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The gens of the criminal also held a council, and endeavored to effect an adjustment or condonation of the crime with the gens of the murdered person; but it often happened that the gens of the criminal called upon the other gentes of their phratry, when the slayer and the slain belonged to opposite phratries, to unite with them to obtain a condonation of the crime.

Along with this advance, or perhaps preceding it, the social organization of the tribe, or its division into clans and phratries, would manifest itself, and those who "belong together" would build together. This requirement was a very common one and was closely adhered to even a few years ago. Although degeneration in arts is common enough, a peculiar condition prevailed in the pueblo region.

In a previous work I have considered the organization of the American aborigines in gentes, phratries, and tribes, with the functions of each in their social system. The gentile organization opens to us one of the oldest and most widely-prevalent institutions of mankind. It furnished the nearly universal plan of government of ancient society, Asiatic, European, African, American, and Australian.

This separation of the people into two divisions by gentes created two phratries. Some knowledge of the functions of these phratries is of course desirable, but without it, the fact of their existence is established by the divisions themselves.

It has six estufas, with remains of a convex wall, connecting the two wings, and inclosing the court. These estufas, like those in the other pueblos, suggest the probability that they were places for holding the councils of the gentes and phratries.

In Australia the tribe a term to be defined presently is nearly always split up into two exogamous divisions, which it is usual to call phratries. Then, in some of the Australian tribes, the phratry is subdivided into two, and, in others, into four portions, between which exogamy takes place according to a curious criss-cross scheme.

The first and chief division in our tribe, as regards customary marriage law, is the partition of all tribes-folk into these 'phratries, or 'exogamous moieties. While in most Australian tribes the meanings of the names of phratries are lost, where the meanings are known they are usually names of animals Eagle, Hawk, and Crow, White Cockatoo and Black Cockatoo, and so forth.

The eight gentes of the Seneca Iroquois tribe were reintegrated in two phratries as follows: First Phratry Gentes 1 Bear 2 Wolf 3 Beaver 4 Turtle Second Phratry Gentes 5 Deer 6 Snipe 7 Heron 8 Hawk The gentes in the same phratry are brother gentes to each other and cousin gentes to those of the other phratry. They are equal in grade, character, and privileges.

The four "lineages" of the Tlascalans who occupied the four quarters of the pueblo of Tlascalan were, in all probability, so many phratries. They were sufficiently numerous for four tribes, but as they occupied the same pueblo and spoke the same dialect the phratric organization was apparently a necessity. They went forth to battle by phratries.

The phratries have thus no presiding animals, and in the phratries there are no totem kins of the phratriac names. The cause of these peculiarities is matter of conjecture. A peculiarity in the totemic system of the Euahlayi the right of each individual to kill and eat his own totem has been mentioned, and may be associated here with other taboos on food.