Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/777

 RELATION OF SEX TO PRIMITIVE SOCIAL CONTROL 763

precious, since filiation based on relation to females prepares the way for organization based on motor activities. But in the pre- maternal stage, in the maternal stage, and in the patriarchal stage * the male force was present and was the carrier of the social will. \ In the fully maternal system, indeed, the male authority is only thinly veiled, or not at all. Filiation through female descent precedes filiation through achievement, because it is a function of somatic conditions, in the main, while filiation through achievement is a function of historical conditions. This advan- tage of maternal organization in point of time embarrasses and obscures the individual and collective expression of the male force, but under the veil of female nomenclature and in the midst of the female organization we can always detect the presence of the male authority. Bachofen's conception of the maternal system as a political system was erroneous, as Dar- gun and others have pointed out, 1 though woman has been reinforced by the fact of descent, and has so figured somewhat in political systems.

A most instructive example of the parallel existence of descent through females and of male authority is found in the Wyandot tribe of Indians, in which also the participation of woman in the regulative activities of society is, perhaps, more systematically developed than in any other single case among maternal peoples. Major Powell gives the following outline of the civil and military government of this tribe :

The civil government inheres in a system of councils and chiefs. In each gens there is a council, composed of four women, called Yu-wai-yu-wd-na. These four women councilors select a chief of the gens from its male mem- bers that is, from their brothers and sons. This gentile chief is the head of the gentile council. The council of the tribe is composed of the aggregated gentile councils. The tribal council, therefore, is composed one-fifth of men and four-fifths of women. The sachem of the tribe, or tribal chief, is chosen by the chiefs of the gentes. There is sometimes a grand council of the gens, composed^ of the councilors of the gens proper and all the heads of house- holds (women) and leading men brothers and sons. There is also a grand council of the tribe, composed of the council of the tribe proper and the heads of households of the tribe, and all the leading men of the tribe ....

See L. VON DAROUN, Muttcrrttht und Vaterrecht> 1892.