Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/768

 powell] SOCIOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF INSTITUTIONS 697

A tribe is a group of people composed of clans : a clan is a group of people having a common name. Suppose that a tribe springs from four persons, viz., a brother and a sister belonging to one clan, and a brother and a sister belonging to another clan, and that each of the men marries the other's sister. Let us call one of our clans " Wolf," and the other " Eagle." The Wolf man marries the Eagle woman ; and the Eagle man marries the Wolf woman. This is the first generation of a tribe composed of two clans, the man and his wife belonging to different clans. The four persons belong to two clans, and constitute two families. Let us suppose that each couple has four children, two boys and two girls. They will belong to two clans. The chil- dren of the Wolf mother will belong to the Wolf clan, and the children of the Eagle mother to the Eagle clan, for the children take the name of the mother. This is the second generation. Then four people of the second generation and two of the first generation belong to the Wolf clan ; and four of the second gen- eration and two of the first generation belong to the Eagle clan. Thus we see that clans do not correspond to what we call families. The husband and wife belong to different clans ; and the children belong to the clan of the mother, and take the name of the mother. The mother, not the father, owns the children ; and the husband is but the guest of his wife, not the head of the household.

Suppose that each man of the second generation marries a woman of that generation who belongs to a different clan, and that each pair has four children, two boys and two girls. These children constitute the third generation. The children belong to the clan of the mother. There are now three generations of peo- ple in each clan ; and every mother claims her own children as members of her clan. The head of the family is the mother; but the head of the clan is the grandmother's brother. Always the elder-man of the clan is the ruler of the clan; and the woman is the family ruler of her children. We may go on from the

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