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Updated: June 13, 2025
It is rare among the American Indian tribes to find such plain evidence of the segmentation of gentes in their external organization, followed by the formation into phratries of their respective subdivisions. It shows also that the phratry is founded upon the kinship of the gentes.
III. Fifty Sachemships were created and named in perpetuity in certain gentes of the several Tribes; with power in these gentes to fill vacancies, as often as they occurred, by election from among their respective members, and with the further power to depose from office for cause; but the right to invest these Sachems with office was reserved to the General Council.
They were called "patres nunorum gentium," the senators of the inferior gentes. The "comitia curiata," assembled in the comi'tium, the general assemblies of the people were held in the forum.
As the Dorians were divided into three tribes, so the Ionians were usually distributed into four tribes. Each tribe contained three Phratriae, each Phratry thirty Gentes, and each Gens thirty heads of families.
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.
It would be the doctrine of adoption turned the other way; instead of a father adopting a son, a number of men would agree to adopt a common father. The family then grew into the gens; the union of gentes formed the state, the political community, which in its first form was commonly a tribe. Then came the nation, formed of a union of tribes.
The three tribes, therefore, contained three hundred gentes. But with the growth of the city it came to pass that a gens often included a great number of families; we read of three hundred Fabii forming the gens Fabia in the year 275. These families composed, ultimately, the aristocracy. They were the people who filled all offices, and alone had the right of voting in the assemblies.
The psalm "Laudate Dominum, omnes gentes," rang out when the beadle came to take his taper. Durtal could hardly resist a cry, when he had to stand up; his benumbed knees cracked, and their joints would hardly work. Yet he regained his place somehow; let the crowd pass, and approaching the beadle, asked him the name of the convent, and the order to which the nuns belonged.
Here the fact of several families uniting on the principle of kin, living in a cluster of houses, and practicing communism, is expressly stated. It is singular that this industrious investigator did not notice, what is now known to be the fact, that all these tribes were organized in gentes and phratries. It would have rendered his observations upon their usages and customs more definite.
It may be suggested as probable that the Mound-Builders were organized in gentes, phratries, and tribes. If this were the case, the phratries would need separate places for holding their councils and for performing their religious observances. These ring embankments suggest the circular estufas found in connection with the New Mexican pueblos, two, four, and sometimes five at one pueblo.
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