Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/770

 powell] SOCIOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF INSTITUTIONS 699

clansman is related through his father and through his wife, together with all the members of his own clan, constitute the tribe. Thus in savage society we have families, clans, and tribes. We have still a fourth unit. Two or more tribes may unite to form a confederacy for offensive or defensive purposes, or for both. When a confederacy is formed, artificial kinship is intro- duced ; and the tribes which unite agree to consider themselves related. If two tribes unite, the men of the tribes may consider each other as elder and younger brothers, or as fathers and sons, or even as uncles and nephews. Where many tribes unite to form a confederacy, relationships are distributed to the members of the confederacy, but only after long conferences, where such questions are considered in detail. Thus we see that in tribal society men are not regimented or grouped territorially, as in national society, but are regimented by kinship, real or conven- tional as the case may be: the same end, however, is accom- plished in full, that is, the people are grouped in a hierarchy of units. Thus in tribal society men are grouped or regimented by kindred ; and each person belongs to at least four groups of dif- ferent grades in the hierarchy. Certain things are regulated by the confederacy, certain things by the tribe, certain things by the clan, certain things by the mother of the family. In national society there is local government. In a democratic nation this is local self-government ; and in a monarchical nation it is local gov- ernment through officers appointed by the monarch. In tribal society there is group government, the questions of government being relegated to the several groups, and the elder-man of the group having authority.

In the course of generations some clans may die out, and the children be left without parents or grandparents: they must then be adopted into some other family. If they are adopted by a mother's sister they are still in the same clan ; but if they are adopted by a father's sister they are considered as belonging to his clan, which is the same as that of his sister. It is thus that it

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