United States or Niger ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


With Bachofen, he argued that this matriarchal period must have been characterized by promiscuous relations of the sexes. In 1877 Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, an American ethnologist and sociologist, put forth again, independently, practically the same theory, basing it upon an extensive study of the North American Indian tribes.

Doubtless the worship of the female energy prevailed under the matriarchal system, and was practised at a time when women were the recognized heads of families and when they were regarded as the more important factors in human society.

"But there is another way, and that certainly not less reliable, by which we can arrive at some understanding of the Mother-Age, and how it naturally came about, namely, by a study of our 'contemporary ancestors, of people who linger on the matriarchal level. Such people, as well as others on the still lower nomad stage of civilization, are to be found at this day in Australia.

She should be absolutely mistress of her own body, and sole legal guardian of her own children." "Which means that you would institute free divorce, and make the family matriarchal instead of patriarchal; replace one lopsided system by another." "Give it him, Nellie," put in Connie. "I haven't heard those notions of his for years. I thought he had recanted long ago." "Well, yes!

It is true that there was a time, some traditions of which are still preserved among the Indian tribes of North America, when the woman possessed controlling influence and power. This matriarchal or mother age passed with the primitive period in which the energies of men were absorbed in hunting and fighting.

Even if the matriarchal period was not so important as has sometimes been assumed, woman certainly had large influence over tribal affairs in early savage life. With the increase in population, and the consequent disappearance of game, man was forced to turn his attention to the crude agriculture which woman had begun to develop.

The children of the marriage are of the kindred of the mother, and never of his kindred: they are lost to his family. Thus there can be no extension of the clan through the males, it is the wife’s clan that is extended by marriage. Tylor, “The Matriarchal Family System,” Nineteenth Century, July 1896. McLennan, The Patriarchal Theory, p. 208. Heriot, Travels through the Canadas, p. 323.

There is nothing in Tinguian life or tradition to indicate that they have ever had a clan system or a matriarchal form of government. The few references to the procedure immediately after a death indicate that, in part, the people of to-day follow the old custom; but here again an important departure occurs.

Most American Indians are in the matriarchal period of development, which precedes the patriarchal; and it is then, should they become sedentary, that caste appears to be born.

Their social organisation presents one of the most perfect examples still surviving of matriarchal institutions carried out with a logic and a thoroughness which, to those accustomed to regard the status and authority of the father as the foundation of society, are exceedingly remarkable.