICAL PERIODS.
PROGRESS OF MANKIND FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE SCALE.—ILLUSTRATED
BY INVENTIONS DISCOVERIES AND INSTITUTIONS.—TWO PLANS
OF GOVERNMENT—ONE GENTILE AND SOCIAL, GIVING A SOCIETY,
(_Societas_); THE OTHER POLITICAL, GIVING A STATE,
(_Civitas_).—THE FORMER FOUNDED UPON PERSONS AND GENTILISM;
THE LATTER UPON TERRITORY AND PROPERTY.—THE FIRST, THE PLAN OF
GOVERNMENT OF ANCIENT SOCIETY.—THE SECOND, THAT OF MODERN OR
CIVILIZED SOCIETY.—UNIFORMITY OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE.—PROPOSED
ETHNICAL PERIODS—I. LOWER STATUS OF SAVAGERY; II. MIDDLE
STATUS OF SAVAGERY; III. UPPER STATUS OF SAVAGERY; IV. LOWER
STATUS OF BARBARISM; V. MIDDLE STATUS OF BARBARISM; VI. UPPER
STATUS OF BARBARISM; VII. STATUS OF CIVILIZATION.
The latest investigations respecting the early condition of the human
race, are tending to the conclusion that mankind commenced their career
at the bottom of the scale and worked their way up from savagery to
civilization through the slow accumulations of experimental knowledge.
As it is undeniable that portions of the human family have existed in
a state of savagery, other portions in a state of barbarism, and still
other portions in a state of civilization, it seems equally so that
these three distinct conditions are connected with each other in a
natural as well as necessary sequence of progress. Moreover, that this
sequence has been historically true of the entire human family, up to
the status attained by each branch respectively, is rendered probable
by the conditions under which all progress occurs, and by the known
advancement of several branches of the family through two or more of
these conditions.
An attempt will be made in the following pages to bring forward
additional evidence of the rudeness of the early condition of mankind,
of the gradual evolution of their mental and moral powers through
experience, and of their protracted struggle with opposing obstacles
while winning their way to civilization. It will be drawn, in part,
from the great sequence of inventions and discoveries which stretches
along the entire pathway of human progress; but chiefly from domestic
institutions, which express the growth of certain ideas and passions.
As we re-ascend along the several lines of progress toward the
primitive ages of mankind, and eliminate one after the other, in the
order in which they appeared, inventions and discoveries on the one
hand, and institutions on the other, we are enabled to perceive that
the former stand to each other in progressive, and the latter in
unfolding relations. While the former class have had a connection,
more or less direct, the latter have been developed from a few primary
germs of thought. Modern institutions plant their roots in the period
of barbarism, into which their germs were transmitted from the previous
period of savagery. They have had a lineal descent through the ages,
with the streams of the blood, as well as a logical development.
Two independent lines of investigation thus invite our attention. The
one leads through inventions and discoveries, and the other through
primary institutions. With the knowledge gained therefrom, we may hope
to indicate the principal stages of human development. The proofs
to be adduced will be drawn chiefly from domestic institutions; the
references to achievements more strictly intellectual being general as
well as subordinate.
The facts indicate the gradual formation and subsequent development of
certain ideas, passions, and aspirations. Those which hold the most
prominent positions may be generalized as growths of the particular
ideas with which they severally stand connected. Apart from inventions
and discoveries they are the following:
I. _Subsistence_,
II. _Government_,
III. _Language_,
IV. _The Family_,
V. _Religion_,
VI. _House Life and Architecture_,
VII. _Property_.
_First._ Subsistence has been increased and perfected by a series of
successive arts, introduced at long intervals of time, and connected
more or less directly with inventions and discoveries.
_Second._ The germ of government must be sought in the organization
into gentes in the Status of savagery; and followed down, through the
advancing forms of this institution, to the establishment of political
society.
_Third._ Human speech seems to have been developed from the rudest and
simplest forms of expression. Gesture or sign language, as intimated
by Lucretius,[1] must have preceded articulate language, as thought
preceded speech. The monosyllabical preceded the syllabical, as the
latter did that of concrete words. Human intelligence, unconscious of
design, evolved articulate language by utilizing the vocal sounds.
This great subject, a department of knowledge by itself, does not fall
within the scope of the present investigation.
_Fourth._ With respect to the family, the stages of its growth are
embodied in systems of consanguinity and affinity, and in usages
relating to marriage, by means of which, collectively, the family can
be definitely traced through several successive forms.
_Fifth._ The growth of religious ideas is environed with such intrinsic
difficulties that it may never receive a perfectly satisfactory
exposition. Religion deals so largely with the imaginative and
emotional nature, and consequently with such uncertain elements of
knowledge, that all primitive religions are grotesque and to some
extent unintelligible. This subject also falls without the plan of this
work excepting as it may prompt incidental suggestions.
_Sixth._ House architecture, which connects itself with the form of
the family and the plan of domestic life, affords a tolerably complete
illustration of progress from savagery to civilization. Its growth can
be traced from the hut of the savage, through the communal houses of
the barbarians, to the house of the single family of civilized nations,
with all the successive links by which one extreme is connected with
the other. This subject will be noticed incidentally.
_Lastly._ The idea of property was slowly formed in the human mind,
remaining nascent and feeble through immense periods of time. Springing
into life in savagery, it required all the experience of this period
and of the subsequent period of barbarism to develop the germ, and
to prepare the human brain for the acceptance of its controlling
influence. Its dominance as a passion over all other passions marks
the commencement of civilization. It not only led mankind to overcome
the obstacles which delayed civilization, but to establish political
society on the basis of territory and of property. A critical knowledge
of the evolution of the idea of property would embody, in some
respects, the most remarkable portion of the mental history of mankind.
It will be my object to present some evidence of human progress along
these several lines, and through successive ethnical periods, as it is
revealed by inventions and discoveries, and by the growth of the ideas
of government, of the family, and of property.
It may be here premised that all forms of government are reducible
to two general plans, using the word plan in its scientific sense.
In their bases the two are fundamentally distinct. The first, in the
order of time, is founded upon persons, and upon relations purely
personal, and may be distinguished as a society (_societas_). The gens
is the unit of this organization; giving as the successive stages
of integration, in the archaic period, the gens, the phratry, the
tribe and the confederacy of tribes, which constituted a people or
nation (_populus_). At a later period a coalescence of tribes in the
same area into a nation took the place of a confederacy of tribes
occupying independent areas. Such, through prolonged ages, after the
gens appeared, was the substantially universal organization of ancient
society; and it remained among the Greeks and Romans after civilization
supervened. The second is founded upon territory and upon property,
and may be distinguished as a state (_civitas_). The township or ward,
circumscribed by metes and bounds, with the property it contains, is
the basis or unit of the latter, and political society is the result.
Political society is organized upon territorial areas, and deals with
property as well as with persons through territorial relations. The
successive stages of integration are the township or ward, which is the
unit of organization; the county or province, which is an aggregation
of townships or wards; and the national domain or territory, which is
an aggregation of counties or provinces; the people of each of which
are organized into a body politic. It taxed the Greeks and Romans to
the extent of their capacities, after they had gained civilization, to
invent the deme or township and the city ward; and thus inaugurate the
second great plan of government, which remains among civilized nations
to the present hour. In ancient society this territorial plan was
unknown. When it came in it fixed the boundary line between ancient and
modern society, as the distinction will be recognized in these pages.
It may be further observed that the domestic institutions of the
barbarous, and even of the savage ancestors of mankind, are still
exemplified in portions of the human family with such completeness
that, with the exception of the strictly primitive period, the several
stages of this progress are tolerably well preserved. They are seen in
the organization of society upon the basis of sex, then upon the basis
of kin, and finally upon the basis of territory; through the successive
forms of marriage and of the family, with the systems of consanguinity
thereby created; through house life and architecture; and through
progress in usages with respect to the ownership and inheritance of
property.
The theory of human degradation to explain the existence of savages
and of barbarians is no longer tenable. It came in as a corollary from
the Mosaic cosmogony, and was acquiesced in from a supposed necessity
which no longer exists. As a theory, it is not only incapable of
explaining the existence of savages, but it is without support in the
facts of human experience.
The remote ancestors of the Aryan nations presumptively passed through
an experience similar to that of existing barbarous and savage tribes.
Though the experience of these nations embodies all the information
necessary to illustrate the periods of civilization, both ancient
and modern, together with a part of that in the Later period of
barbarism, their anterior experience must be deduced, in the main,
from the traceable connection between the elements of their existing
institutions and inventions, and similar elements still preserved in
those of savage and barbarous tribes.
It may be remarked finally that the experience of mankind has run in
nearly uniform channels; that human necessities in similar conditions
have been substantially the same; and that the operations of the mental
principle have been uniform in virtue of the specific identity of the
brain of all the races of mankind. This, however, is but a part of
the explanation of uniformity in results. The germs of the principal
institutions and arts of life were developed while man was still a
savage. To a very great extent the experience of the subsequent periods
of barbarism and of civilization have been expended in the further
development of these original conceptions. Wherever a connection can
be traced on different continents between a present institution and
a common germ, the derivation of the people themselves from a common
original stock is implied.
The discussion of these several classes of facts will be facilitated
by the establishment of a certain number of Ethnical Periods; each
representing a distinct condition of society, and distinguishable by
a mode of life peculiar to itself. The terms “Age of _Stone_,” “of
_Bronze_,” and “of _Iron_” introduced by Danish archæologists, have
been extremely useful for certain purposes, and will remain so for
the classification of objects of ancient art; but the progress of
knowledge has rendered other and different subdivisions necessary.
Stone implements were not entirely laid aside with the introduction of
tools of iron, nor of those of bronze. The invention of the process
of smelting iron ore created an ethnical epoch, yet we could scarcely
date another from the production of bronze. Moreover, since the period
of stone implements overlaps those of bronze and of iron, and since
that of bronze also overlaps that of iron, they are not capable of a
circumscription that would leave each independent and distinct.
It is probable that the successive arts of subsistence which arose at
long intervals will ultimately, from the great influence they must have
exercised upon the condition of mankind, afford the most satisfactory
bases for these divisions. But investigation has not been carried far
enough in this direction to yield the necessary information. With
our present knowledge the main result can be attained by selecting
such other inventions or discoveries as will afford sufficient tests
of progress to characterize the commencement of successive ethnical
periods. Even though accepted as provisional, these periods will be
found convenient and useful. Each of those about to be proposed will be
found to cover a distinct culture, and to represent a particular mode
of life.
The period of savagery, of the early part of which very little is
known, may be divided, provisionally, into three sub-periods. These may
be named respectively the _Older_, the _Middle_, and the _Later_ period
of savagery; and the condition of society in each, respectively, may be
distinguished as the _Lower_, the _Middle_, and the _Upper Status_ of
savagery.
In like manner, the period of barbarism divides naturally into three
sub-periods, which will be called, respectively, the _Older_, the
_Middle_, and the _Later_ period of barbarism; and the condition of
society in each, respectively, will be distinguished as the _Lower_,
the _Middle_, and the _Upper Status_ of barbarism.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to find such tests of progress
to mark the commencement of these several periods as will be found
absolute in their application, and without exceptions upon all the
continents. Neither is it necessary, for the purpose in hand, that
exceptions should not exist. It will be sufficient if the principal
tribes of mankind can be classified, according to the degree of their
relative progress, into conditions which can be recognized as distinct.
I. _Lower Status of Savagery._
This period commenced with the infancy of the human race, and may be
said to have ended with the acquisition of a fish subsistence and of
a knowledge of the use of fire. Mankind were then living in their
original restricted habitat, and subsisting upon fruits and nuts.
The commencement of articulate speech belongs to this period. No
exemplification of tribes of mankind in this condition remained to the
historical period.
II. _Middle Status of Savagery._
It commenced with the acquisition of a fish subsistence and a knowledge
of the use of fire, and ended with the invention of the bow and
arrow. Mankind, while in this condition, spread from their original
habitat over the greater portion of the earth’s surface. Among tribes
still existing it will leave in the Middle Status of savagery, for
example, the Australians and the greater part of the Polynesians when
discovered. It will be sufficient to give one or more exemplifications
of each status.
III. _Upper Status of Savagery._
It commenced with the invention of the bow and arrow, and ended with
the invention of the art of pottery. It leaves in the Upper Status
of Savagery the Athapascan tribes of the Hudson’s Bay Territory, the
tribes of the valley of the Columbia, and certain coast tribes of North
and South America; but with relation to the time of their discovery.
This closes the period of Savagery.
IV. _Lower Status of Barbarism._
The invention or practice of the art of pottery, all things considered,
is probably the most effective and conclusive test that can be selected
to fix a boundary line, necessarily arbitrary, between savagery and
barbarism. The distinctness of the two conditions has long been
recognized, but no criterion of progress out of the former into the
latter has hitherto been brought forward. All such tribes, then, as
never attained to the art of pottery will be classed as savages, and
those possessing this art but who never attained a phonetic alphabet
and the use of writing will be classed as barbarians.
The first sub-period of barbarism commenced with the manufacture of
pottery, whether by original invention or adoption. In finding its
termination, and the commencement of the Middle Status, a difficulty
is encountered in the unequal endowments of the two hemispheres, which
began to be influential upon human affairs after the period of savagery
had passed. It may be met, however, by the adoption of equivalents.
In the Eastern hemisphere, the domestication of animals, and in the
Western, the cultivation of maize and plants by irrigation, together
with the use of adobe-brick and stone in house building have been
selected as sufficient evidence of progress to work a transition out
of the Lower and into the Middle Status of barbarism. It leaves, for
example, in the Lower Status, the Indian tribes of the United States
east of the Missouri River, and such tribes of Europe and Asia as
practiced the art of pottery, but were without domestic animals.
V. _Middle Status of Barbarism._
It commenced with the domestication of animals in the Eastern
hemisphere, and in the Western with cultivation by irrigation and
with the use of adobe-brick and stone in architecture, as shown.
Its termination may be fixed with the invention of the process of
smelting iron ore. This places in the Middle Status, for example, the
Village Indians of New Mexico, Mexico, Central America and Peru, and
such tribes in the Eastern hemisphere as possessed domestic animals,
but were without a knowledge of iron. The ancient Britons, although
familiar with the use of iron, fairly belong in this connection. The
vicinity of more advanced continental tribes had advanced the arts of
life among them far beyond the state of development of their domestic
institutions.
VI. _Upper Status of Barbarism._
It commenced with the manufacture of iron, and ended with the invention
of a phonetic alphabet, and the use of writing in literary composition.
Here civilization begins. This leaves in the Upper Status, for example,
the Grecian tribes of the Homeric age, the Italian tribes shortly
before the founding of Rome, and the Germanic tribes of the time of
Cæsar.
VII. _Status of Civilization._
It commenced, as stated, with the use of a phonetic alphabet and
the production of literary records, and divides into _Ancient_ and
_Modern_. As an equivalent, hieroglyphical writing upon stone may be
admitted.
RECAPITULATION.
_Periods._ _Conditions._
I. _Older Period of Savagery_, I. _Lower Status of Savagery_,
II. _Middle Period of Savagery_, II. _Middle Status of Savagery_,
III. _Later Period of Savagery_, III. _Upper Status of Savagery_,
IV. _Older Period of Barbarism_, IV. _Lower Status of Barbarism_,
V. _Middle Period of Barbarism_, V. _Middle Status of Barbarism_,
VI. _Later Period of Barbarism_, VI. _Upper Status of Barbarism_,
VII. STATUS OF CIVILIZATION.
I. _Lower Status of Savagery, From the Infancy of the Human
Race to the commencement
of the next Period._
II. _Middle Status of Savagery, From the acquisition of a fish
subsistence and a knowledge
of the use of fire, to etc._
III. _Upper Status of Savagery, From the Invention of the
Bow and Arrow, to etc._
IV. _Lower Status of Barbarism, From the Invention of the
Art of Pottery, to etc._
V. _Middle Status of Barbarism, From the Domestication of
animals on the Eastern hemisphere,
and in the Western
from the cultivation of maize
and plants by Irrigation, with
the use of adobe-brick and
stone, to etc._
VI. _Upper Status of Barbarism, From the Invention of the
process of Smelting Iron Ore,
with the use of iron tools, to
etc._
VII. _Status of Civilization, From the Invention of a Phonetic
Alphabet, with the use of
writing, to the present time._
Each of these periods has a distinct culture and exhibits a mode of
life more or less special and peculiar to itself. This specialization
of ethnical periods renders it possible to treat a particular society
according to its condition of relative advancement, and to make it a
subject of independent study and discussion. It does not affect the
main result that different tribes and nations on the same continent,
and even of the same linguistic family, are in different conditions at
the same time, since for our purpose the _condition_ of each is the
material fact, the _time_ being immaterial.
Since the use of pottery is less significant than that of domestic
animals, of iron, or of a phonetic alphabet, employed to mark the
commencement of subsequent ethnical periods, the reasons for its
adoption should be stated. The manufacture of pottery presupposes
village life, and considerable progress in the simple arts.[2] Flint
and stone implements are older than pottery, remains of the former
having been found in ancient repositories in numerous instances
unaccompanied by the latter. A succession of inventions of greater
need and adapted to a lower condition must have occurred before the
want of pottery would be felt. The commencement of village life, with
some degree of control over subsistence, wooden vessels and utensils,
finger weaving with filaments of bark, basket making, and the bow and
arrow make their appearance before the art of pottery. The Village
Indians who were in the Middle Status of barbarism, such as the
Zuñians, the Aztecs and the Cholulans, manufactured pottery in large
quantities and in many forms of considerable excellence; the partially
Village Indians of the United States, who were in the Lower Status
of barbarism, such as the Iroquois, the Choctas and the Cherokees,
made it in smaller quantities and in a limited number of forms; but
the Non-horticultural Indians, who were in the Status of savagery,
such as the Athapascans, the tribes of California and of the valley of
the Columbia, were ignorant of its use.[3] In Lubbock’s _Pre-Historic
Times_, in Tylor’s _Early History of Mankind_, and in Peschel’s _Races
of Man_, the particulars respecting this art, and the extent of its
distribution, have been collected with remarkable breadth of research.
It was unknown in Polynesia (with the exception of the Islands of the
Tongans and Fijians), in Australia, in California, and in the Hudson’s
Bay Territory. Mr. Tylor remarks that “the art of weaving was unknown
in most of the Islands away from Asia,” and that “in most of the South
Sea Islands there was no knowledge of pottery.”[4] The Rev. Lorimer
Fison, an English missionary residing in Australia, informed the author
in answer to inquiries, that “the Australians had no woven fabrics,
no pottery, and were ignorant of the bow and arrow.” This last fact
was also true in general of the Polynesians. The introduction of the
ceramic art produced a new epoch in human progress in the direction of
an improved living and increased domestic conveniences. While flint
and stone implements—which came in earlier and required long periods
of time to develop all their uses—gave the canoe, wooden vessels and
utensils, and ultimately timber and plank in house architecture,[5]
pottery gave a durable vessel for boiling food, which before that had
been rudely accomplished in baskets coated with clay, and in ground
cavities lined with skin, the boiling being effected with heated
stones.[6]
Whether the pottery of the aborigines was hardened by fire or cured by
the simple process of drying, has been made a question. Prof. E. T.
Cox, of Indianapolis, has shown by comparing the analyses of ancient
pottery and hydraulic cements, “that so far as chemical constituents
are concerned it (the pottery) agrees very well with the composition of
hydraulic stones.” He remarks further, that “all the pottery belonging
to the mound-builders’ age, which I have seen, is composed of alluvial
clay and sand, or a mixture of the former with pulverized fresh-water
shells. A paste made of such a mixture possesses in a high degree the
properties of hydraulic Puzzuolani and Portland cement, so that vessels
formed of it hardened without being burned, as is customary with
modern pottery. The fragments of shells served the purpose of gravel
or fragments of stone as at present used in connection with hydraulic
lime for the manufacture of artificial stone.”[7] The composition of
Indian pottery in analogy with that of hydraulic cement suggests the
difficulties in the way of inventing the art, and tends also to explain
the lateness of its introduction in the course of human experience.
Notwithstanding the ingenious suggestion of Prof. Cox, it is probable
that pottery was hardened by artificial heat. In some cases the fact
is directly attested. Thus Adair, speaking of the Gulf Tribes, remarks
that “they make earthern pots of very different sizes, so as to contain
from two to ten gallons, large pitchers to carry water, bowls, dishes,
platters, basins, and a prodigious number of other vessels of such
antiquated forms as would be tedious to describe, and impossible to
name. Their method of glazing them is, they place them over a large
fire of smoky pitch-pine, which makes them smooth, black and firm.”[8]
Another advantage of fixing definite ethnical periods is the direction
of special investigation to those tribes and nations which afford the
best exemplification of each status, with the view of making each both
standard and illustrative. Some tribes and families have been left
in geographical isolation to work out the problems of progress by
original mental effort; and have, consequently, retained their arts
and institutions pure and homogeneous; while those of other tribes
and nations have been adulterated through external influence. Thus,
while Africa was and is an ethnical chaos of savagery and barbarism,
Australia and Polynesia were in savagery, pure and simple, with the
arts and institutions belonging to that condition. In like manner, the
Indian family of America, unlike any other existing family, exemplified
the condition of mankind in three successive ethnical periods. In the
undisturbed possession of a great continent, of common descent, and
with homogeneous institutions, they illustrated, when discovered, each
of these conditions, and especially those of the Lower and of the
Middle Status of barbarism, more elaborately and completely than any
other portion of mankind. The far northern Indians and some of the
coast tribes of North and South America were in the Upper Status of
savagery; the partially Village Indians east of the Mississippi were
in the Lower Status of barbarism, and the Village Indians of North
and South America were in the Middle Status. Such an opportunity to
recover full and minute information of the course of human experience
and progress in developing their arts and institutions through these
successive conditions has not been offered within the historical
period. It must be added that it has been indifferently improved. Our
greatest deficiencies relate to the last period named.
Differences in the culture of the same period in the Eastern and
Western hemispheres undoubtedly existed in consequence of the unequal
endowments of the continents; but the condition of society in the
corresponding status must have been, in the main, substantially similar.
The ancestors of the Grecian, Roman and German tribes passed through
the stages we have indicated, in the midst of the last of which the
light of history fell upon them. Their differentiation from the
undistinguishable mass of barbarians did not occur, probably, earlier
than the commencement of the Middle Period of barbarism. The experience
of these tribes has been lost, with the exception of so much as is
represented by the institutions, inventions and discoveries which they
brought with them, and possessed when they first came under historical
observation. The Grecian and Latin tribes of the Homeric and Romulian
periods afford the highest exemplification of the Upper Status of
barbarism. Their institutions were likewise pure and homogeneous, and
their experience stands directly connected with the final achievement
of civilization.
Commencing, then, with the Australians and Polynesians, following
with the American Indian tribes, and concluding with the Roman and
Grecian, who afford the highest exemplifications respectively of the
six great stages of human progress, the sum of their united experiences
may be supposed fairly to represent that of the human family from
the Middle Status of savagery to the end of ancient civilization.
Consequently, the Aryan nations will find the type of the condition of
their remote ancestors, when in savagery, in that of the Australians
and Polynesians; when in the Lower Status of barbarism in that of the
partially Village Indians of America; and when in the Middle Status
in that of the Village Indians, with which their own experience in
the Upper Status directly connects. So essentially identical are
the arts institutions and mode of life in the same status upon all
the continents, that the archaic form of the principal domestic
institutions of the Greeks and Romans must even now be sought in the
corresponding institutions of the American aborigines, as will be
shown in the course of this volume. This fact forms a part of the
accumulating evidence tending to show that the principal institutions
of mankind have been developed from a few primary germs of thought; and
that the course and manner of their development was predetermined, as
well as restricted within narrow limits of divergence, by the natural
logic of the human mind and the necessary limitations of its powers.
Progress has been found to be substantially the same in kind in tribes
and nations inhabiting different and even disconnected continents,
while in the same status, with deviations from uniformity in particular
instances produced by special causes. The argument when extended tends
to establish the unity of origin of mankind.
In studying the condition of tribes and nations in these several
ethnical periods we are dealing, substantially, with the ancient
history and condition of our own remote ancestors.
CHAPTER II.
ARTS OF SUBSISTENCE.
SUPREMACY OF MANKIND OVER THE EARTH.—CONTROL OVER SUBSISTENCE
THE CONDITION.—MANKIND ALONE GAINED THAT CONTROL.—SUCCESSIVE
ARTS OF SUBSISTENCE.—I. NATURAL SUBSISTENCE; II. FISH
SUBSISTENCE; III. FARINACEOUS SUBSISTENCE; IV. MEAT AND
MILK SUBSISTENCE; V. UNLIMITED SUBSISTENCE THROUGH FIELD
AGRICULTURE.—LONG INTERVALS OF TIME BETWEEN THEM.
The important fact that mankind commenced at the bottom of the scale
and worked up, is revealed in an expressive manner by their successive
arts of subsistence. Upon their skill in this direction, the whole
question of human supremacy on the earth depended. Mankind are the
only beings who may be said to have gained an absolute control over
the production of food; which at the outset they did not possess above
other animals. Without enlarging the basis of subsistence, mankind
could not have propagated themselves into other areas not possessing
the same kinds of food, and ultimately over the whole surface of
the earth; and lastly, without obtaining an absolute control over
both its variety and amount, they could not have multiplied into
populous nations. It is accordingly probable that the great epochs of
human progress have been identified, more or less directly, with the
enlargement of the sources of subsistence.
We are able to distinguish five of these sources of human food, created
by what may be called as many successive arts, one superadded to the
other, and brought out at long separated intervals of time. The first
two originated in the period of savagery, and the last three, in the
period of barbarism. They are the following, stated in the order of
their appearance:
I. _Natural Subsistence upon Fruits and Roots on a Restricted Habitat._
This proposition carries us back to the strictly primitive period of
mankind, when few in numbers, simple in subsistence, and occupying
limited areas, they were just entering upon their new career. There
is neither an art, nor an institution, that can be referred to this
period; and but one invention, that of language, which can be connected
with an epoch so remote. The kind of subsistence indicated assumes a
tropical or sub-tropical climate. In such a climate, by common consent,
the habitat of primitive man has been placed. In fruit and nut-bearing
forests under a tropical sun, we are accustomed, and with reason, to
regard our progenitors as having commenced their existence.
The races of animals preceded the race of mankind, in the order of
time. We are warranted in supposing that they were in the plenitude
of their strength and numbers when the human race first appeared. The
classical poets pictured the tribes of mankind dwelling in groves, in
caves and in forests, for the possession of which they disputed with
wild beasts[9]—while they sustained themselves with the spontaneous
fruits of the earth. If mankind commenced their career without
experience, without weapons, and surrounded with ferocious animals, it
is not improbable that they were, at least partially, tree-livers, as a
means of protection and security.
The maintenance of life, through the constant acquisition of food, is
the great burden imposed upon existence in all species of animals. As
we descend in the scale of structural organization, subsistence becomes
more and more simple at each stage, until the mystery finally vanishes.
But, in the ascending scale, it becomes increasingly difficult until
the highest structural form, that of man, is reached, when it attains
the maximum.
Intelligence from henceforth becomes a more prominent factor. Animal
food, in all probability, entered from a very early period into human
consumption; but whether it was actively sought when mankind were
essentially frugivorous in practice, though omnivorous in structural
organization, must remain a matter of conjecture. This mode of
sustenance belongs to the strictly primitive period.
II. _Fish Subsistence._
In fish must be recognized the first kind of artificial food, because
it was not fully available without cooking. Fire was first utilized,
not unlikely, for this purpose. Fish were universal in distribution,
unlimited in supply, and the only kind of food at all times attainable.
The cereals in the primitive period were still unknown, if in fact they
existed, and the hunt for game was too precarious ever to have formed
an exclusive means of human support. Upon this species of food mankind
became independent of climate and of locality; and by following the
shores of the seas and lakes, and the courses of the rivers could,
while in the savage state, spread themselves over the greater portion
of the earth’s surface. Of the fact of these migrations there is
abundant evidence in the remains of flint and stone implements of the
Status of Savagery found upon all the continents. In reliance upon
fruits and spontaneous subsistence a removal from the original habitat
would have been impossible.
Between the introduction of fish, followed by the wide migrations
named, and the cultivation of farinaceous food, the interval of time
was immense. It covers a large part of the period of savagery. But
during this interval there was an important increase in the variety and
amount of food. Such, for example, as the bread roots cooked in ground
ovens, and in the permanent addition of game through improved weapons,
and especially through the bow and arrow. This remarkable invention,
which came in after the spear and war club, and gave the first deadly
weapon for the hunt, appeared late in savagery.[10]
It has been used to mark the commencement of its Upper Status. It must
have given a powerful upward influence to ancient society, standing in
the same relation to the period of savagery, as the iron sword to the
period of barbarism, and fire-arms to the period of civilization.
From the precarious nature of all these sources of food, outside of the
great fish areas, cannibalism became the dire resort of mankind. The
ancient universality of this practice is being gradually demonstrated.
III. _Farinaceous Subsistence through Cultivation._
We now leave Savagery and enter the Lower Status of barbarism. The
cultivation of cereals and plants was unknown in the Western hemisphere
except among the tribes who had emerged from savagery; and it seems to
have been unknown in the Eastern hemisphere until after the tribes of
Asia and Europe had passed through the Lower, and had drawn near to
the close of the Middle Status of barbarism. It gives us the singular
fact that the American aborigines in the Lower Status of barbarism were
in possession of horticulture one entire ethnical period earlier than
the inhabitants of the Eastern hemisphere. It was a consequence of the
unequal endowments of the two hemispheres; the Eastern possessing all
the animals adapted to domestication, save one, and a majority of the
cereals; while the Western had only one cereal fit for cultivation,
but that the best. It tended to prolong the older period of barbarism
in the former, to shorten it in the latter; and with the advantage of
condition in this period in favor of the American aborigines. But when
the most advanced tribes in the Eastern hemisphere, at the commencement
of the Middle Period of barbarism, had domesticated animals which
gave them meat and milk, their condition, without a knowledge of the
cereals, was much superior to that of the American aborigines in the
corresponding period, with maize and plants, but without domestic
animals. The differentiation of the Semitic and Aryan families from
the mass of barbarians seems to have commenced with the domestication
of animals.
That the discovery and cultivation of the cereals by the Aryan family
was subsequent to the domestication of animals is shown by the
fact, that there are common terms for these animals in the several
dialects of the Aryan language, and no common terms for the cereals or
cultivated plants. Mommsen, after showing that the domestic animals
have the same names in the Sanskrit, Greek and Latin (which Max
Müller afterwards extended to the remaining Aryan dialects[11]) thus
proving that they were known and presumptively domesticated before
the separation of these nations from each other, proceeds as follows:
“On the other hand, we have as yet no certain proofs of the existence
of agriculture at this period. Language rather favors the negative
view. Of the Latin-Greek names of grain none occur in the Sanskrit
with the single exception of ζέα, which philologically represents
the Sanskrit _yavas_, but denotes in Indian, barley; in Greek,
_spelt_. It must indeed be granted that this diversity in the
names of cultivated plants, which so strongly contrasts with the
essential agreement in the appellations of domestic animals, does not
absolutely preclude the supposition of a common original agriculture.
The cultivation of rice among the Indians, that of wheat and spelt
among the Greeks, and that of rye and oats among the Germans and Celts,
may all be traceable to a common system of original tillage.”[12] This
last conclusion is forced. Horticulture preceded field culture, as the
garden (_hortos_) preceded the field (_ager_); and although the latter
implies boundaries, the former signifies directly an “inclosed space.”
Tillage, however, must have been older than the inclosed garden; the
natural order being first, tillage of patches of open alluvial land,
second of inclosed spaces or gardens, and third, of the field by means
of the plow drawn by animal power. Whether the cultivation of such
plants as the pea, bean, turnip, parsnip, beet, squash and melon, one
or more of them, preceded the cultivation of the cereals, we have at
present no means of knowing. Some of these have common terms in Greek
and Latin; but I am assured by our eminent philologist, Prof. W. D.
Whitney, that neither of them has a common term in Greek or Latin and
Sanskrit.
Horticulture seems to have originated more in the necessities of the
domestic animals than in those of mankind. In the Western hemisphere
it commenced with maize. This new era, although not synchronous in the
two hemispheres, had immense influence upon the destiny of mankind.
There are reasons for believing that it required ages to establish the
art of cultivation, and render farinaceous food a principal reliance.
Since in America it led to localization and to village life, it tended,
especially among the Village Indians, to take the place of fish and
game. From the cereals and cultivated plants, moreover, mankind
obtained their first impression of the possibility of an abundance of
food.
The acquisition of farinaceous food in America and of domestic animals
in Asia and Europe, were the means of delivering the advanced tribes,
thus provided, from the scourge of cannibalism, which as elsewhere
stated, there are reasons for believing was practiced universally
throughout the period of savagery upon captured enemies, and, in time
of famine, upon friends and kindred. Cannibalism in war, practiced by
war parties in the field, survived among the American aborigines, not
only in the Lower, but also in the Middle Status of barbarism, as, for
example, among the Iroquois and the Aztecs; but the general practice
had disappeared. This forcibly illustrates the great importance which
is exercised by a permanent increase of food in ameliorating the
condition of mankind.
IV. _Meat and Milk Subsistence._
The absence of animals adapted to domestication in the Western
hemisphere, excepting the llama,[13] and the specific differences in
the cereals of the two hemispheres exercised an important influence
upon the relative advancement of their inhabitants. While this
inequality of endowments was immaterial to mankind in the period
of savagery, and not marked in its effects in the Lower Status of
barbarism, it made an essential difference with that portion who had
attained to the Middle Status. The domestication of animals provided
a permanent meat and milk subsistence which tended to differentiate
the tribes which possessed them from the mass of other barbarians.
In the Western hemisphere, meat was restricted to the precarious
supplies of game. This limitation upon an essential species of food
was unfavorable to the Village Indians; and doubtless sufficiently
explains the inferior size of the brain among them in comparison with
that of Indians in the Lower Status of barbarism. In the Eastern
hemisphere, the domestication of animals enabled the thrifty and
industrious to secure for themselves a permanent supply of animal food,
including milk; the healthful and invigorating influence of which upon
the race, and especially upon children, was undoubtedly remarkable.
It is at least supposable that the Aryan and Semitic families owe
their pre-eminent endowments to the great scale upon which, as far
back as our knowledge extends, they have identified themselves with
the maintenance in numbers of the domestic animals. In fact, they
incorporated them, flesh, milk, and muscle into their plan of life.[14]
No other family of mankind have done this to an equal extent, and the
Aryan have done it to a greater extent than the Semitic.
The domestication of animals gradually introduced a new mode of life,
the pastoral, upon the plains of the Euphrates and of India, and upon
the steppes of Asia; on the confines of one or the other of which the
domestication of animals was probably first accomplished. To these
areas, their oldest traditions and their histories alike refer them.
They were thus drawn to regions which, so far from being the cradle
lands of the human race, were areas they would not have occupied as
savages, or as barbarians in the Lower Status of barbarism, to whom
forest areas were natural homes. After becoming habituated to pastoral
life, it must have been impossible for either of these families to
re-enter the forest areas of Western Asia and of Europe with their
flocks and herds, without first learning to cultivate some of the
cereals with which to subsist the latter at a distance from the grass
plains. It seems extremely probable, therefore, as before stated, that
the cultivation of the cereals originated in the necessities of the
domestic animals, and in connection with these western migrations; and
that the use of farinaceous food by these tribes was a consequence of
the knowledge thus acquired.
In the Western hemisphere, the aborigines were enabled to advance
generally into the Lower Status of barbarism, and a portion of them
into the Middle Status, without domestic animals, excepting the
llama in Peru, and upon a single cereal, maize, with the adjuncts of
the bean, squash, and tobacco, and in some areas, cacao, cotton and
pepper. But maize, from its growth in the hill—which favored direct
cultivation—from its useableness both green and ripe, and from its
abundant yield and nutritive properties, was a richer endowment in aid
of early human progress than all other cereals put together. It serves
to explain the remarkable progress the American aborigines had made
without the domestic animals; the Peruvians having produced bronze,
which stands next, and quite near, in the order of time, to the process
of smelting iron ore.
V. _Unlimited Subsistence through Field Agriculture._
The domestic animals supplementing human muscle with animal power,
contributed a new factor of the highest value. In course of time, the
production of iron gave the plow with an iron point, and a better
spade and axe. Out of these, and the previous horticulture, came field
agriculture; and with it, for the first time, unlimited subsistence.
The plow drawn by animal power may be regarded as inaugurating a
new art. Now, for the first time, came the thought of reducing the
forest, and bringing wide fields under cultivation.[15] Moreover,
dense populations in limited areas now became possible. Prior to
field agriculture it is not probable that half a million people were
developed and held together under one government in any part of the
earth. If exceptions occurred, they must have resulted from pastoral
life on the plains, or from horticulture improved by irrigation, under
peculiar and exceptional conditions.
In the course of these pages it will become necessary to speak of the
family as it existed in different ethnical periods; its form in one
period being sometimes entirely different from its form in another. In
Part III these several forms of the family will be treated specially.
But as they will be frequently mentioned in the next ensuing Part,
they should at least be defined in advance for the information of the
reader. They are the following:
I. _The Consanguine Family._
It was founded upon the intermarriage of brothers and sisters in a
group. Evidence still remains in the oldest of existing systems of
Consanguinity, the Malayan, tending to show that this, the first
form of the family, was anciently as universal as this system of
consanguinity which it created.
II. _The Punaluan Family._
Its name is derived from the Hawaiian relationship of _Punalua_. It
was founded upon the intermarriage of several brothers to each other’s
wives in a group; and of several sisters to each other’s husbands
in a group. But the term brother, as here used, included the first,
second, third, and even more remote male cousins, all of whom were
considered brothers to each other, as we consider own brothers; and the
term sister included the first, second, third, and even more remote
female cousins, all of whom were sisters to each other, the same as own
sisters. This form of the family supervened upon the consanguine. It
created the Turanian and Ganowánian systems of consanguinity. Both this
and the previous form belong to the period of savagery.
III. _The Syndyasmian Family._
The term is from συνδυάζω, to pair, συνδυασμός, a joining two together.
It was founded upon the pairing of a male with a female under the form
of marriage, but without an exclusive cohabitation. It was the germ of
the Monogamian Family. Divorce or separation was at the option of both
husband and wife. This form of the family failed to create a system of
consanguinity.
IV. _The Patriarchal Family._
It was founded upon the marriage of one man to several wives. The term
is here used in a restricted sense to define the special family of the
Hebrew pastoral tribes, the chiefs and principal men of which practiced
polygamy. It exercised but little influence upon human affairs for want
of universality.
V. _The Monogamian Family._
It was founded upon the marriage of one man with one woman, with an
exclusive cohabitation; the latter constituting the essential element
of the institution. It is pre-eminently the family of civilized
society, and was therefore essentially modern. This form of the family
also created an independent system of consanguinity.
Evidence will elsewhere be produced tending to show both the existence
and the general prevalence of these several forms of the family at
different stages of human progress.
CHAPTER III.
RATIO OF HUMAN PROGRESS.
RETROSPECT ON THE LINES OF HUMAN PROGRESS.—PRINCIPAL
CONTRIBUTIONS OF MODERN CIVILIZATION.—OF ANCIENT
CIVILIZATION.—OF LATER PERIOD OF BARBARISM.—OF MIDDLE
PERIOD.—OF OLDER PERIOD.—OF PERIOD OF SAVAGERY.—HUMBLE
CONDITION OF PRIMITIVE MAN.—HUMAN PROGRESS IN A GEOMETRICAL
RATIO.—RELATIVE LENGTH OF ETHNICAL PERIODS.—APPEARANCE OF
SEMITIC AND ARYAN FAMILIES.
It is well to obtain an impression of the relative amount and of the
ratio of human progress in the several ethnical periods named, by
grouping together the achievements of each, and comparing them with
each other as distinct classes of facts. This will also enable us to
form some conception of the relative duration of these periods. To
render it forcible, such a survey must be general, and in the nature
of a recapitulation. It should, likewise, be limited to the principal
works of each period.
Before man could have attained to the civilized state it was necessary
that he should gain all the elements of civilization. This implies
an amazing change of condition, first from a primitive savage to a
barbarian of the lowest type, and then from the latter to a Greek
of the Homeric period, or to a Hebrew of the time of Abraham. The
progressive development which history records in the period of
civilization was not less true of man in each of the previous periods.
By re-ascending along the several lines of human progress toward
the primitive ages of man’s existence, and removing one by one his
principal institutions, inventions and discoveries, in the order in
which they have appeared, the advance made in each period will be
realized.
The principal contributions of modern civilization are the electric
telegraph; coal gas; the spinning-jenny; and the power loom; the
steam-engine with its numerous dependent machines, including the
locomotive, the railway, and the steam-ship; the telescope; the
discovery of the ponderability of the atmosphere and of the solar
system; the art of printing; the canal lock; the mariner’s compass;
and gunpowder. The mass of other inventions, such, for example, as
the Ericsson propeller, will be found to hinge upon one or another of
those named as antecedents: but there are exceptions, as photography,
and numerous machines not necessary to be noticed. With these also
should be removed the modern sciences; religious freedom and the
common schools; representative democracy; constitutional monarchy
with parliaments; the feudal kingdom; modern privileged classes;
international, statute and common law.
Modern civilization recovered and absorbed whatever was valuable in
the ancient civilizations; and although its contributions to the sum
of human knowledge have been vast, brilliant and rapid, they are far
from being so disproportionately large as to overshadow the ancient
civilizations and sink them into comparative insignificance.
Passing over the mediæval period, which gave Gothic architecture,
feudal aristocracy with hereditary titles of rank, and a hierarchy
under the headship of a pope, we enter the Roman and Grecian
civilizations. They will be found deficient in great inventions and
discoveries, but distinguished in art, in philosophy, and in organic
institutions. The principal contributions of these civilizations
were imperial and kingly government; the civil law; Christianity;
mixed aristocratical and democratical government, with a senate and
consuls; democratical government with a council and popular assembly;
the organization of armies into cavalry and infantry, with military
discipline; the establishment of navies, with the practice of naval
warfare; the formation of great cities, with municipal law; commerce
on the seas; the coinage of money; and the state, founded upon
territory and upon property; and among inventions, fire-baked brick,
the crane,[16] the water-wheel for driving mills, the bridge, aqueduct
and sewer; lead pipe used as a conduit with the faucet; the arch,
the balance scale; the arts and sciences of the classical period,
with their results, including the orders of architecture; the Arabic
numerals, and alphabetic writing.
These civilizations drew largely from, as well as rested upon, the
inventions and discoveries and the institutions of the previous
period of barbarism. The achievements of civilized man, although very
great and remarkable, are nevertheless very far from sufficient to
eclipse the works of man as a barbarian. As such he had wrought out
and possessed all the elements of civilization, excepting alphabetic
writing. His achievements as a barbarian should be considered in their
relation to the sum of human progress; and we may be forced to admit
that they transcend, in relative importance, all his subsequent works.
The use of writing, or its equivalent in hieroglyphics upon stone,
affords a fair test of the commencement of civilization.[17] Without
literary records neither history nor civilization can properly be said
to exist. The production of the Homeric poems, whether transmitted
orally or committed to writing at the time, fixes with sufficient
nearness the introduction of civilization among the Greeks. These
poems, ever fresh and ever marvelous, possess an ethnological value
which enhances immensely their other excellences. This is especially
true of the Iliad, which contains the oldest as well as the most
circumstantial account now existing of the progress of mankind up to
the time of its composition. Strabo compliments Homer as the father of
geographical science;[18] but the great poet has given, perhaps without
design, what was infinitely more important to succeeding generations:
namely, a remarkably full exposition of the arts, usages, inventions
and discoveries, and mode of life of the ancient Greeks. It presents
our first comprehensive picture of Aryan society while still in
barbarism, showing the progress then made, and of what particulars it
consisted. Through these poems we are enabled confidently to state that
certain things were known among the Greeks before they entered upon
civilization. They also cast an illuminating light far backward into
the period of barbarism.
Using the Homeric poems as a guide and continuing the retrospect into
the Later Period of barbarism, let us strike off from the knowledge
and experience of mankind the invention of poetry; the ancient
mythology in its elaborate form, with the Olympian divinities; temple
architecture; the knowledge of the cereals, excepting maize and
cultivated plants, with field agriculture;[19] cities encompassed with
walls of stone, with battlements, towers and gates; the use of marble
in architecture;[20] ship-building with plank and probably with the use
of nails;[21] the wagon and the chariot;[22] metallic plate armor;[23]
the copper-pointed spear and embossed shield;[24] the iron sword;[25]
the manufacture of wine, probably;[26] the mechanical powers excepting
the screw; the potter’s wheel and the hand-mill for grinding grain;[27]
woven fabrics of linen and woolen from the loom;[28] the iron axe and
spade;[29] the iron hatchet and adz;[30] the hammer and the anvil;[31]
the bellows and the forge;[32] and the side-hill furnace for smelting
iron ore, together with a knowledge of iron. Along with the above-named
acquisitions must be removed the monogamian family; military
democracies of the heroic age; the later phase of the organization into
gentes, phratries and tribes; the agora or popular assembly, probably; a
knowledge of individual property in houses and lands; and the advanced
form of municipal life in fortified cities. When this has been done,
the highest class of barbarians will have surrendered the principal
portion of their marvelous works, together with the mental and moral
growth thereby acquired.
From this point backward through the Middle Period of barbarism the
indications become less distinct, and the relative order in which
institutions, inventions and discoveries appeared is less clear; but
we are not without some knowledge to guide our steps even in these
distant ages of the Aryan family. For reasons previously stated, other
families, besides the Aryan, may now be resorted to for the desired
information.
Entering next the Middle Period, let us, in like manner, strike out
of human experience the process of making bronze; flocks and herds
of domestic animals;[33] communal houses with walls of adobe, and of
dressed stone laid in courses with mortar of lime and sand; cyclopean
walls; lake dwellings constructed on piles; the knowledge of native
metals,[34] with the use of charcoal and the crucible for melting them;
the copper axe and chisel; the shuttle and embryo loom; cultivation
by irrigation, causeways, reservoirs and irrigating canals; paved
roads; osier suspension bridges; personal gods, with a priesthood
distinguished by a costume, and organized in a hierarchy; human
sacrifices; military democracies of the Aztec type; woven fabrics of
cotton and other vegetable fibre in the Western hemisphere, and of wool
and flax in the Eastern; ornamental pottery; the sword of wood, with
the edges pointed with flints; polished flint and stone implements; a
knowledge of cotton and flax; and the domestic animals.
The aggregate of achievements in this period was less than in that
which followed; but in its relations to the sum of human progress
it was very great. It includes the domestication of animals in the
Eastern hemisphere, which introduced in time a permanent meat and milk
subsistence, and ultimately field agriculture; and also inaugurated
those experiments with the native metals which resulted in producing
bronze,[35] as well as prepared the way for the higher process of
smelting iron ore. In the Western hemisphere it was signalized by the
discovery and treatment of the native metals, which resulted in the
production independently of bronze; by the introduction of irrigation
in the cultivation of maize and plants, and by the use of adobe-brick
and stone in the construction of great joint tenement houses in the
nature of fortresses.
Resuming the retrospect and entering the Older Period of barbarism,
let us next remove from human acquisitions the confederacy, based upon
gentes, phratries and tribes under the government of a council of
chiefs which gave a more highly organized state of society than before
that had been known. Also the discovery and cultivation of maize and
the bean, squash and tobacco, in the Western hemisphere, together with
a knowledge of farinaceous food; finger weaving with warp and woof;
the kilt, moccasin and leggin of tanned deer-skin; the blow-gun for
bird shooting; the village stockade for defense; tribal games; element
worship, with a vague recognition of the Great Spirit; cannibalism in
time of war; and lastly, the art of pottery.
As we ascend in the order of time and of development, but descend in
the scale of human advancement, inventions become more simple, and
more direct in their relations to primary wants; and institutions
approach nearer and nearer to the elementary form of a gens composed
of consanguinei, under a chief of their own election, and to the tribe
composed of kindred gentes, under the government of a council of
chiefs. The condition of Asiatic and European tribes in this period,
(for the Aryan and Semitic families did not probably then exist), is
substantially lost. It is represented by the remains of ancient art
between the invention of pottery and the domestication of animals; and
includes the people who formed the shell-heaps on the coast of the
Baltic, who seem to have domesticated the dog, but no other animals.
In any just estimate of the magnitude of the achievements of mankind in
the three sub-periods of barbarism, they must be regarded as immense,
not only in number and in intrinsic value, but also in the mental and
moral development by which they were necessarily accompanied.
Ascending next through the prolonged period of savagery, let us strike
out of human knowledge the organization into gentes, phratries and
tribes; the syndyasmian family; the worship of the elements in its
lowest form; syllabical language; the bow and arrow; stone and bone
implements; cane and splint baskets; skin garments; the punaluan
family; the organization upon the basis of sex; the village, consisting
of clustered houses; boat craft, including the bark and dug-out canoe;
the spear pointed with flint, and the war club; flint implements of
the ruder kinds; the consanguine family; monosyllabical language;
fetishism; cannibalism; a knowledge of the use of fire; and lastly,
gesture language.[36] When this work of elimination has been done
in the order in which these several acquisitions were made, we shall
have approached quite near the infantile period of man’s existence,
when mankind were learning the use of fire, which rendered possible
a fish subsistence and a change of habitat, and when they were
attempting the formation of articulate language. In a condition so
absolutely primitive, man is seen to be not only a child in the scale
of humanity, but possessed of a brain into which not a thought or
conception expressed by these institutions, inventions and discoveries
had penetrated;—in a word, he stands at the bottom of the scale, but
potentially all he has since become.
With the production of inventions and discoveries, and with the growth
of institutions, the human mind necessarily grew and expanded; and
we are led to recognize a gradual enlargement of the brain itself,
particularly of the cerebral portion. The slowness of this mental
growth was inevitable, in the period of savagery, from the extreme
difficulty of compassing the simplest invention out of nothing, or
with next to nothing to assist mental effort; and of discovering
any substance or force in nature available in such a rude condition
of life. It was not less difficult to organize the simplest form
of society out of such savage and intractable materials. The first
inventions and the first social organizations were doubtless the
hardest to achieve, and were consequently separated from each other
by the longest intervals of time. A striking illustration is found in
the successive forms of the family. In this law of progress, which
works in a geometrical ratio, a sufficient explanation is found of the
prolonged duration of the period of savagery.
That the early condition of mankind was substantially as above
indicated is not exclusively a recent, nor even a modern opinion. Some
of the ancient poets and philosophers recognized the fact, that mankind
commenced in a state of extreme rudeness from which they had risen by
slow and successive steps. They also perceived that the course of their
development was registered by a progressive series of inventions and
discoveries, but without noticing as fully the more conclusive argument
from social institutions.
The important question of the ratio of this progress, which has a
direct bearing upon the relative length of the several ethnical
periods, now presents itself. Human progress, from first to last, has
been in a ratio not rigorously but essentially geometrical. This is
plain on the face of the facts; and it could not, theoretically, have
occurred in any other way. Every item of absolute knowledge gained
became a factor in further acquisitions, until the present complexity
of knowledge was attained. Consequently, while progress was slowest
in time in the first period, and most rapid in the last, the relative
amount may have been greatest in the first, when the achievements of
either period are considered in their relations to the sum. It may be
suggested, as not improbable of ultimate recognition, that the progress
of mankind in the period of savagery, in its relations to the sum of
human progress, was greater in degree than it was afterwards in the
three sub-periods of barbarism; and that the progress made in the whole
period of barbarism was, in like manner, greater in degree than it has
been since in the entire period of civilization.
What may have been the relative length of these ethnical periods is
also a fair subject of speculation. An exact measure is not attainable,
but an approximation may be attempted. On the theory of geometrical
progression, the period of savagery was necessarily longer in duration
than the period of barbarism, as the latter was longer than the period
of civilization. If we assume a hundred thousand years as the measure
of man’s existence upon the earth in order to find the relative length
of each period,—and for this purpose, it may have been longer or
shorter,—it will be seen at once that at least sixty thousand years
must be assigned to the period of savagery. Three-fifths of the life
of the most advanced portion of the human race, on this apportionment,
were spent in savagery. Of the remaining years, twenty thousand, or
one-fifth, should be assigned to the Older Period of barbarism. For the
Middle and Later Periods there remain fifteen thousand years, leaving
five thousand, more or less, for the period of civilization.
The relative length of the period of savagery is more likely under
than over stated. Without discussing the principles on which this
apportionment is made, it may be remarked that in addition to the
argument from the geometrical progression under which human development
of necessity has occurred, a graduated scale of progress has been
universally observed in remains of ancient art, and this will be found
equally true of institutions. It is a conclusion of deep importance
in ethnology that the experience of mankind in savagery was longer in
duration than all their subsequent experience, and that the period of
civilization covers but a fragment of the life of the race.
Two families of mankind, the Aryan and Semitic, by the commingling of
diverse stocks, superiority of subsistence or advantage of position,
and possibly from all together, were the first to emerge from
barbarism. They were substantially the founders of civilization.[37]
But their existence as distinct families was undoubtedly, in a
comparative sense, a late event. Their progenitors are lost in the
undistinguishable mass of earlier barbarians. The first ascertained
appearance of the Aryan family was in connection with the domestic
animals, at which time they were one people in language and
nationality. It is not probable that the Aryan or Semitic families
were developed into individuality earlier than the commencement of the
Middle Period of barbarism, and that their differentiation from the
mass of barbarians occurred through their acquisition of the domestic
animals.
The most advanced portion of the human race were halted, so to express
it, at certain stages of progress, until some great invention or
discovery, such as the domestication of animals or the smelting of iron
ore, gave a new and powerful impulse forward. While thus restrained,
the ruder tribes, continually advancing, approached in different
degrees of nearness to the same status; for wherever a continental
connection existed, all the tribes must have shared in some measure in
each other’s progress. All great inventions and discoveries propagate
themselves; but the inferior tribes must have appreciated their value
before they could appropriate them. In the continental areas certain
tribes would lead; but the leadership would be apt to shift a number
of times in the course of an ethnical period. The destruction of the
ethnic bond and life of particular tribes, followed by their decadence,
must have arrested for a time, in many instances and in all periods,
the upward flow of human progress. From the Middle Period of barbarism,
however, the Aryan and Semitic families seem fairly to represent the
central threads of this progress, which in the period of civilization
has been gradually assumed by the Aryan family alone.
The truth of this general position may be illustrated by the condition
of the American aborigines at the epoch of their discovery. They
commenced their career on the American continent in savagery; and,
although possessed of inferior mental endowments, the body of them had
emerged from savagery and attained to the Lower Status of barbarism;
whilst a portion of them, the Village Indians of North and South
America, had risen to the Middle Status. They had domesticated the
llama, the only quadruped native to the continent which promised
usefulness in the domesticated state, and had produced bronze by
alloying copper with tin. They needed but one invention, and that the
greatest, the art of smelting iron ore, to advance themselves into
the Upper Status. Considering the absence of all connection with the
most advanced portion of the human family in the Eastern hemisphere,
their progress in unaided self-development from the savage state must
be accounted remarkable. While the Asiatic and European were waiting
patiently for the boon of iron tools, the American Indian was drawing
near to the possession of bronze, which stands next to iron in the
order of time. During this period of arrested progress in the Eastern
hemisphere, the American aborigines advanced themselves, not to the
status in which they were found, but sufficiently near to reach it
while the former were passing through the last period of barbarism, and
the first four thousand years of civilization. It gives us a measure of
the length of time they had fallen behind the Aryan family in the race
of progress: namely the duration of the Later Period of barbarism, to
which the years of civilization must be added. The Aryan and Ganowánian
families together exemplify the entire experience of man in five
ethnical periods, with the exception of the first portion of the Later
Period of savagery.
Savagery was the formative period of the human race. Commencing at zero
in knowledge and experience, without fire, without articulate speech
and without arts, our savage progenitors fought the great battle, first
for existence, and then for progress, until they secured safety from
ferocious animals, and permanent subsistence. Out of these efforts
there came gradually a developed speech, and the occupation of the
entire surface of the earth. But society from its rudeness was still
incapable of organization in numbers. When the most advanced portion
of mankind had emerged from savagery, and entered the Lower Status of
barbarism, the entire population of the earth must have been small in
numbers. The earliest inventions were the most difficult to accomplish
because of the feebleness of the power of abstract reasoning. Each
substantial item of knowledge gained would form a basis for further
advancement; but this must have been nearly imperceptible for ages
upon ages, the obstacles to progress nearly balancing the energies
arrayed against them. The achievements of savagery are not particularly
remarkable in character, but they represent an amazing amount of
persistent labor with feeble means continued through long periods of
time before reaching a fair degree of completeness. The bow and arrow
afford an illustration.
The inferiority of savage man in the mental and moral scale,
undeveloped, inexperienced, and held down by his low animal appetites
and passions, though reluctantly recognized, is, nevertheless,
substantially demonstrated by the remains of ancient art in flint, stone
and bone implements, by his cave life in certain areas, and by his
osteological remains. It is still further illustrated by the present
condition of tribes of savages in a low state of development, left
in isolated sections of the earth as monuments of the past. And yet
to this great period of savagery belongs the formation of articulate
language and its advancement to the syllabical stage, the establishment
of two forms of the family, and possibly a third, and the organization
into gentes which gave the first form of society worthy of the name.
All these conclusions are involved in the proposition, stated at the
outset, that mankind commenced their career at the bottom of the scale;
which “modern science claims to be proving by the most careful and
exhaustive study of man and his works.”[38]
In like manner, the great period of barbarism was signalized by four
events of pre-eminent importance: namely, the domestication of animals,
the discovery of the cereals, the use of stone in architecture, and the
invention of the process of smelting iron ore. Commencing probably with
the dog as a companion in the hunt, followed at a later period by the
capture of the young of other animals and rearing them, not unlikely,
from the merest freak of fancy, it required time and experience to
discover the utility of each, to find means of raising them in numbers
and to learn the forbearance necessary to spare them in the face of
hunger. Could the special history of the domestication of each animal
be known, it would exhibit a series of marvelous facts. The experiment
carried, locked up in its doubtful chances, much of the subsequent
destiny of mankind. Secondly, the acquisition of farinaceous food by
cultivation must be regarded as one of the greatest events in human
experience. It was less essential in the Eastern hemisphere, after the
domestication of animals, than in the Western, where it became the
instrument of advancing a large portion of the American aborigines into
the Lower, and another portion into the Middle Status of barbarism. If
mankind had never advanced beyond this last condition, they had the
means of a comparatively easy and enjoyable life. Thirdly, with the
use of adobe-brick and of stone in house building, an improved mode
of life was introduced, eminently calculated to stimulate the mental
capacities, and to create the habit of industry,—the fertile source of
improvements. But, in its relations to the high career of mankind, the
fourth invention must be held the greatest event in human experience,
preparatory to civilization. When the barbarian, advancing step by
step, had discovered the native metals, and learned to melt them in the
crucible and to cast them in moulds; when he had alloyed native copper
with tin and produced bronze; and, finally, when by a still greater
effort of thought he had invented the furnace, and produced iron from
the ore, nine-tenths of the battle for civilization was gained.[39]
Furnished with iron tools, capable of holding both an edge and a point,
mankind were certain of attaining to civilization. The production of
iron was the event of events in human experience, without a parallel,
and without an equal, beside which all other inventions and discoveries
were inconsiderable, or at least subordinate. Out of it came the
metallic hammer and anvil, the axe and the chisel, the plow with an
iron point, the iron sword; in fine, the basis of civilization, which
may be said to rest upon this metal. The want of iron tools arrested
the progress of mankind in barbarism. There they would have remained
to the present hour, had they failed to bridge the chasm. It seems
probable that the conception and the process of smelting iron ore came
but once to man. It would be a singular satisfaction could it be known
to what tribe and family we are indebted for this knowledge, and with
it for civilization.
The Semitic family were then in advance of the Aryan, and in the lead
of the human race. They gave the phonetic alphabet to mankind and it
seems not unlikely the knowledge of iron as well.
At the epoch of the Homeric poems, the Grecian tribes had made immense
material progress. All the common metals were known, including the
process of smelting ores, and possibly of changing iron into steel;
the principal cereals had been discovered, together with the art of
cultivation, and the use of the plow in field agriculture; the dog,
the horse, the ass, the cow, the sow, the sheep and the goat had
been domesticated and reared in flocks and herds, as has been shown.
Architecture had produced a house constructed of durable materials,
containing separate apartments,[40] and consisting of more than
a single story;[41] ship building, weapons, textile fabrics, the
manufacture of wine from the grape, the cultivation of the apple, the
pear, the olive and the fig,[42] together with comfortable apparel,
and useful implements and utensils, had been produced and brought
into human use.[43] But the early history of mankind was lost in the
oblivion of the ages that had passed away. Tradition ascended to an
anterior barbarism through which it was unable to penetrate. Language
had attained such development that poetry of the highest structural
form was about to embody the inspirations of genius. The closing period
of barbarism brought this portion of the human family to the threshold
of civilization, animated by the great attainments of the past, grown
hardy and intelligent in the school of experience, and with the
undisciplined imagination in the full splendor of its creative powers.
Barbarism ends with the production of grand barbarians. Whilst the
condition of society in this period was understood by the later Greek
and Roman writers, the anterior state, with its distinctive culture and
experience, was as deeply concealed from their apprehension as from our
own; except as occupying a nearer stand-point in time, they saw more
distinctly the relations of the present with the past. It was evident
to them that a certain sequence existed in the series of inventions and
discoveries, as well as a certain order of development of institutions,
through which mankind had advanced themselves from the status of
savagery to that of the Homeric age; but the immense interval of time
between the two conditions does not appear to have been made a subject
even of speculative consideration.
PART II.
GROWTH OF THE IDEA OF GOVERNMENT.
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_,[44]) established in the group, grew into a stupendous
scheme, which became the organic principle on which society was
constituted. From the nature of the case these rights and privileges
rooted themselves so firmly that emancipation from them was slowly
accomplished through movements which resulted in unconscious
reformations. Accordingly it will be found that the family has advanced
from a lower to a higher form as the range of this conjugal system was
gradually reduced. The family, commencing in the consanguine, founded
upon the intermarriage of brothers and sisters in a group, passed
into the second form, the punaluan, under a social system akin to
the Australian classes, which broke up the first species of marriage
by substituting groups of brothers who shared their wives in common,
and groups of sisters who shared their husbands in common,—marriage
in both cases being in the group. The organization into classes upon
sex, and the subsequent higher organization into gentes upon kin,
must be regarded as the results of great social movements worked
out unconsciously through natural selection. For these reasons
the Australian system, about to be presented, deserves attentive
consideration, although it carries us into a low grade of human life.
It represents a striking phase of the ancient social history of our
race.
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.[45]
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).[46] 3. Opossum, (Mute).
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:
_Male._ _Female._
1. Ippai. 1. Ippata.
2. Kumbo. 2. Buta.
3. Murri. 3. Mata.
4. Kubbi. 4. Kapota.
All the Ippais, of whatever gens, are brothers to each other.
Theoretically, they are descended from a supposed common female
ancestor. All the Kumbos are the same; and so are all the Murris and
Kubbis, respectively, and for the same reason. In like manner, all
the Ippatas, of whatever gens, are sisters to each other, and for the
same reason; all the Butas are the same, and so are all the Matas and
Kapotas, respectively. In the next place, all the Ippais and Ippatas
are brothers and sisters to each other, whether children of the same
mother or collateral consanguinei, and in whatever gens they are found.
The Kumbos and Butas are brothers and sisters; and so are the Murris
and Matas, and the Kubbis and Kapotas respectively. If an Ippai and
Ippata meet, who have never seen each other before, they address each
other as brother and sister. The Kamilaroi, therefore, are organized
into four great primary groups of brothers and sisters, each group
being composed of a male and a female branch; but intermingled over
the areas of their occupation. Founded upon sex, instead of kin, it is
older than the gentes, and more archaic, it may be repeated, than any
form of society hitherto known.
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:
Ippai can marry Kapota, and no other.
Kumbo ” ” Mata, ” ” ”
Murri ” ” Buta, ” ” ”
Kubbi ” ” Ippata, ” ” ”
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 females. In this fact,
evidence of the encroachment of the gens upon the class is furnished,
tending to the overthrow of the latter.
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 existing state of marriage and of the family of which
no adequate conception could have been formed apart from the facts.
It affords the first direct evidence of a state of society which
had previously been deduced, as extremely probable, from systems of
consanguinity and affinity.[47]
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:
_Male._ _Female._ _Male._ _Female._
Ippai marries Kapota. Their children are Murri and Mata.
Kumbo ” Mata. ” ” ” Kubbi ” Kapota.
Murri ” Buta. ” ” ” Ippai ” Ippata.
Kubbi ” Ippata. ” ” ” Kumbo ” Buta.
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. That it
was subsequent in point of time, is shown by the relations of the two
systems, by the inchoate condition of the gentes, by the impaired
condition of the classes through encroachments by the gens, and by
the fact that the class is still the unit of organization. These
conclusions will be made apparent in the sequel.
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:
_Gentes._ _Male._ _Female._ _Male._ _Female._
1. Iguana. All are Murri and Mata, or Kubbi and Kapota.
2. Emu. ” ” Kumbo ” Buta, ” Ippai ” Ippata.
3. Kangaroo. ” ” Murri ” Mata, ” Kubbi ” Kapota.
4. Bandicoot. ” ” Kumbo ” Buta, ” Ippai ” Ippata.
5. Opossum. ” ” Murri ” Mata, ” Kubbi ” Kapota.
6. Blacksnake. ” ” Kumbo ” Buta, ” Ippai ” Ippata.
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 classes as an anterior organization were
evidently arranged within the gentes, and not formed by the subdivision
of the latter.
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.[48]
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.[49]
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 without diminishing its extent, which was equally
impossible so long as the classes, with the privileges they conferred,
remained in full vitality. The _jura conjugialia_, which appertained
to these classes, were the dead weight upon the Kamilaroi, without
emancipation from which they would have remained for additional
thousands of years in the same condition, substantially, in which they
were found.
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 no sound basis for such an hypothesis. Cases
of physical and mental deterioration in tribes and nations may be
admitted, for reasons which are known, but they never interrupted the
general progress of mankind. All the facts of human knowledge and
experience tend to show that the human race, as a whole, have steadily
progressed from a lower to a higher condition. The arts by which
savages maintain their lives are remarkably persistent. They are never
lost until superseded by others higher in degree. By the practice of
these arts, and by the experience gained through social organizations,
mankind have advanced under a necessary law of development, although
their progress may have been substantially imperceptible for centuries.
It was the same with races as with individuals, although tribes and
nations have perished through the disruption of their ethnic life.
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 the Hawaiian
custom of punalua. Original ideas, absolutely independent of previous
knowledge and experience, are necessarily few in number. Were it
possible to reduce the sum of human ideas to underived originals, the
small numerical result would be startling. Development is the method of
human progress.
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 the nearly universal
plan of government of ancient society, Asiatic, European, African,
American and Australian. It was the instrumentality by means of which
society was organized and held together. Commencing in savagery, and
continuing through the three sub-periods of barbarism, it remained
until the establishment of political society, which did not occur until
after civilization had commenced. The Grecian gens, phratry and tribe,
the Roman gens, _curia_ and tribe find their analogues in the gens,
phratry and tribe of the American aborigines. In like manner, the Irish
_sept_, the Scottish _clan_, the _phrara_ of the Albanians, and the
Sanskrit _ganas_, without extending the comparison further, are the
same as the American Indian gens, which has usually been called a clan.
As far as our knowledge extends, this organization runs through the
entire ancient world upon all the continents, and it was brought down
to the historical period by such tribes as attained to civilization.
Nor is this all. Gentile society wherever found is the same in
structural organization and in principles of action; but changing from
lower to higher forms with the progressive advancement of the people.
These changes give the history of development of the same original
conceptions.
_Gens_, γένος, and _ganas_ in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit have alike
the primary signification of _kin_. They contain the same element as
_gigno_, γίγνομαι, 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 name, with descent in the male line, and passing in
the same manner. The modern family, as expressed by its name, is an
unorganized gens; with the bond of kin broken, and its members as
widely dispersed as the family name is found.
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 to meet. Among the Greeks and
Romans, political society supervened upon gentile society, but not
until civilization had commenced. The township (and its equivalent, the
city ward), with its fixed property, and the inhabitants it contained,
organized as a body politic, became the unit and the basis of a new
and radically different system of government. After political society
was instituted, this ancient and time-honored organization, with
the phratry and tribe developed from it, gradually yielded up their
existence. It will be my object, in the course of this volume, to trace
the progress of this organization from its rise in savagery to its
final overthrow in civilization; for it was under gentile institutions
that barbarism was won by some of the tribes of mankind while in
savagery, and that civilization was won by the descendants of some of
the same tribes while in barbarism. Gentile institutions carried a
portion of mankind from savagery to civilization.
This organization may be successfully studied both in its living and in
its historical forms in a large number of tribes and races. In such an
investigation it is preferable to commence with the gens in its archaic
form, 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.[50]
A comparison of the Indian clan with the gens of the Greeks and Romans
reveals at once their identity in structure and functions. It also
extends to the phratry and tribe. If the identity of these several
organizations can be shown, of which there can be no doubt, there is a
manifest propriety in returning to the Latin and Grecian terminologies
which are full and precise as well as historical. I have made herein
the substitutions required, and propose to show the parallelism of
these several organizations.
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 higher process than confederating. In the latter case the tribes
occupied independent territories.
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 males, would belong to other gentes; namely,
those of their respective mothers. Such was the gens in its archaic
form, when the paternity of children was not certainly ascertainable,
and when their maternity afforded the only certain criterion of
descents.
This state of descents, which can be traced back to the Middle Status
of savagery, as among the Australians, remained among the American
aborigines through the Upper Status of savagery, and into and through
the Lower Status of barbarism, with occasional exceptions. In the
Middle Status of barbarism, the Indian tribes began to change descent
from the female line to the male, as 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 the male line, remained the unit of the social system. It could not
have reached the second form without previously existing in the first.
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 tobacco, in garden beds, and made unleavened bread
from pounded maize which they boiled in earthern vessels;[51] they
tanned skins into leather with which they manufactured kilts, leggings
and moccasins; they used the bow and arrow and war-club as their
principal weapons; used flint stone and bone implements, wore skin
garments, and were expert hunters and fishermen. They constructed
long joint-tenement houses large enough to accommodate five, ten, and
twenty families, and each household practiced communism in living; but
they were unacquainted with the use of stone or adobe-brick in house
architecture, and with the use of the native metals. In mental capacity
and in general advancement they were the representative branch of the
Indian family north of New Mexico. General F. A. Walker has sketched
their military career in two paragraphs: “The career of the Iroquois
was simply terrific. They were the scourge of God upon the aborigines
of the continent.”[52]
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 of the
members of a gens, its capabilities as the unit of a social and
governmental system will be more fully understood, as well as the
manner in which it entered into the higher organizations of the
phratry, tribe, and confederacy.
The gens is individualized by the following rights, privileges, and
obligations conferred and imposed upon its members, and which made up
the _jus gentilicium_.
I. _The right of electing its sachem and chiefs._
II. _The right of deposing its sachem and chiefs._
III. _The obligation not to marry in the gens._
IV. _Mutual rights of inheritance of the property of deceased
members._
V. _Reciprocal obligations of help, defense, and redress
of injuries._
VI. _The right of bestowing names upon its members._
VII. _The right of adopting strangers into the gens._
VIII. _Common religious rites, query._
IX. _A common burial place._
X. _A council of the gens._
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, were usually the superior class in ability, though not in
authority over the gens. The relation of the sachem was primarily to
the gens, of which he was the official head; while that of the chief
was primarily to the tribe, of the council of which he, as well as the
sachem, were members.
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.[53] This will explain the
succession of the office of sachem which passed from brother to
brother, or from uncle to nephew, and very rarely from grandfather to
grandson. The choice, which was by free suffrage of both males and
females of adult age, usually fell upon a brother of the deceased
sachem, or upon one of the sons of a sister; an own brother, or the son
of an own sister being most likely to be preferred. As between several
brothers, own and collateral, on the one hand, and the sons of several
sisters, own and collateral, on the other, there was no priority of
right, for the reason that all the male members of the gens were
equally eligible. To make a choice between them was the function of the
elective principle.
Upon the death of a sachem, for example among the Seneca-Iroquois, a
council of his gentiles[54] was convened to name his successor. Two
candidates, according to their usages, must be voted upon, both of
them members of the gens. Each person of adult age was called upon to
express his or her preference, and the one who received the largest
number of affirmative declarations was nominated. It still required
the assent of the seven remaining gentes before the nomination was
complete. If these gentes, who met for the purpose by phratries,
refused to confirm the nomination it was thereby set aside, and the
gens proceeded to make another choice. When the person nominated by his
gens was accepted by the remaining gentes the election was complete;
but it was still necessary that the new sachem should be _raised up_,
to use their expression, or invested with his office by a council of
the confederacy, before he could enter upon its duties. It was their
method of conferring the _imperium_. In this manner the rights and
interests of the several gentes were consulted and preserved; for
the sachem of a gens was _ex officio_ a member of the council of the
tribe, and of the higher council of the confederacy. The same method
of election and of confirmation existed with respect to the office
of chief, and for the same reasons. But a general council was never
convened to raise up chiefs below the grade of a sachem. They awaited
the time when sachems were invested.
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 of the advantages it conferred,
and of its adaptability to human wants in savagery and in barbarism.
The Iroquois still adhere inflexibly to the rule which forbids persons
to marry in their own gens.
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 by
his nearest relations within the gens. In the case of a male his own
brothers and sisters and maternal uncles divided his effects among
themselves. This practical limitation of the inheritance to the nearest
gentile kin discloses the germ of agnatic inheritance. In the case of
a female her property was inherited by her children and her sisters,
to the exclusion of her brothers. In every case the property remained
in the gens. The children of the deceased males took nothing from
their father because they belonged to a different gens. It was for the
same reason that the husband took nothing from the wife, or the wife
from her husband. These mutual rights of inheritance strengthened the
autonomy of the gens.
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.”[55] By the term kindred, as here used, we are justified
in understanding the gens. And of the Florida Indians: “When a brother
or son dies the people of the house will rather starve than seek
anything to eat during three months, but the kindred and relations
send it all in.”[56] Persons who removed from one village to another
could not transfer their possessory right to cultivated lands or to a
section of a joint-tenement house to a stranger; but must leave them
to his gentile kindred. Herrera refers to this usage among the Indian
tribes of Nicaragua; “He that removed from one town to another could
not sell what he had, but must leave it to his nearest relation.”[57]
So much of their property was held in joint ownership that their plan
of life would not admit of its alienation to a person of another
gens. Practically, the right to such property was possessory, and
when abandoned it reverted to the gens. Garcilasso de la Vega remarks
of the tribes of the Peruvian Andes, that “when the commonalty, or
ordinary sort, married, the communities of the people were obliged to
build and provide them houses.”[58] For _communities_, as here used, we
are justified in understanding the gens. Herrera speaking of the same
tribes observes that “this variety of tongues proceed from the nations
being divided into races, tribes, or clans.”[59] Here the gentiles were
required to assist newly married pairs in the construction of their
houses.
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.[60]
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 was held separately, and
propositions were made in behalf of the murderer for a condonation
of the act, usually in the nature of expressions of regret and of
presents of considerable value. If there were justifying or extenuating
circumstances it generally resulted in a composition; but if the
gentile kindred of the slain person were implacable, one or more
avengers were appointed by his gens from among its members, whose
duty it was to pursue the criminal until discovered, and then to slay
him wherever he might be found. If they accomplished the deed it was
no ground of complaint by any member of the gens of the victim. Life
having answered for life the demands of justice were appeased.
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.[61] Indian personal names, however, usually indicate the
gens of the individual to persons of other gentes in the same tribe. As
a rule each gens had names for persons that were its special property,
and, as such, could not be used by other gentes of the same tribe. A
gentile name conferred of itself gentile rights. These names either
proclaimed by their signification the gens to which they belonged, or
were known as such by common reputation.[62]
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 the infant. But the
child was not fully christened until its birth and name, together with
the name and gens of its mother and the name of its father, had been
announced at the next ensuing council of the tribe. Upon the death of a
person his name could not be used again in the life-time of his oldest
surviving son without the consent of the latter.[63]
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 name given transfers
the child to the gens to which the name belongs. But this is a wide
departure from archaic usages, and exceptional in practice. It tends to
corrupt and confound the gentile lineage. The names now in use among
the Iroquois and among other Indian tribes are, in the main, ancient
names handed down in the gentes from time immemorial.
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, through hardihood or favoritism, in running through the
lines in safety was entitled to this reward. Captives when adopted
were often assigned in the family the places of deceased persons
slain in battle, in order to fill up the broken ranks of relatives. A
declining gens might replenish its numbers, through adoption, although
such instances are rare. At one time the Hawk gens of the Senecas
were reduced to a small number of persons, and its extinction became
imminent. To save the gens a number of persons from the Wolf gens by
mutual consent were transferred in a body by adoption to that of the
Hawk. The right to adopt seems to be left to the discretion of each
gens.
Among the Iroquois the ceremony of adoption was performed at a public
council of the tribe, which turned it practically into a religious
rite.[64]
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.[65] The gens became the natural centre of religious growth and
the birthplace of religious ceremonies.
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 religious rites; and yet their religious
worship had a more or less direct connection with the gentes. It was
here that religious ideas would naturally germinate and that forms of
worship would be instituted. But they would expand from the gens over
the tribe, rather than remain special to the gens. Accordingly we find
among the Iroquois six annual religious festivals, (Maple, Planting,
Berry, Green-Corn, Harvest, and New Years Festivals)[66] which were
common to all the gentes united in a tribe, and which were observed at
stated seasons of the year.
Each gens furnished a number of “Keepers of the Faith,” both male
and female, who together were charged with the celebration of these
festivals.[67] The number advanced to this office by each was regarded
as evidence of the fidelity of the gens to religion. They designated
the days for holding the festivals, made the necessary arrangements
for their celebration, and conducted the ceremonies in conjunction
with the sachems and chiefs of the tribe, who were, _ex officio_,
“Keepers of the Faith.” With no official head, and none of the marks
of a priesthood, their functions were equal. The female “Keepers of
the Faith” were more especially charged with the preparation of the
feast, which was provided at all councils at the close of each day for
all persons in attendance. It was a dinner in common. The religious
rites appertaining to these festivals, which have been described in a
previous work,[68] need not be considered further than to remark, that
their worship was one of thanksgiving, with invocations to the Great
Spirit, and to the Lesser Spirits to continue to them the blessings of
life.
With the progress of mankind out of the Lower into the Middle, and
more especially out of the latter into the Upper Status of barbarism,
the gens became more the centre of religious influence and the source
of religious development. We have only the grosser part of the Aztec
religious system; but in addition to national gods, there seem to have
been other gods, belonging to smaller divisions of the people than the
phratries. The existence of an Aztec ritual and priesthood would lead
us to expect among them a closer connection of religious rites with the
gentes than is found among the Iroquois; but their religious beliefs
and observances are under the same cloud of obscurity as their social
organization.
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.”[69] The Iroquois
in ancient times used scaffolds and preserved the bones of deceased
relatives in bark barrels, often keeping them in the house they
occupied. They also buried in the ground. In the latter case those of
the same gens were not always buried locally together unless they had
a common cemetery for the village. The late Rev. Ashur Wright, so long
a missionary among the Senecas, and a noble specimen of the American
missionary, wrote to the author as follows; “I find no trace of the
influence of clanship in the burial places of the dead. I believe that
they buried promiscuously. However, they say that formerly the members
of the different clans more frequently resided together than they do
at the present time. As one family they were more under the influence
of family feeling, and had less of individual interest. Hence, it
might occasionally happen that a large proportion of the dead in some
particular burying place might be of the same clan.” Mr. Wright is
undoubtedly correct that in a particular cemetery members of all the
gentes established in a village would be buried; but they might keep
those of the same gens locally together. An illustration in point is
now found at the Tuscarora reservation near Lewiston, where the tribe
has one common cemetery, and where individuals of the same gens are
buried in a row by themselves. One row is composed of the graves of
the deceased members of the Beaver gens, two rows of the members of
the Bear gens, one row of the Gray Wolf, one of the Great Turtle, and
so on to the number of eight rows. Husband and wife are separated from
each other and buried in different rows; fathers and their children
the same; but mothers and their children and brothers and sisters
are found in the same row. It shows the power of gentile feeling,
and the quickness with which ancient usages are reverted to under
favorable conditions; for the Tuscaroras are now christianized without
surrendering the practice. An Onondaga Indian informed the writer
that the same mode of burial by gentes now prevailed at the Onondaga
and Oneida cemeteries. While this usage, perhaps, cannot be declared
general among the Indian tribes, there was undoubtedly in ancient times
a tendency to, and preference for this mode of burial.
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, Asiatic,
European and American, from the institution of the gens in savagery
to civilization. It was the instrument of government as well as the
supreme authority over the gens, the tribe, and the confederacy.
Ordinary affairs were adjusted by the chiefs; but those of general
interest were submitted to the determination of a council. As the
council sprang from the gentile organization the two institutions have
come down together through the ages. The Council of Chiefs represents
the ancient method of evolving the wisdom of mankind and applying it
to human affairs. Its history, gentile, tribal, and confederate, would
express the growth of the idea of government in its whole development,
until political society supervened into which the council, changed into
a senate, was transmitted.
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 Indian society was organized. A structure composed of such units
would of necessity bear the impress of their character, for as the unit
so the compound. It serves to explain that sense of independence and
personal dignity universally an attribute of Indian character.
Thus substantial and important in the social system was the gens as
it anciently existed among the American aborigines, and as it still
exists in full vitality in many Indian tribes. It was the basis of the
phratry, of the tribe, and of the confederacy of tribes. 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 six hundred and fifty persons to a gens. The Cherokees
would average more than a thousand to a gens. In the present condition
of the principal Indian tribes the number of persons in each gens would
range from one hundred to a thousand.
One of the oldest and most widely prevalent institutions of mankind,
the gentes have been closely identified with human progress upon
which they have exercised a powerful influence. They have been found
in tribes in the Status of savagery, in the Lower, in the Middle,
and in the Upper Status of barbarism on different continents, and in
full vitality in the Grecian and Latin tribes after civilization had
commenced. Every family of mankind, except the Polynesian, seems to
have come under the gentile organization, and to have been indebted to
it for preservation, and for the means of progress. It finds its only
parallel in length of duration in systems of consanguinity, which,
springing up at a still earlier period, have remained to the present
time, although the marriage usages in which they originated have long
since disappeared.
From its early institution, and from its maintenance through such
immense stretches of time, the peculiar adaptation of the gentile
organization to mankind, while in a savage and in a barbarous state,
must be regarded as abundantly demonstrated.
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 THLINKEETS.—THEIR
PROBABLE UNIVERSALITY IN THE TRIBES OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES.
The phratry (φρατρία) 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 phratry, and to form the specified
number of phratries in each tribe. But the phratric organization had
a natural foundation in the immediate kinship of certain gentes as
subdivisions of an original gens, which undoubtedly was the basis on
which the Grecian phratry was originally formed. The incorporation of
alien gentes, and transfers by consent or constraint, would explain the
numerical adjustment of the gentes and phratries in the Athenian tribes.
The Roman _curia_ was the analogue of the Grecian phratry. It is
constantly mentioned by Dionysius as a phratry.[70] There were ten
gentes in each _curia_, and ten _curiae_ in each of the three Roman
tribes, making thirty _curiae_ and three hundred gentes of the Romans.
The functions of the Roman _curia_ are much better known than those
of the Grecian phratry, and were higher in degree because the _curia_
entered directly into the functions of government. The assembly of
the gentes (_comitia curiata_) voted by _curiae_, each having one
collective vote. This assembly was the sovereign power of the Roman
People down to the time of Servius Tullius.
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.[71] At
a later period among the Athenians—for the phratry at Athens survived
the institution of political society under Cleisthenes—it looked after
the registration of citizens, thus becoming the guardian of descents
and of the evidence of citizenship. The wife upon her marriage was
enrolled in the phratry of her husband, and the children of the
marriage were enrolled in the gens and phratry of their father. It
was also the duty of this organization to prosecute the murderer of a
phrator in the courts of justice. These are among its known objects and
functions in the earlier and later periods. Were all the particulars
fully ascertained, the phratry would probably manifest itself in
connection with the common tables, the public games, the funerals of
distinguished men, the earliest army organization, and the proceedings
of councils, as well as in the observance of religious rites and in the
guardianship of social privileges.
The phratry existed in a large number of the tribes of the American
aborigines, where it is seen to arise by natural growth, and to stand
as the second member of the organic series, as among the Grecian and
Latin tribes. It did not possess original governmental functions, as
the gens, tribe and confederacy possessed them; but it was endowed with
certain useful powers in the social system, from the necessity for
some organization larger than a gens and smaller than a tribe, and
especially when the tribe was large. The same institution in essential
features and in character, it presents the organization in its archaic
form and with its archaic functions. A knowledge of the Indian phratry
is necessary to an intelligent understanding of the Grecian and the
Roman.
The eight gentes of the Seneca-Iroquois tribe were reintegrated in two
phratries as follows:
_First Phratry._
_Gentes._—1. Bear. 2. Wolf. 3. Beaver. 4. Turtle.
_Second Phratry._
_Gentes._—5. Deer. 6. Snipe. 7. Heron. 8. Hawk.
Each phratry (De-ă-non-dă′-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 respect to the gens of the individual. A
tradition of the Senecas affirms that the Bear and the Deer were the
original gentes, of which the others were subdivisions. It is thus
seen that the phratry had a natural foundation in the kinship of the
gentes of which it was composed. After their subdivision from increase
of numbers there was a natural tendency to their reunion in a higher
organization for objects common to them all. The same gentes are not
constant in a phratry indefinitely, as will appear when the composition
of the phratries in the remaining Iroquois tribes is considered.
Transfers of particular gentes from one phratry to the other must
have occurred when the equilibrium in their respective numbers was
disturbed. It is important to know the simple manner in which this
organization springs up, and the facility with which it is managed,
as a part of the social system of ancient society. With the increase
of numbers in a gens, followed by local separation of its members,
segmentation occurred, and the seceding portion adopted a new gentile
name. But a tradition of their former unity would remain, and become
the basis of their reorganization in a phratry.
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._
_Gentes._—1. Bear. 2. Wolf. 3. Turtle. 4. Snipe. 5. Eel.
_Second Phratry._
_Gentes._—6. Deer. 7. Beaver. 8. Hawk.
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._
_Gentes._—1. Wolf. 2. Turtle. 3. Snipe. 4. Beaver. 5. Ball.
_Second Phratry._
_Gentes._—6. Deer. 7. Eel. 8. Bear.
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 discovery. About A. D. 1712 they
were forced out of this area, whereupon they removed to the country of
the Iroquois and were admitted into the confederacy as a sixth member.
They have eight gentes organized in two phratries, as follows:
_First Phratry._
_Gentes_.—1. Bear. 2. Beaver. 3. Great Turtle. 4. Eel.
_Second Phratry._
_Gentes._—5. Gray Wolf. 6. Yellow Wolf. 7. Little Turtle. 8. Snipe.
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 a
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