7IO AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., I, 1S99
are in the stage of transition, and there is scarcely a gentile tribe which has not some feature of clanship organization as a survival But more than this — all of the tribes of North America have come into association to a greater or less degree with the European invaders, and have thus taken on some of the elements of civil- ized culture, so that the Columbian period has been one of very rapid development in tribal organization. Now, again and again we find abundant evidence that the savage tribe yields its peculiarities by exchanging them for barbaric characteristics. A review of the evidence which has been accumulating through a series of years on this subject demonstrates that clanship organi- zation develops into gentile organization. To set forth in a summary manner how this development is accomplished will per- haps be the best method of explaining the nature of a barbaric government. *
In savagery there are societies which are organized for the purpose of securing the cooperation of ghosts in the affairs of mankind. These societies are often called phratries or brother- hoods, and are the custodians of the lore of unseen beings. They occupy themselves with ceremonies and various practices intended to secure advantages and to avert evils which are attributed to multitudinous ghostly beings which are supposed to have tenuous bodies and to live an occult and magical life as they take part in human affairs. Everything unexplained is attributed to ghosts. The leader in these thaumaturgic societies is called by white men a medicine-man, or sometimes priest, or even a thaumaturgist ; a more scientific term is shaman. The phratry over which the shaman presides has a special care of health and the occult agencies of welfare, so he presides over elaborate ceremonies which have a religious significance. These phratries, called by some of our writers societies, take a very active part in savage society, for much of the time of the people is occupied in the performance of the rites of thaumaturgy antecedent to any enter- prise of importance in which the clan may engage.
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