Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/117

111 importance only after the population had increased considerably.

The tribal names generally seem to be more the result of chance than of intentional selection. In course of time it frequently happened that a tribe designated a neighboring tribe by another name than that chosen by itself. In this manner the Germans received their first historical name from the Celts.

2. A distinct dialect peculiar to this tribe. As a matter of fact the tribe and the dialect are co-extensive. In America, the formation of new tribes and dialects by segmentation was in progress until quite recently, and doubtless it is still going on. Where two weak tribes amalgamated into one, there it exceptionally happened that two closely related dialects were simultaneously spoken in the same tribe. The average strength of American tribes is less than 2,000 members. The Cherokees, however, number about 26,000, the greatest number of Indians in the United States speaking the same dialect.

3. The right to solemnly invest the sachems and chiefs elected by the gentes, and

4. The right to depose them, even against the will of the gens. As these sachems and chiefs are members of the tribal council, these rights of the tribe explain themselves. Where a league of tribes had been formed and all the tribes were represented in a feudal council, the latter exercised these rights.

5. The possession of common religious conceptions (mythology) and rites. "After the fashion of barbarians the American Indians were a religious people." Their mythology has not yet been critically investigated. They materialized their religious conceptions—spirits of all sorts—in human shapes, but the lower stage of barbarism in which they lived, knows nothing as yet of so-called idols. It is a cult of nature and of the elements, in process of evolution