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Updated: June 13, 2025
New tribes, as well as new gentes, were constantly forming by natural growth, and the process was sensibly accelerated by the great expanse of the American continent. The method was simple. In the first place there would occur a gradual outflow of people from some overstocked geographical center, which possessed superior advantages in the means of subsistence.
At first it was a single tribe or people distributed into distinct gentes or houses; after the Sabine war, a second tribe was added on terms of equality, and the state was dual, composed of two tribes, the Ramnes and the Tities or Quirites, and, afterward, in the time of Tullus Hostilius, were added the Lucertes or Luceres, making the division into three ruling tribes, each divided into one hundred houses or gentes.
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.
As the result, I found that the two hundred and eight Seminole now in Florida are divided into the following gentes and in the following numbers: I endeavored, also, to learn the name the Indians use for gens or clan, and was told that it is “Po-ha-po-hûm-ko-sin;” the best translation I can give of the name is “Those of one camp or house.”
In some of the tribes the phratries stand out prominently upon the face of their organization. Thus the Chocta gentes are united in two phratries which must be mentioned first in order to show the relation of the gentes to each other. The first phratry is called "Divided People," and contains four gentes. The second is called "Beloved People" and also contains four gentes.
Without ascertaining the unit of their social system, if organized in gentes, as they probably were, and without gaining any knowledge of the organization that did exist, they boldly invented for the Aztecs a monarchy, with high feudal characteristics, out of the reception of Cortes by their principal war-chief, and such other flimsy materials as Montezuma's dinner.
The Cornelii gentes furnished fifteen consuls in one hundred and twelve years, and the Valerii, ten. And, what is more remarkable, for the following one hundred and fifty years these two families furnished nearly the same number.
Tribes formed by the subdivisions of an original tribe would possess a number of gentes in common, and speak dialects of the same language. After several centuries of separation they would still have a number of the same gentes. Thus the Hurons, now Wyandots, have six gentes of the same name with six of the gentes of the Seneca-Iroquois, after at least four hundred years of separation.
Now by Men Pygmies we are by no means to understand Dwarfs. In all Countries, and in all Ages, there has been now and then observed such Miniture of Mankind, or under-sized Men. Cardan[A] tells us he saw one carried about in a Parrot's Cage, that was but a Cubit high. Nicephorus[B] tells us, that in Theodosius the Emperour's time, there was one in Ægypt that was no bigger than a Partridge; yet what was to be admired, he was very Prudent, had a sweet clear Voice, and a generous Mind; and lived Twenty Years. So likewise a King of Portugal sent to a Duke of Savoy, when he married his Daughter to him, an Æthiopian Dwarf but three Palms high.[C] And Thevenot[D] tells us of the Present made by the King of the Abyssins, to the Grand Seignior, of several little black Slaves out of Nubia, and the Countries near Æthiopia, which being made Eunuchs, were to guard the Ladies of the Seraglio. And a great many such like Relations there are. But these being only Dwarfs, they must not be esteemed the Pygmies we are enquiring about, which are represented as a Nation, and the whole Race of them to be of the like stature. Dari tamen integras Pumilionum Gentes, tam falsum est, qu
It is probably older than the confederacy which was established more than four centuries ago. The amount of difference in their composition, as to the gentes they contain, represents the vicissitudes through which each tribe has passed in the interval. In any view of the matter it is small, tending to illustrate the permanence of the phratry as well as the gens.
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