Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/324

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HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES.

foundation of their social system. He names the following as among the rights, duties, and obligations of the kinship:

I. The kin claimed the right to name its members.
II. It was the duty of the kin to educate or train its members to every branch of public life.
III. The kin had the right to regulate and to control marriage.
IV. It was one of the attributes of the kin to enjoy common burial.
V. The right of the kin to 'separate worship' appears not only established within the kin's territory, but it is also recognized even at the central medicine-lodge of the tribe.
VI. The kin was obligated to protect and defend the persons and property of its members, and to resent and punish any injury done to them, as if it were a crime committed against the kin itself.
VII. The kin had the right to elect its officers, as well as the right to remove or depose them for misbehavior.[1]

He also regards the four "brotherhoods" who occupied the four quarters of the pueblo as probably phratries.[2] He also shows that the government was under the control of a council, Tlatocan, composed of a body of chiefs.'[3]

One of the most interesting results of this investigation is the discovery of a class of persons unattached to any gens, "outcasts from the bond of kinship."[4] Such a class grows up in every gentile society, when as far advanced as the Aztecs were. It finds its analogue in the Roman Plebeians. This remarkable essay will abundantly repay a careful study.

When we have learned to speak of the American Indians in language adapted to Indian life and Indian institutions, they will become comprehensible. So long as we apply to their social organizations and domestic institutions terms adapted to the organizations and to the institutions of civilized society, we caricature the Indians and deceive ourselves. There was neither a political society, nor a state, nor any civilization in America when it was discovered; and, excluding the Eskimos, but one race of Indians, the Red Race.


  1. Twelfth Ann. Rept. Peabody Museum, pp. 615-638
  2. Ib.,p.584.
  3. Ib.,p. 646, et seq.
  4. Ib., p. 608, et seq.