185. The Sequence of Social Institutions
The most peripheral and backward peoples of both North and South America even to-day remain without clans, moieties, hereditary totems, or exogamic groupings (§ [110]). Some of these, like the Eskimo and Fuegians, live at the extreme ends of the continents, under conditions of hardships which might be imagined to have directed all their energies toward the material sides of life and thus left over little interest for the development of institutions. But this argument will not apply to the many clanless tribes of the California, Plains, and Tropical Forest areas. It must accordingly be concluded that those American nations that show no formal organization of society on a hereditary basis—or at least the more primitive ones who possess no equivalent or substitute—do without this organization because they never acquired it. This negative condition may then be inferred as the original one of the whole American race.
Somewhat more advanced culturally, on the whole, and less definitely marginal, at any rate in North America, are several series of tribes that do possess exogamic groups—either sibs or moieties—in which descent goes in the male line and is generally associated with totemic beliefs or practices. These comprise the tribes of one segment of the Northwest Coast area; those of one end of the Southwest with some extension into California; and those of most of the Northern Woodland, with some extension into the Plains.
Another series of tribes live under the same sort of organization but with descent reckoned in the female instead of the male line. These comprise the peoples of one end of the Northwest Coast; those of one portion of the Southwest; and those of the Southeast, with some extensions into the Northeast and Plains.
These exogamic-totemic series of tribes average higher in their general culture than the clanless and totemless ones. On the whole, too, they are situated nearer the focus of civilization in Middle America. As between the two exogamic-totemic series the matrilinear tribes must be accredited with a more complex and better organized culture than the patrilinear ones. The finest carving in North America, for instance, is that of the Northwest—totem poles, masks, and the like. Within the Northwest, the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian—matrilinear tribes—excel in the quality of this work. They far surpass the patrilinear Kwakiutl and Salish. So in the Southwest: the matrilinear Pueblos build stone towns, obey a priestly hierarchy, and possess an elaborate series of cult societies. The patrilinear Pimas and southern Californians live in villages of brush or earth-covered houses, are priestless, and know at most a single religious society. Again, the matrilineal Southern Woodlanders had made some approach to a system of town life and political institutions, the patrilineal Northern Woodlanders did without any serious institutions in these directions. The one Northeastern group that established a successful political organization, the Iroquois with their League of the Five Nations, were matrilinear among patrilinear neighbors and possessed positive affiliations with the Southeast.
It would be extravagant to maintain that throughout the North American continent every matrilineal tribe was culturally more advanced than every patrilineal one. But it is clear that within each area or type of culture the matrilineal tribes manifest superiority over the patrilineal tribes in a preponderance of cultural aspects. The matrilineal clan organization thus represents a higher and presumably later stage in North America than patrilineal clan organization, as this in turn ranks and temporally follows the clanless condition.
With one exception, the distribution of the same tribes with reference to the South Mexican center agrees with their advancement. The Northeast is distinctly peripheral, the Southeast a half-way tract connected with Mexico by way both of the Southwest and the Antilles. The matrilineal Pueblo portion of the Southwest occupies part of the plateau backbone near the southern end of which the Mexican culture developed. It was along this backbone that civilization flowed up through northern Mexico. The coasts lagged behind. They were marginal in Mexico, more marginal still in the Southwest, where the patrilineal tribes lived on or near the Pacific.
The one exception is in the Northwest Coast, where the more remote northerly tribes are matrilinear, the nearer southerly ones patrilinear. This reversed distribution raises the suspicion that the Northwestern social organization may have had nothing to do with Mexico, but may be a purely local product. This suspicion is hardened by the fact that the Northwest shows a number of other culture traits—some peculiar to itself, others recurring in well separated areas—which it seems impossible to connect with Mexico. Several of these traits will be discussed farther on. For the present it is enough to note their existence as an indication favorable to the interpretation of the Northwest social organization as unrelated to Mexico. Thus the abnormal matrilineal-patrilineal distribution in the Northwest is no bar to the generic finding for North America that clanless, patrilinear, and matrilinear organizations of society rank in this order both as regards developmental sequence and distance from Middle America.
For South America the data are too scattering to discuss profitably without rather detailed consideration.
The distributional facts outside Middle America thus point to this reconstruction of events. The original Americans were non-exogamous, non-totemic, without sibs or unilateral reckoning of descent. The first institution of exogamic groups was on the basis of descent in the male line, occurred in or near Middle America, and flowed outwards, though not to the very peripheries and remotest tracts of the continents. Somewhat later, perhaps also in Middle America, possibly at the same center, the institution was altered: descent became matrilinear. This new type of organization diffused, but in its briefer history traveled less far and remained confined to the tribes that were in most active cultural connection with Middle America.