Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/782

 powell] SOCIOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF INSTITUTIONS 711

These phratries which are organized to obtain the assistance of ghosts develop periodical ceremonies which are designed to secure the annual productions of nature upon which human wel- fare depends. Thus the fishing tribes of the Pacific coast that depend largely for their food on the coming of the salmon from the sea at stated times have ceremonies designed to secure their coming; those that depend upon cereals, like wild rice, also have their ceremonies to invoke the aid of ghosts to bring abundant seeds. In arid lands, where vegetation is so dependent upon rain, these ceremonies take the form of invocations for rain. Thus in every region of the United States periodical ceremonies are per- formed to secure harvests and supplies of game.

Again, human beings are subject to many diseases which are universally attributed to ghosts. Ceremonies to ghosts are com- mon for the purpose of propitiating them or of preventing their malign influences or even of obtaining the aid of some ghosts to defend the people from other ghosts. Societies, or incorpora- tions, as we have called them, but which are often called phratries, or brotherhoods, are first incorporated among men as religious societies on the theory that the good and evil of life are largely dependent upon ghosts.

In tribal life the head of such a society, if it be a man, is known as father ; in some few cases the head may be a woman, when she is known as mother. The children of such a head of society are known as brothers and sisters, hence among classical peoples they were known as phratries.

These brotherhoods constitute an important element in savage society, and their chiefs have on some occasions quite as much influence as the governmental chiefs. Often the father of the brotherhood and the elder-man of the clan is the same person. When this is the case, authority is doubly established. Ulti- mately this union effects a reorganization of the tribe itself, and clans become gentes. How this is accomplished we must now explain.

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