# The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III.
THE IROQUOIS GENS.
We now come to another discovery of Morgan that is at least as important as the reconstruction of the primeval form of the family from the systems of kinship. It is the proof that the sex organizations within the tribe of North American Indians, designated by animal names, are essentially identical with the genea of the Greeks and the gentes of the Romans; that the American form is the original from which the Greek and Roman forms were later derived; that the whole organization of Greek and Roman society during primeval times in gens, phratry and tribe finds its faithful parallel in that of the American Indians; that the gens is an institution common to all barbarians up to the time of civilization—at least so far as our present sources of information reach. This demonstration has cleared at a single stroke the most difficult passages of remotest ancient Greek and Roman history. At the same time it has given us unexpected information concerning the fundamental outlines of the constitution of society in primeval times— before the introduction of the state. Simple as the matter is after we have once found it out, still it was only lately discovered by Morgan. In his work of 1871 he had not yet unearthed this mystery. Its revelation has completely silenced for the time being those generally so overconfident English authorities on primeval history.
The Latin word gens, used by Morgan generally for the designation of this sex organization, is derived, ​like the equivalent Greek word genos, from the common Aryan root gan, signifying to beget. Gens, genos, Sanskrit dschanas, Gothic kuni, ancient Norse and Anglesaxon kyn, English kin, Middle High German künne, all signify lineage, descent. Gens in Latin, genos in Greek, specially designate that sex organization which boasted of common descent (from a common sire) and was united into a separate community by certain social and religious institutions, but the origin and nature of which nevertheless remained obscure to all our historians.
Elsewhere, in speaking of the Punaluan family, we saw how the gens was constituted in its original form. It consisted of all individuals who by means of the Punaluan marriage and in conformity with the conceptions necessarily arising in it made up the recognized offspring of a certain ancestral mother, the founder of that gens. Since fatherhood is uncertain in this form of the family, female lineage is alone valid. And as brothers must not marry their sisters, but only women of foreign descent, the children bred from these foreign women do not belong to the gens, according to maternal law. Hence only the offspring of the daughters of every generation remain in the same sex organization. The descendants of the sons are transferred to the gentes of the new mothers. What becomes of this group of kinship when it constitutes itself a separate group, distinct from similar groups in the same tribe?
As the classical form of this original gens Morgan selects that of the Iroquois, more especially that of the Seneca tribe. This tribe has eight gentes named after animals: 1. Wolf. 2. Bear. 3. Turtle. 4. Beaver. 5. Deer. 6, Snipe. 7. Heron. 8. Hawk. Every gens observes the following customs:
1. The gens elects its sachem (official head during peace) and its chief (leader in war). The sachem ​must be selected within the gens and his office was in a sense hereditary. It had to be filled immediately after a vacancy occurred. The chief could be selected outside of the gens, and his office could even be temporarily vacant. The son never followed his father in the office of sachem, because the Iroquois observed maternal law, in consequence of which the son belonged to another gens. But the brother or the son of a sister was often elected as a successor. Men and women both voted in elections. The election, however, had to be confirmed by the other seven gentes, and then only the sachem-elect was solemnly invested, by the common council of the whole Iroquois federation. The significance of this will be seen later. The power of the sachem within the tribe was of a paternal, purely moral nature. He had no means of coercion at his command. He was besides by virtue of his office a member of the tribal council of the Senecas and of the federal council of the whole Iroquois nation. The Chief had the right to command only in times of war.
2. The gens can retire the sachem and the chief at will. This again is done by men and women jointly. The retired men are considered simple warriors and private persons like all others. The tribal council, by the way, can also retire the sachems, even against the will of the tribe.
3. No member is permitted to marry within the gens. This is the fundamental rule of the gens, the tie that holds it together. It is the negative expression of the very positive blood relationship, by virtue of which the individuals belonging to it become a gens. By the discovery of this simple fact Morgan for the first time revealed the nature of the gens. How little the gens had been understood before him is proven by former reports on savages and barbarians, in which the different organizations of which ​the gentile order is composed are jumbled together without understanding and distinction as tribe, clan, thum, etc. Sometimes it is stated that intermarrying within these organizations is forbidden. This gave rise to the hopeless confusion, in which McLennan could pose as Napoleon and establish order by the decree: All tribes are divided into those that forbid intermarrying (exogamous) and those that permit it (endogamous). And after he had thus made confusion worse confounded, he could indulge in deep meditations which of his two preposterous classes was the older: exogamy or endogamy. By the discovery of the gens founded on affinity of blood and the resulting impossibility of its members to intermarry, this nonsense found a natural end. It is self understood that the marriage interdict within the gens was strictly observed at the stage in which we find the Iroquois.
4. The property of deceased members fell to the share of the other gentiles; it had to remain in the gens. In view of the insignificance of the objects an Iroquois could leave behind, the nearest gentile relations divided the heritage. Was the deceased a man, then his natural brothers, sisters and the brothers of the mother shared in his property. Was it a woman, then her children and natural sisters shared, but not her brothers. For this reason husband and wife could not inherit from one another, nor the children from the father.
5. The gentile members owed to each other help, protection and especially assistance in revenging injury inflicted by strangers. The individual relied for his protection on the gens and could be assured of it. Whoever injured the individual, injured the whole gens. From this blood kinship arose the obligation to blood revenge that was unconditionally recognized by the Iroquois. If a stranger killed a gentile ​member, the whole gens of the slain man was pledged to .revenge his death. First mediation was tried. The gens of the slayer deliberated and offered to the gentile council of the slain propositions for atonement, consisting generally in expressions of regret and presents of considerable value. If these were accepted, the matter was settled. In the opposite case the injured gens appointed one or more avengers who were obliged to pursue the slayer and to kill him. If they succeeded, the gens of the slayer had no right to complain. The account was squared.
6. The gens had certain distinct names or series of names, which no other gens in the whole tribe could use, so that the name of the individual indicated to what gens he belonged. A gentile name at the same time bestowed gentile rights.
7. The gens may adopt strangers who thereby are adopted into the whole tribe. The prisoners of war who were not killed became by adoption into a gens tribal members of the Senecas and thus received full gentile and tribal rights. The adoption took place on the motion of some gentile members, of men who accepted the stranger as a brother or sister, of women who accepted him as a child. The solemn introduction into the gens was necessary to confirm the adoption. Frequently certain gentes that had shrunk exceptionally were thus strengthened by mass adoptions from another gens with the consent of the latter. Among the Iroquois the solemn introduction into the gens took place in a public meeting of the tribal council, whereby it actually became a religious ceremony.
The existence of special religious celebrations among Indian gentes can hardly be demonstrated. But the religious rites of the Indians are more or less connected with the gens. At the six annual religious festivals of the Iroquois the sachems and chiefs of ​the different gentes were added to the "Keepers of the Faith" and had the functions of priests.
9. The gens had a common burial place. Among the Iroquois of the State of New York, who are crowded by white men all around them, the burial place has disappeared, but it existed formerly. Among other Indians it is still in existence, e.g., among the Tuscaroras, near relatives of the Iroquois, where every gens has a row by itself in the burial place, although they are Christians. The mother is buried in the same row as her children, but not the father. And among the Iroquois the whole gens of the deceased attends the funeral, prepares the grave and provides the addresses, etc.
10. The gens had a council, the democratic assembly of all male and female gentiles of adult age, all with equal suffrage. This council elected and deposed its sachems and chiefs; likewise the other "Keepers of the Faith." It deliberated on gifts of atonement or blood revenge for murdered gentiles and it adopted strangers into the gens. In short, it was the sovereign power in the gens.
The following are the rights and privileges of the typical Indian gens, according to Morgan: "All the members of an Iroquois gens were personally free, and they were bound to defend each other's freedom; they were equal in privileges and in personal rights, the sachems and chiefs claiming no superiority; and they were a brotherhood bound together by ties of kin. Liberty, equality and fraternity, though never formulated, were cardinal principles of the gens. These facts are material, because the gens was the unit of a social and governmental system, the foundation upon which Indian society was organized. A structure composed of such units would of necessity bear the impress of their character, for as the unit, so the compound. It serves to explain that sense ​of independence and personal dignity universally an attribute of Indian character."
At the time of the discovery the Indians of entire North America were organized in gentes by maternal law. Only "in some tribes, as among the Dakotas, the gentes had fallen out; in others as among the Ojibwas, the Omahas and the Mayas of Yucatan, descent had been changed from the female to the male line."
Among many Indian tribes with more than five or six gentes we find three, four or more gentes united into a separate group, called phratry by Morgan in accurate translation of the Indian name by its Greek equivalent. Thus the Senecas have two phratries, the first comprising gentes one to four, the second gentes five to eight. Closer investigation shows that these phratries generally represent the original gentes that formed the tribe in the beginning. For the marriage interdict necessitated the existence of at least two gentes in a tribe in order to realize its separate existence. As the tribe increased, every gens segmented into two or more new gentes, while the original gens comprising all the daughter gentes, lived on in the phratry. Among the Senecas and most of the other Indians "the gentes in the same phratry are brother gentes to each other, and cousin gentes to those of the other phratry"—terms that have a very real and expressive meaning in the American system of kinship, as we have seen. Originally no Seneca was allowed to marry within his phratry, but this custom has long become obsolete and is now confined to the gens. According to the tradition among the Senecas, the bear and the deer were the two original gentes, from which the others were formed by segmentation. After this new institution had become well established it was modified according to circumstances. If certain gentes became extinct, it ​sometimes happened that by mutual consent the members of one gens were transferred in a body from other phratries. Hence we find the gentes of the same name differently grouped in the phratries of the different tribes.
"The phratry, among the Iroquois, was partly for social and partly for religious objects." 1. In the ball game one phratry plays against another. Each one sends its best players, the other members, upon different sides of the field, watch the game and bet against one another on the result. 2. In the tribal council the sachems and chiefs of each phratry are seated opposite one another, every speaker addressing the representatives of each phratry as separate bodies. 3. When a murder had been committed in the tribe, the slayer and the slain belonging to different phratries, the injured gens often appealed to its brother gentes. These held a phratry council which in a body addressed itself to the other phratry, in order to prevail on the latter to assemble in council and effect a condonation of the matter. In this case the phratry re-appears in its original gentile capacity, and with a better prospect of success than the weaker gens, its daughter. 4. At the funeral of prominent persons the opposite phratry prepared the interment and the burial rites, while the phratry of the deceased attended the funeral as mourners. If a sachem died, the opposite phratry notified the central council of the Iroquois that the office of the deceased had become vacant. 5. In electing a sachem the phratry council also came into action. Endorsement by the brother gentes was generally considered a matter of fact, but the gentes of the other phratry might oppose. In such a case the council of this phratry met, and if it maintained its opposition, the election was null and void. 6. Formerly the Iroquois had special ​religious mysteries, called medicine lodges by the white men. These mysteries were celebrated among the Senecas by two religious societies that had a special form of initiation for new members; each phratry was represented by one of these societies. 7. If, as is almost certain, the four lineages occupying the four quarters of Tlascaia at the time of the conquest were four phratries, then it is proved that the phratries were at the same time military units, as were the Greek phratries and similar sex organizations of the Germans. Each of these four lineages went into battle as a separate group with its special uniform and flag and its own leader.
Just as several gentes form a phratry so in the classical form several phratries form a tribe. In some cases the middle group, the phratry, is missing in strongly decimated tribes.
What constitutes an Indian tribe in America? 1. A distinct territory and a distinct name. Every tribe had a considerable hunting and fishing ground beside the place of its actual settlement. Beyond this territory there was a wide neutral strip of land reaching over to the boundaries of the next tribe; a smaller strip between tribes of related languages, a larger between tribes of foreign languages. This corresponds to the boundary forest of the Germans, the desert created by Caesar's Suevi around their territory, the isârnholt (Danish jarnved, Latin limei Danicus) between Danes and Germans, the sachsen wald (Saxon forest) and the Slavish branibor between Slavs and Germans giving the province of Brandenburg its name. The territory thus surrounded by neutral ground was the collective property of a certain tribe, recognized as such by other tribes and defended against the invasion of others. The disadvantage of undefined boundaries became of ​practical 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 ​to pantheism. The different tribes had regular festivals with prescribed forms of worship, mainly dances and games. Especially dancing was an essential part of all religious celebrations. Every tribe celebrated by itself.
6. A tribal council for public affairs. It was composed of all the sachems and chiefs of the different, gentes, real representatives because they could be deposed at any moment. It deliberated in public, surrounded by the rest of the tribal members, who had a right to take part in the discussions and claim attention. The council decided. As a rule any one present gained a hearing on his demand. The women could also present their views by a speaker of their choice. Among the Iroquois the final resolution had to be passed unanimously, as was also the case in some resolutions of German mark (border) communities. It was the special duty of the tribal council to regulate the relations with foreign tribes. The council received and despatched legations, declared war and made peace. War was carried on principally by volunteers. "Theoretically, each tribe was at war with every other tribe with which it had not formed a treaty of peace."
Expeditions against such enemies were generally organized by certain prominent warriors. They started a war dance, and whoever took part in it thereby declared his intention to join the expedition. Ranks were formed and the march began immediately. The defense of the attacked tribal territory was also generally carried on by volunteers. The exodus and the return of such columns was always the occasion of public festivities. The consent of the tribal council for such expeditions was not required, and was neither asked nor given. This corresponds to the private war expeditions of German followers described by Tacitus. Only these German ​groups of followers had already assumed a more permanent character, forming a standing center organized during peace, around which the other volunteers gathered in case of war. Such war columns were rarely strong in numbers. The most important expeditions of the Indians, even for long distances, were undertaken by insignificant forces. If more than one group joined for a great expedition, every group obeyed its own leader. The uniformity of the campaign plan was secured as well as possible by a council of these leaders. This is the mode of warfare among the Allemani in the fourth century on the Upper Rhine, as described by Ammianus Marcellinus.
7. In some tribes we find a head chief, whose power, however, is limited. He is one of the sachems who has to take provisional measures in cases requiring immediate action, until the council can assemble and decide. He represents a feeble, but generally undeveloped prototype of an official with executive power. The latter, as we shall see, developed in most cases out of the highest war chief.
The great majority of American Indians did not go beyond the league of tribes. With a few tribes of small membership, separated by wide boundary tracts, weakened by unceasing warfare, they occupied an immense territory. Leagues were now and then formed by kindred tribes as the result of momentary necessity and dissolved again under more favorable conditions. But in certain districts, tribes of the same kin had again found their way out of disbandment into permanent federations, making the first step towards the formation of nations. In the United States we find the highest form of such a league among the Iroquois. Emigrating from their settlements west of the Mississippi, where they probably formed a branch of the great Dakota family, they settled at last after long wanderings in the ​present State of New York. They had five tribes: Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas and Mohawks. They lived on fish, venison, and the products of rough gardening, inhabiting villages protected by stockades. Their number never exceeded 20,000, and certain gentes were common to all five tribes. They spoke closely related dialects of the same language and occupied territories contiguous to one another. As this land was won by conquest, it was natural for these tribes to stand together against the expelled former inhabitants. This led, not later than the beginning of the fifteenth century, to a regular "eternal league," a sworn alliance that immediately assumed an aggressive character, relying on its newly won strength. About 1675, at the summit of its power, it had conquered large districts round about and partly expelled the inhabitants, partly made them tributary. The Iroquois League represented the most advanced social organization attained by Indians that had not passed the lower stage of barbarism. This excludes only the Mexicans, New Mexicans and Peruvians.
The fundamental provisions of the league were:
1. Eternal federation of the five consanguineous tribes on the basis of perfect equality and independence in all internal tribal matters. This consanguinity formed the true fundament of the league. Three of these tribes, called father tribes, were brothers to one another; the other two, also mutual brothers, were called son tribes. The three oldest gentes were represented by living members in all five tribes, and these members were all regarded as brothers. Three other gentes were still alive in three tribes, and all of their members called one another brothers. The common language, only modified by variations of dialect, was the expression and proof of their common descent.
​2. The official organ of the league was a federal council of fifty sachems, all equal in rank and prominence. This council had the supreme decision in a federal matters.
3. On founding this league the fifty sachems had been assigned to the different tribes and gentes as holders of new offices created especially for federal purposes. Vacancies were filled by new elections in the gens, and the holders of these offices could be deposed at will. But the right of installation belonged to the federal council.
4. These federal sachems were at the same time sachems of their tribe and had a seat and a vote in the tribal council.
5. All decisions of the federal council had to be unanimous.
6. The votes were cast by tribes, so that every tribe and the council members of each tribe had to vote together in order to adopt a final resolution.
7. Any one of the five tribes could convoke the federal council, but the council could not convene itself.
8. Federal meetings were held publicly in the presence of the assembled people. Every Iroquois could have the word, but the final decision rested with the council.
9. The league had no official head, no executive chief.
10. It had, however, two high chiefs of war, both with equal functions and power (the two "kings" of Sparta, the two consuls of Rome).
This was the whole constitution, under which the Iroquois lived over four hundred years and still live. I have described it more fully after Morgan, because we have here an opportunity for studying the organization of a society that does not yet know a state. The state presupposes a public power of coërcion ​separated from the aggregate body of its members. Maurer, with correct intuition, recognized the constitution of the German Mark as a purely social institution, essentially different from that of a state, though furnishing the fundament on which a state constitution could be erected later on. Hence in all of his writings, he traced the gradual rise of the public power of coercion from and by the side of primordial constitutions of marks, villages, farms and towns. The North American Indians show how an originally united tribe gradually spreads over an immense continent; how tribes by segmentation become nations, whole groups of tribes; how languages change so that they not only become unintelligible to one another, but also lose every trace of former unity; how at the same time one gens splits up into several gentes, how the old mother gentes are preserved in the phratries and how the names of these oldest gentes still remain the same in widely distant and long separated tribes. Wolf and bear still are gentile names in a majority of all Indian tribes. And the above named constitution is essentially applicable to all of them, except that many did not reach the point of forming leagues of related tribes.
But once the gens was given as a social unit, we also see how the whole constitution of gentes, phratries and tribes developed with almost unavoid- able necessity—because naturally—from the gens. All three of them are groups of differentiated consanguine relations. Each is complete in itself, arranges its own local affairs and supplements the other groups. And the cycle of functions performed by them includes the aggregate of the public affairs of men in the lower stage of barbarism.
Wherever we find the gens as the social unit of a nation, we are justified in searching for a tribal organization similar to the one described above. And ​whenever sufficient material is at hand, as in Greek and Roman history, there we shall not only find such an organization, but we may also be assured that the comparison with the American sex organizations will assist us in solving the most perplexing doubts and riddles in places where the material forsakes us.
How wonderful this gentile constitution is in all its natural simplicity! No soldiers, gensdarmes and policemen, no nobility, kings, regents, prefects or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits, and still affairs run smoothly. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the entire community involved in them, either the gens or the tribe or the various gentes among them- selves. Only in very rare cases the blood revenge is threatened as an extreme measure. Our capital punishment is simply a civilized form of it, afflicted with all the advantages and drawbacks of civilization. Not a vestige of our cumbersome and intricate system of administration is needed, although there are more public affairs to be settled than nowadays: the communistic household is shared by a number of families, the land belongs to the tribe, only the gardens are temporarily assigned to the households. The parties involved in a question settle it and in most cases the hundred-year-old traditions have settled everything beforehand. There cannot be any poor and destitute—the communistic households and the gentes know their duties toward the aged, sick and disabled. All are free and equal—the women included. There is no room yet for slaves, nor for the subjugation of foreign tribes. When about 1651 the Iroquois had vanquished the Eries and the "Neutral Nation," they offered to adopt them into the league on equal terms. Only when the vanquished declined this offer they were driven out of their territory.
What splendid men and women were produced by such a society! All the white men who came into ​contact with unspoiled Indians admired the personal dignity, straightforwardness, strength of character and bravery of these barbarians.
We lately received proofs of such bravery in Africa. A few years ago the Zulus, and some months ago the Nubians, both of which tribes still retain the gentile organization, did what no European army can do. Armed only with lances and spears, without any firearms, they advanced under a hail of bullets from breechloaders up to the bayonets of the English infantry—the best of the world for fighting in closed ranks—and threw them into confusion more than once, yea, even forced them to retreat in spite of the immense disparity of weapons, and in spite of the fact that they have no military service and don't know anything about drill. How enduring and able they are, is proved by the complaints of the English who admit that a Kaffir can cover a longer distance In twenty-four hours than a horse. The smallest muscle springs forth, hard and tough like a whiplash, says an English painter.
Such was human society and its members, before the division into classes had taken place. And a comparison of that social condition with the condition of the overwhelming majority of present day society shows the enormous chasm that separates our proletarian and small farmer from the free gentile of old. That is one side of the question. We must not overlook, however, that this organization was doomed. It did not pass beyond the tribe. The league of tribes marked the beginning of its downfall, as we shall see, and as the attempts of the Iroquois at subjugating others showed. Whatever went beyond the tribe, went outside of gentilism. Where no direct peace treaty existed, there war reigned from tribe to tribe. And this war was carried on with the particular cruelty ​that distinguishes man from other animals, and that was modified later on simply by self-interest.
The gentile constitution in its most flourishing time, such as we saw it in America, presupposed a very undeveloped state of production, hence a population thinly scattered over a wide area. Man was almost completely dominated by nature, a strange and incomprehensible riddle to him. His simple religious conceptions clearly reflect this. The tribe remained the boundary line for man, as well in regard to himself as to strangers outside. The gens, the tribe and their Institutions were holy and inviolate. They were a superior power instituted by nature, and the feelings, thoughts and actions of the individual remained unconditionally subject to them. Commanding as the people of this epoch appear to us, nothing distinguishes one from another. They are still attached, as Marx has it, to the navel string of the primordial community.
The power of these natural and spontaneous communities had to be broken, and it was. But it was done by influences that from the very beginning bear the mark of degradation, of a downfall from the simple moral grandeur of the old gentile society. The new system of classes is inaugurated by the meanest impulses: vulgar covetousness, brutal lust, sordid avarice, selfish robbery of common wealth. The old gentile society without classes is undermined and brought to fall by the most contemptible means: theft, violence, cunning, treason. And during all the thousands of years of its existence, the new society has never been anything else but the development of the small minority at the expense of the exploited and oppressed majority. More than ever this is true at present.