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tile name, as Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle, etc. With descent in the female line, as among the Iroquois, the gens is composed of a supposed female ancestor and her children, together with the children of her female descendants in perpetuity. It includes this ancestor and her children, the children of her daughters and the children of her female descendants, while the children of her sons and the children of her male descendants are excluded. The latter belonged to the gentes

of their respective mothers. A moiety only of the descendants of the supposed ancestor belong to the gens. When descent is in the male line, as it was among the Greeks, and among the Mayas of Yucatan, the gens is composed of a supposed male ancestor and his children, together with the children of his sons, and the children of his male descendants in perpetuity, while the children of his daughters, and the children of his female descendants would belong to other gentes.

Each gens had its own sachem and one or more chiefs elected from among its members. The office of sachem was hereditary in the gens, in the sense that it was filled as often as a vacancy occurred, while the office of chief was non-hereditary, because it was bestowed in reward of merit, and died with the individual. We thus distinguish two primary grades of chiefs, of which all other grades were varieties. A son could not be chosen to succeed his father, where descent was in the female line, because he belonged to a different gens, and no gens would accept a sachem or chief from any gens but its own. The office passed from brother to brother, or from uncle to nephew; but, as all male cousins were brothers under their system of consanguinity, the person chosen was not necessarily an own brother; and as all the sons of a person's female cousins were his nephews, the nephew chosen was not necessarily the son of an own sister of the deceased sachem. This rule is mentioned because the Aztec succession was precisely the same as the Iroquois; the office held by Montezuma passing from brother to brother or from uncle to nephew. Assuming the existence of Aztec gentes, with descent in the female line, the Aztec succession is perfectly intelligible.

The gens was individualized by the following rights, privileges, and obligations :

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. Mutual obligations of help, defence, and redress of inju

ries.

VI. The right of bestowing names upon its members.

VII. The right of adopting strangers into the gens. VIII. A common burial-place.

IX. A council of the gens.

Want of space precludes an exposition of these characteristics. All the members of the gens were free, and bound to defend each other's freedom; they were all equal in position and in personal rights, the sachem and chiefs claiming no superiority; and they were a brotherhood bound together by the ties of kin. Liberty, equality, and fraternity, though never formulated, were cardinal principles of the gens. These facts are material, because the gens was the unit of their social and governmental system, the foundation upon which Indian society was organized. A structure composed of such units would of necessity bear the impress of their character; for as the unit, so the compound. It serves to explain that sense of personal independence universally an attribute of Indian character. Such and so substantial was the character of the gens as it anciently existed among the American aborigines, and as it still exists in full vitality in many. Indian tribes. Upon the gentes rested the phratry, the tribe, and the confederacy of tribes. Three thousand Senecas divided among eight gentes would give an average of three hundred and seventy-five persons to a gens.

Next in the ascending scale of organization is the phratry, consisting of a certain number of gentes reunited in a higher association for certain common objects. The Senecas were in two phratries, each consisting of four gentes, of which those in the same phratry were styled brother gentes to each other, and cousins to the other four. This organization was for social and religious rather than governmental objects. The Cayuga, Onondaga, and Tuscarora tribes had each the same number of gentes, united in the same number of phratries,

while the Oneida and the Mohawk tribes had but three gentes each, and no phratries.

The third stage of organization is the tribe. It is composed of a number of gentes of common lineage, all the members of which speak the same dialect. The tribe held an independent territory, bore a tribal name, and possessed a government administered by a council of chiefs. Out of the gens came the chief, and out of the union of the gentes in a tribe came the council, composed of the chiefs of the gentes. It was the instrument of government, and the only one known to the American aborigines. The great body of the Indian tribes were organized in gentes, precisely like those of the Iroquois, and the phratry is still found among a number of them. Their government was purely social, dealing with persons through their relations to a gens and tribe, and perfectly simple when examined as an organization.

Fourth and last is the confederacy of tribes, which was the ultimate stage of organization, and the highest to which the aborigines attained. It was composed of tribes speaking dialects of the same stock language, the tribes having been formed by the segmentation of an original tribe. Subdivision, followed by separation in area and divergence of speech, would leave each tribe in possession of the same gentes, and with a dialect of the same language, which furnished the elements of union upon which confederacies were formed, and by means of which they were made possible. The Iroquois Confederacy consisted of five tribes, afterwards increased to six, each occupying an independent territory, and remaining under the government of its own council in whatever related to the tribe individually. They were also under the government of a general council of the confederacy in whatever related to their common interests as united tribes.

The council of sachems consisted of fifty members, taken from certain gentes of the several tribes. The offices were hereditary in these gentes, but elective among their members. When a vacancy occurred by the death of a sachem in any tribe, a council of the decedent's gens was convened to elect his successor, in which all the adult male and female members of the gens were entitled to vote. After they had made a choice it

was still necessary that the remaining gentes should accept or reject the nomination. They met for this purpose by phratries. If either of them refused to accept the nominee, his nomination was thereby set aside, and the gens proceeded to make another choice. When the choice made by the gens had been accepted by the phratries, it was still necessary that the new sachem should be "raised up," to use their expression, and invested with his office by the council of the confederacy. Until the ceremony of investiture was performed he could not assume the duties of a sachem. Thus carefully were the rights and the independence of the people guarded in the choice of their sachems and chiefs, the latter obtaining office in much the same manner. Moreover, the gens had power to depose both sachem and chiefs, if for any reason they became unacceptable. This, in a few words, is the whole theory of the office of an Indian chief, an office found in every tribe of the American aborigines, and springing naturally from the gens.

War-chiefs were common in the Iroquois tribes, but when the confederacy was formed they experienced the necessity for a general commander of the forces of the confederacy. Two principal war-chiefs were accordingly created instead of one, both being assigned to the Seneca tribe. They were made hereditary in the Wolf and Turtle gentes, among whose members they were elected like the sachem, and were raised up in the same manner.

The same office reappears among the Aztecs, and was held by Montezuma. It is probable that it was hereditary in a particular gens, and elective among its members, like the office of principal war-chief among the Iroquois. The blazon on the house occupied by Montezuma was an eagle, which of itself creates a presumption that he belonged to the Eagle gens. An elective office implies a constituency; but what was the constituency in this case? We are told there were six electors, four Aztec, one Tezcucan, and one Tlacopan; but who made the electors? Again we are told that it was the prerogative of the incumbent of the office to appoint the six electors to name his successor. This is not the theory of an elective Indian office, and is, moreover, improbable on its face. Historians have not given an exposition of the structure of Aztec society. NO. 251.

VOL. CXXIII.

19

For aught that appears the people were an unorganized rabble. An emperor, with lords and nobles, judges, captains, and municipal functionaries appear, a multitude of officers of all grades, but with no organized society behind them to whom they were responsible. How these men came into their offices, and the tenure by which they were held, is left a mystery. Montezuma appointed them, they would have us believe, because it so easily disposes of the difficulty. But they have mentioned two facts which may enable future investigators to solve the problem of Montezuma's election. It appears that the Aztecs occupied their pueblo in four divisions, precisely as the Tlascalans occupied theirs, each in a distinct quarter, called the four quarters of Mexico. It seems highly probable that these divisions were four Aztec phratries. These again are represented by Tezozomoc and Herrera as falling into subdivisions. It is equally probable that these subdivisions were so many gentes. Each of these subdivisions, as will be shown, held lands in common. When a people organized in gentes, phratries, and tribes gather in a town or city, they settle locally by gentes and tribes, a necessary consequence of their social organization. The Grecian and Roman gentes and tribes settled in their cities in this manner. For example, the three Roman tribes were organized in gentes and curiæ (ten gentes in a curiæ, and ten curiæ in a tribe), the curia being the analogue of the phratry; and they settled locally at Rome by gentes, by curiæ, and by tribes. The Ramnes occupied the Palatine Hill, the Tities were mostly on the Quirinal, and the Luceres mostly on the Esquiline. If the Aztecs were organized in gentes and phratries, having but one tribe, they would of necessity be found in as many quarters as they had phratries, with each gens of the same phratry in the main locally by itself. The fact that the Aztec office of warchief passed from brother to brother or from uncle to nephew is confirmed by two elections under the eyes of the Spaniards. Montezuma was succeeded by his brother Cuitlahua, and the latter was succeeded by his nephew Guatemozin. The same thing is known to have occurred in a number of previous successions. It may therefore be suggested as a probable explanation of the mode of election that the office was hereditary

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