2. Choctas. Among the Choctas the phratric organization appears in a conspicuous manner, because each phratry is named, and stands out plainly as a phratry. It doubtless existed in a majority of the tribes previously named, but the subject has not been specially investigated. The tribe of the

Creeks consists of eight gentes arranged in two phratries, composed of four gentes each, as among the Iroquois.

I. Divided People. (First Phratry).
1. Reed.2. Law Okla.3. Lulak.4. Linoklusha.
II. Beloved People. (Second Phratry).
1. Beloved People.2. Small People.
3. Large People.4. Cray Fish.[164]

The gentes of the same phratry could not intermarry; but the members of either of the first gentes could marry into either gens of the second, and vice versâ. It shows that the Choctas, like the Iroquois, commenced with two gentes, each of which afterwards subdivided into four, and that the original prohibition of intermarriage in the gens had followed the subdivisions. Descent among the Choctas was in the female line. Property and the office of sachem were hereditary in the gens. In 1869 they numbered some twelve thousand, which would give an average of fifteen hundred persons to a gens. The foregoing information was communicated to the author by the late Dr. Cyrus Byington, who entered the missionary service in this tribe in 1820 while they still resided in their ancient territory east of the Mississippi, who removed with them to the Indian Territory, and died in the missionary service about the year 1868, after forty-five years of missionary labors. A man of singular excellence and purity of character, he has left behind him a name and a memory of which humanity may be proud.

A Chocta once expressed to Dr. Byington a wish that he might be made a citizen of the United States, for the reason that his children would then inherit his property instead of his gentile kindred under the old law of the gens. Chocta usages would distribute his property after his death among his brothers and sisters and the children of his sisters. He could, however, give his property to his children in his life-time, in which case they could hold it against the members of his gens. Many

Indian tribes now have considerable property in domestic animals and in houses and lands owned by individuals, among whom the practice of giving it to their children in their life-time has become common to avoid gentile inheritance. As property increased in quantity the disinheritance of children began to arouse opposition to gentile inheritance; and in some of the tribes, that of the Choctas among the number, the old usage was abolished a few years since, and the right to inherit was vested exclusively in the children of the deceased owner. It came, however, through the substitution of a political system in the place of the gentile system, an elective council and magistracy being substituted in place of the old government of chiefs. Under the previous usages the wife inherited nothing from her husband, nor he from her; but the wife’s effects were divided among her children, and in default of them, among her sisters.

3. Chickasas. In like manner the Chickasas were organized in two phratries, of which the first contains four, and the second eight gentes, as follows: