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Updated: June 7, 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.
The Bow people appear to have been the most important of these, since their name was applied to the village. Their totemic signatures, in pictographic form, may still be seen on the sides of the cliff under Awatobi, and in the ruins was found a fine arrowshaft polisher on which was an incised drawing of a bow and an arrow, suggesting that the owner was a member of the Bow phratry.
The same gentes are not constant in a phratry indefinitely, as appears from the composition of the phratries in the remaining Iroquois tribes. Transfers of particular gentes from one phratry to the other must have occurred when the equilibrium in their respective numbers was disturbed.
As I have said before, there were two classes of these patriarchal families: the O-uji, or Great Clans; and the Ko-uji, or Little Clans. The lesser were branches of the greater, and subordinate to them, so that the group formed by an O-uji with its Ko-uji might be loosely compared with the Roman curia or Greek phratry.
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.
The phratry was without governmental functions in the strict sense of the phrase, these being confined to the gens tribe and confederacy; but it entered into their social affairs with large administrative powers, and would have concerned itself more and more with their religious affairs as the condition of the people advanced.
It proves conclusively the natural process by which in course of time a gens breaks up into several, and these remain united in a phratric organization, which is expressed by assuming a phratric name. They are as follows: I. Wolf Phratry Gentes. 1. Wolf 2. Bear 3. Dog. 4 Opossum. II. Turtle Phratry Gentes 5 Little Turtle. 6. Mud Turtle. 7. Great Turtle 8. Yellow Eel. III. Turkey Phratry Gentes 9.
Two consuls would balance the military power between them, and prevent either from becoming supreme. Among the Iroquois this office never became influential. In Indian ethnography the subjects of primary importance are the gens, phratry, tribe, and confederacy. They exhibit the organization of society.
The first phratry included the Bear, the Deer, and the Highland Striped Turtle; the second, the Highland Black Turtle, the Mud Turtle, and the Large Smooth Turtle; the third, the Hawk, the Beaver, and the Wolf, and the fourth, the Snake, and the Porcupine. Every clan was ruled by a council of five, and of those five, four were women.
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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