These changes show that certain gentes in some of the tribes have become extinct through the vicissitudes of time, and that others have been formed by the segmentation of over full gentes.
With a knowledge of the rights, privileges, and obligations of the members of a gens, its capabilities as the unit of a social and governmental system will be more fully understood, as well as the manner in which it entered into the higher organizations of the phratry tribe, and confederacy.
The gens is individualized by the following rights, privileges, and obligations conferred and imposed upon its members, and which made up the jus gentilicium:
I The right of electing its sachem and chiefs
II The right of deposing its sachem and chiefs
III The obligation not to marry in the gens
IV Mutual rights of inheritance of the property of deceased
members
V Reciprocal obligations of help, defense, and redress of
injuries
VI The right of bestowing names upon its members
VII The right of adopting strangers into the gens