The foreign elements intermingled with the native culture in sections of the Eastern hemisphere produced an abnormal condition of society, where the arts of civilized life were remolded to the aptitudes and wants of savages and barbarians.[476] Tribes strictly nomadic have also social peculiarities, growing out of their exceptional mode of life, which are not well understood. Through influences, derived from the higher races, the indigenous culture of many tribes has been arrested, and so far adulterated as to change the natural flow of their progress. Their institutions and social state became modified in consequence.
It is essential to systematic progress in Ethnology that the condition both of savage and of barbarous tribes should be studied in its normal development in areas where the institutions of the people are homogeneous. Polynesia and Australia, as elsewhere suggested, are the best areas for the study of savage society. Nearly the whole theory of savage life may be deduced from their institutions, usages and customs, inventions and discoveries. North and South America, when discovered, afforded the best opportunities for studying the condition of society in the Lower and in the Middle Status of barbarism. The aborigines, one stock in blood and lineage, with the exception of the Eskimos, had gained possession of a great continent, more richly endowed for human occupation than the Eastern continents, save in animals capable of domestication. It afforded them an ample field for undisturbed development. They came into its possession apparently in a savage state; but the establishment of the organization into gentes put them into possession of the principal germs of progress possessed by the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans.[477] Cut off thus early, and losing all further connection with the central stream of human progress, they commenced their career upon a new continent with the humble mental and moral endowments of savages. The independent evolution of the primary ideas they brought with them commenced under conditions insuring a career undisturbed by foreign influences. It holds true alike in the growth of the idea of government, of the family, of household life, of property, and of the arts of subsistence. Their institutions, inventions and discoveries, from savagery, through the Lower and into the Middle Status of barbarism, are homogeneous, and still reveal a continuity of development of the same original conceptions.
In no part of the earth, in modern times, could a more perfect exemplification of the Lower Status of barbarism be found than was afforded by the Iroquois, and other tribes of the United States east of the Mississippi. With their arts indigenous and unmixed, and with their institutions pure and homogeneous, the culture of this period, in its range, elements and possibilities, is illustrated by them in the fullest manner. A systematic exposition of these several subjects ought to be made, before the facts are allowed to disappear.
In a still higher degree all this was true with respect to the Middle Status of barbarism, as exemplified by the Village Indians of New Mexico, Mexico, Central America, Grenada, Ecuador, and Peru. In no part of the earth was there to be found such a display of society in this Status, in the sixteenth century, with its advanced arts and inventions, its improved architecture, its nascent manufactures and its incipient sciences. American scholars have a poor account to render of work done in this fruitful field. It was in reality a lost condition of ancient society which was suddenly unveiled to European observers with the discovery of America; but they failed to comprehend its meaning, or to ascertain its structure.
There is one other great condition of society, that of the Upper Status of barbarism, not now exemplified by existing nations; but it may be found in the history and traditions of the Grecian and Roman, and later of the German tribes. It must be deduced, in the main, from their institutions, inventions and discoveries, although there is a large amount of information illustrative of the culture of this period, especially in the Homeric poems.
When these several conditions of society have been studied in the areas of their highest exemplification, and are thoroughly understood, the course of human development from savagery, through barbarism to civilization, will become intelligible as a connected whole. The course of human experience will also be found as before suggested to have run in nearly uniform channels.
The patriarchal family of the Semitic tribes requires but a brief notice, for reasons elsewhere stated; and it will be limited to little more than a definition. It belongs to the Later Period of barbarism, and remained for a time after the commencement of civilization. The chiefs, at least, lived in polygamy; but this was not the material principle of the patriarchal institution. The organization of a number of persons, bond and free, into a family, under paternal power, for the purpose of holding lands, and for the care of flocks and herds, was the essential characteristic of this family. Those held to servitude, and those employed as servants, lived in the marriage relation, and, with the patriarch as their chief, formed a patriarchal family. Authority over its members and over its property was the material fact. It was the incorporation of numbers in servile and dependent relations, before that time unknown, rather than polygamy, that stamped the patriarchal family with the attributes of an original institution. In the great movement of Semitic society, which produced this family, paternal power over the group was the object sought; and with it a higher individuality of persons.
The same motive precisely originated the Roman family under paternal power (patria potestas); with the power in the father of life and death over his children and descendants, as well as over the slaves and servants who formed its nucleus and furnished its name; and with the absolute ownership of all the property they created. Without polygamy, the pater familias was a patriarch and the family under him was patriarchal. In a less degree, the ancient family of the Grecian tribes had the same characteristics. It marks that peculiar epoch in human progress when the individuality of the person began to rise above the gens, in which it had previously been merged, craving an independent life, and a wider field of individual action. Its general influence tended powerfully to the establishment of the monogamian family, which was essential to the realization of the objects sought. These striking features of the patriarchal families, so unlike any form previously known, have given to it a commanding position; but the Hebrew and Roman forms were exceptional in human experience. In the consanguine and punaluan families, paternal authority was impossible as well as unknown; under the syndyasmian it began to appear as a feeble influence; but its growth steadily advanced as the family became more and more individualized, and became fully established under monogamy, which assured the paternity of children. In the patriarchal family of the Roman type, paternal authority passed beyond the bounds of reason into an excess of domination.
No new system of consanguinity was created by the Hebrew patriarchal family. The Turanian system would harmonize with a part of its relationships; but as this form of the family soon fell out, and the monogamian became general, it was followed by the Semitic system of consanguinity, as the Grecian and Roman were by the Aryan. Each of the three great systems—the Malayan, the Turanian, and the Aryan—indicates a completed organic movement of society, and each assured the presence, with unerring certainty, of that form of the family whose relationships it recorded.