It has been shown among the Iroquois that the warriors could appear before the council of chiefs and express their views upon public questions; and that the women could do the same through orators of their own selection. This popular participation in the government led in time to the popular assembly, with power to adopt or reject public measures submitted to them by the council. Among the Village Indians there is no evidence, so far as the author is aware, that there was an assembly of the people to consider public questions with power to act upon them. The four lineages probably met for special objects, but this was very different from a general assembly for public objects. From the democratic character of their institutions and their advanced condition the Aztecs were drawing near the time when the assembly of the people might be expected to appear.
The growth of the idea of government among the American aborigines, as elsewhere remarked, commenced with the gens and ended with the confederacy. Their organizations were social and not political. Until the idea of property had advanced very far beyond the point they had attained, the substitution of political for gentile society was impossible. There is not a fact to show that any portion of the aborigines, at least in North America, had reached any conception of the second great plan of government founded upon territory and upon property. The spirit of the government and the condition of the people harmonize with the institutions under which they live. When the military spirit predominates, as it did among the Aztecs, a military democracy rises naturally under gentile institutions. Such a government neither supplants the free spirit of the gentes, nor weakens the principles of democracy, but accords with them harmoniously.
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.—Attributes of the Gens.—Similar to those of the Iroquois Gentes.—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 Centre of Social and Religious Influence.
Civilization may be said to have commenced among the Asiatic Greeks with the composition of the Homeric poems about 850 B. C.; and among the European Greeks about a century later with the composition of the Hesiodic poems. Anterior to these epochs, there was a period of several thousand years during which the Hellenic tribes were advancing through the Later Period of barbarism, and preparing for their entrance upon a civilized career. Their most ancient traditions find them already established in the Grecian peninsula, upon the eastern border of the Mediterranean, and upon the intermediate and adjacent islands. An older branch of the same stock, of which the Pelasgians were the chief representatives, had preceded them in the occupation of the greater part of these areas, and were in time either Hellenized by them, or forced into emigration. The anterior condition of the Hellenic tribes and of their predecessors, must be deduced from the arts and inventions which they brought down from the previous period, from the state of development of their language, from their traditions and from their social institutions, which severally survived into the period of civilization. Our discussion will be restricted, in the main, to the last class of facts.
Pelasgians and Hellenes alike were organized in gentes, phratries[234] and tribes; and the latter united by coalescence into nations. In some cases the organic series was not complete. Whether in tribes or nations their government rested upon the gens as the unit of organization, and resulted in a gentile society or a people, as distinguished from a political society or a state. The instrument of government was a council of chiefs, with the co-operation of an agora or assembly of the people, and of a basileus or military commander. The people were free, and their institutions democratical. Under the influence of advancing ideas and wants the gens had passed out of its archaic into its ultimate form. Modifications had been forced upon it by the irresistible demands of an improving society; but, notwithstanding the concessions made, the failure of the gentes to meet these wants was constantly becoming more apparent. The changes were limited, in the main, to three particulars: firstly, descent was changed to the male line; secondly, intermarriage in the gens was permitted in the case of female orphans and heiresses; and thirdly, children had gained an exclusive inheritance of their father’s property. An attempt will elsewhere be made to trace these changes, briefly, and the causes by which they were produced.
The Hellenes in general were in fragmentary tribes, presenting the same characteristics in their form of government as the barbarous tribes in general, when organized in gentes and in the same stage of advancement. Their condition was precisely such as might have been predicted would exist under gentile institutions, and therefore presents nothing remarkable.