Ancient society

by Lewis Henry Morgan

Dr. Ten Broeck, Assistant Surgeon, U. S. A., furnished to Mr. Schoolcraft the Moqui legend of their origin which he obtained at one of their villages. They said that “many years ago their Great Mother[185] brought from her home in the West nine races of men in the following form. First, the Deer race; second, the Sand race; third, the Water [Rain] race; fourth, the Bear race; fifth, the Hare race; sixth, the Prairie Wolf race; seventh, the Rattlesnake race; eighth, the Tobacco Plant race; and ninth, the Reed Grass race. Having planted them on the spot where their villages now stand, she transformed them into men who built up the present pueblos; and the distinction of race is still kept up. One told me that he was of the Sand race, another, the Deer, etc. They are firm believers in metempsychosis, and say that when they die they will resolve into their original forms, and become bears, deers, etc., again.... The government is hereditary, but does not necessarily descend to the son of the incumbent; for if they prefer any other blood relative, he is chosen.”[186] Having passed, in this case, from the Lower into the Middle Status of barbarism, and found the organization into gentes in full development, its adaptation to their changed condition is demonstrated. Its existence among the Village Indians in general is rendered probable; but from this point forward in the remainder of North, and in the whole of South America, we are left without definite information except with respect to the Lagunas. It shows how incompletely the work has been done in American Ethnology, that the unit of their social system has been but partially discovered, and its significance not understood. Still, there are traces of it in the early Spanish authors, and direct knowledge of it in a few later writers, which when brought together will leave but little doubt of the ancient universal prevalence of the gentile organizations throughout the Indian family.

There are current traditions in many gentes, like that of the Moquis, of the transformation of their first progenitors from the animal, or inanimate object, which became the symbol of the gens, into men and women. Thus, the Crane gens of the Ojibwas have a legend that a pair of cranes flew over the wide area from the Gulf to the Great Lakes and from the prairies of the Mississippi to the Atlantic in quest of a place where subsistence was most abundant, and finally selected the Rapids on the outlet of Lake Superior, since celebrated for its fisheries. Having alighted on the bank of the river and folded their wings the Great Spirit immediately changed them into a man and woman, who became the progenitors of the Crane gens of the Ojibwas. There are a number of gentes in the different tribes who abstain from eating the animal whose name they bear; but this is far from universal.

2. Lagunas. The Laguna Pueblo Indians are organized in gentes, with descent in the female line, as appears from an address of Rev. Samuel Gorman before the Historical Society of New Mexico in 1860. “Each town is classed into tribes or families, and each of these groups is named after some animal, bird, herb, timber, planet, or one of the four elements. In the pueblo of Laguna, which is one of above one thousand inhabitants, there are seventeen of these tribes; some are called bear, some deer, some rattlesnake, some corn, some wolf, some water, etc., etc. The children are of the same tribe as their mother. And, according to ancient custom, two persons of the same tribe are forbidden to marry; but, recently, this custom begins to be less rigorously observed than anciently.”

“Their land is held in common, as the property of the community, but after a person cultivates a lot he has a personal claim to it, which he can sell to any one of the same community; or else when he dies it belongs to his widow or daughters; or, if he were a single man, it remains in his father’s family.”[187] That wife or daughter inherit from the father is doubtful.

3. Aztecs, Tezcucans and Tlacopans. The question of the organization of these, and the remaining Nahuatlac tribes of Mexico, in gentes will be considered in the next ensuing chapter.

4. Mayas of Yucatan. Herrera makes frequent reference to the “kindred,” and in such a manner with regard to the tribes in Mexico, Central and South America as to imply the existence of a body of persons organized on the basis of consanguinity much more numerous than would be found apart from gentes. Thus: “He that killed a free man was to make satisfaction to the children and kindred.”[188] It was spoken of the aborigines of Nicaragua, and had it been of the Iroquois, among whom the usage was the same, the term kindred would have been equivalent to gens. And again, speaking generally of the Maya Indians of Yucatan, he 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.”[189] In this another gentile usage may be recognized. Again, speaking of the Aztecs; “if they were guilty, no favor or kindred could save them from death.”[190] One more citation to the same effect may be made, applied to the Florida Indians who were organized in gentes. He observes “that they were extravagantly fond of their children, and cherished them, the parents and kindred lamenting such as died a whole year.”[191] The early observers noticed, as a peculiarity of Indian society, that large numbers of persons were bound together by the bond of kin, and therefore the group came to be mentioned as “the kindred.” But they did not carry the scrutiny far enough to discover, what was probably the truth, that the kindred formed a gens, and, as such, the unit of their social system.

Herrera remarks further of the Mayas, that “they were wont to observe their pedigrees very much, and therefore thought themselves all related, and were helpful to one another.... They did not marry mothers, or sisters-in-law, nor any that bore the same name as their father, which was looked upon as unlawful.”[192] The pedigree of an Indian under their system of consanguinity could have no significance apart from a gens; but leaving this out of view, there was no possible way, under Indian institutions, by which a father and his children could bear the same name except through a gens, which conferred a common gentile name upon all its members. It would also require descent in the male line to bring father and children into the same gens. The statement shows, moreover, that intermarriage in the gens among the Mayas was prohibited. Assuming the correctness of Herrera’s words, it is proof conclusive of the existence of gentes among the Mayas, with descent in the male line. Tylor, in his valuable work on the Early History of Mankind, which is a repository of widely-drawn and well-digested ethnological information, cites the same fact from another source, with the following remarks: “The analogy of the North American Indian custom is therefore with that of the Australian in making clanship on the female side a bar to marriage, but if we go down further south into Central America, the reverse custom, as in China, makes its appearance. Diego de Landa says of the people of Yucatan, that no one took a wife of his name, on the father’s side, for this was a very vile thing among them; but they might marry cousins german on the mother’s side.”[193]

XI. South American Indian Tribes.

Traces of the gens have been found in all parts of South America, as well as the actual presence of the Ganowánian system of consanguinity, but the subject has not been fully investigated. Speaking of the numerous tribes of the Andes brought by the Incas under a species of confederation, Herrera observes that “this variety of tongues proceeded from the nations being divided into races, tribes, or clans.”[194] Here in the clans the existence of gentes is recognized. Mr. Tylor, discussing the rules with respect to marriage and descent, remarks that “further south, below the Isthmus, both the clanship and the prohibition re-appear on the female side. Bernau says that among the Arrawaks of British Guiana, ‘Caste is derived from the mother, and children are allowed to marry into their father’s family, but not into that of their mother.’ Lastly, Father Martin Dobrizhoffer says that the Guaranis avoid, as highly criminal, marriage with the most distant relations; and speaking of the Abipones, he makes the following statement: ... ‘The Abipones, instructed by nature and the example of their ancestors, abhor the very thought of marrying any one related to them by the most distant tie of relationship.’”[195] These references to the social system of the aborigines are vague; but in the light of the facts already presented the existence of gentes with descent in the female line, and with intermarriage in the gens prohibited, renders them intelligible. Brett remarks of the Indian tribes in Guiana that they “are divided into families, each of which has a distinct name, as the Siwidi, Karuafudi, Onisidi, etc. Unlike our families, these all descend in the female line, and no individual of either sex is allowed to marry another of the same family name. Thus a woman of the Siwidi family bears the same name as her mother, but neither her father nor her husband can be of that family. Her children and the children of her daughters will also be called Siwidi, but both her sons and daughters are prohibited from an alliance with any individual bearing the same name; though they may marry into the family of their father, if they choose. These customs are strictly observed, and any breach of them would be considered as wicked.”[196] In the family of this writer may at once be recognized the gens in its archaic form. All the South American tribes above named, with the exception of the Andean, were when discovered either in the Lower Status of barbarism, or in the Status of savagery. Many of the Peruvian tribes concentrated under the government established by the Inca Village Indians were in the Lower Status of barbarism, if an opinion may be formed from the imperfect description of their domestic institutions found in Garcillasso de la Vega.