X.] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 399 



plane of organization characterized by descent in the male line, 

 though many vestiges and some relatively unimportant examples 

 of descent in the female line have been discovered. Thus the 

 clan system was obsolescent, and the gentile system fairly de- 

 veloped ; i.e. the people were practically out of the stage of 

 savagery and well advanced in the stage of barbarism 1 ." So 

 Dorsey: "Among the Dakota... and other groups the man is the 

 head of the family 2 ." It is too soon to criticise further, but 

 enough has been said to show that the clan as here defined is 

 still on its defence even in North America, while in most other 

 regions matriarchal institutions, except as purely local phenomena, 

 have already shared the fate of the group-marriage and promis- 

 cuity theories of Australian ethnologists. 



From the Spanish word Pueblo, " town," " village," are named 

 and partly characterised a considerable group of 



J The Pueblo 



natives, who from remote times have dwelt and Indians and 



j 11 / j i , .. Cliff Dwellers. 



continue to dwell in fixed settlements of a peculiar 

 type scattered over the mesas ("tables" or flat rocky heights), 

 of the present states of New Mexico and Arizona. They do not 

 form a single ethnical or linguistic family, but rather a number of 

 heterogeneous communities speaking several stock languages, and 

 in one instance (Moqui) a dialect of the widely-diffused Shoshonean 

 (Snake) family. A certain uniformity is, however, imparted to 

 the whole group by their common usages, traditions, religious 

 rites, habitations, and general culture. In this respect they stand 

 on a much higher level than any of the other North American 

 aborigines, whence the theory often advanced that the Pueblos 

 represent an intermediate stage in a continuously progressive 

 cultural zone beginning with the northern mound-builders and 

 culminating with the Aztec, Maya, and Peruvian civilizations of 

 Central and South America. 



That there is a steady rise of the culture -grades in the direc- 

 tion from north to south is undoubted, and it may not be without 

 significance that the round-headed mound-builders, Pueblos, and 

 neighbouring Cliff-dwellers are now commonly regarded as all 

 originally of one stock. " There is no warrant whatever for the 



1 Fifteenth An. Report, p. 187. - Ibid. p. 213. 



