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 CHAPTER XVII.

THE FAMILIAL CLAN AND ITS EVOLUTION.

I. The Clan among the Redskins.—Primitive form of the Tribe—The Clan. II. The Family among the Redskins.—Classes of relations among the Omahas—The family among the Iroquois-Senecas, the Omahas, etc.—Primitive familial stage of the Redskins—Adoption and its miracles—Rise and evolution of masculine filiation in America—Exogamy and endogamy. III. The Family in Polynesia.—Maternal filiation—Rarity of exogamy—Hawaian marriage—The terms of kinship—The father humbling himself to the male child—Adoption in Polynesia. IV. The Family among the Mongols.—Familial exogamy among the Mongols—Kinship by classes—Evolution of kinship by classes. V. The Clan and the Family.—The European family has not been the "cellule" of societies—The primitive clan. I. The Clan among the Redskins.

In the preceding chapter we have seen the nature of Redskin exogamy, on which it has sometimes been attempted to construct theories of conjugal evolution applicable to the entire human race. As a matter of fact, the North American Indians marry within their tribe; they are therefore endogamous as regards the tribe, but they do not take their wives from their own clan, and consequently they are exogamous as regards this clan. But the clan being composed of real or supposed blood-relations, the exogamy of the Redskins is actually nothing more than our own prohibition, very much extended, of marriages within certain degrees of kinship.