Grecian, and Sanskrit speaking tribes, with whom it became such a conspicuous institution. It has been found in other branches of the Aryan family of nations, in the Semitic, Uralian, and Turanian families, among the tribes of Africa and Australia, and of the American aborigines.
The gens has passed through successive stages of development in its transition from its archaic to its final form with the progress of mankind. These changes were limited in the main to two: firstly, changing descent from the female line, which was the archaic rule, as among the Iroquois, to the male line, which was the final rule, as among the Grecian and Roman gentes; and, secondly, changing the inheritance of the property of a deceased member of the gens from his gentiles, who took it in the archaic period, first to his agnatic kindred, and finally to his children. These changes, slight as they may seem, indicate very great changes of condition as well as a large degree of progressive development.
The gentile organization, originating in the period of savagery, enduring through the three subperiods of barbarism, finally gave way, among the more advanced tribes, when they attained civilization—the requirements of which it was unable to meet. Among the Greeks and Romans political society supervened upon gentile society, but not until civilization had commenced. The township (and its equivalent, the city ward), with its fixed property, and the inhabitants it contained, organized as a body politic, became the unit and the basis of a new and radically different system of government. After political society was instituted this ancient and time-honored organization, with the phratry and tribe developed from it, gradually yielded up their existence. It was under gentile institutions that barbarism was won by some of the tribes of mankind while in savagery, and that civilization was won by the descendants of some of the same tribes while in barbarism. Gentile institutions carried a portion of mankind from savagery to civilization.
This organization may be successfully studied both in its living and in its historical forms in a large number of tribes and races. In such an investigation it is preferable to commence with the gens in its archaic form. I shall commence, therefore, with the gens as it now exists among the American aborigines, where it is found in its archaic form, and among whom
