SKETCH OF LEWIS H. MORGAN. 117 



Finally, returns from his schedules of inquiry began to pour in from 

 all quarters of the globe, and gradually a vast correspondence grew up, 

 until the kinship systems of more than four fifths of the world were 

 recorded either directly by himself or by others whom he had enlisted 

 in the work. The materials thus collected were gradually by years of 

 labor thoroughly systematized, and finally published by the Smith- 

 sonian Institution as one of its " Contributions to Knowledge," entitled 

 " Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family." It 

 is a quarto volume of about six hundred pages, the result of many 

 years of patient and well-directed labor, and it constitutes a model of 

 inductive research. The kinship systems of eighty tribes of North 

 America, together with those of a great number of the principal na- 

 tions and ti'ibes of the Old World and the islands of the sea, are fully 

 and elaborately recorded in its tables. 



This publication marks a most important epoch in anthropologic 

 research. Prior to its appearance, the social and governmental insti- 

 tutions of mankind antecedent to the evolution of civilization were to 

 a large extent unknown. Travelers and various persons more or less 

 familiar with tribal life had put on record many curious facts, and the 

 comj^ilation of these facts by scholars had resulted in the accumulation 

 of incoherent and inconsistent materials about which more or less crude 

 and fanciful speculations were made ; but the essential characteristics 

 of tribal society, as based upon kinship in barbarism and upon com- 

 munal marriage in savagery, were unknown. 



This first volume was essentially a volume of facts, and only a 

 brief and i-ather unsatisfactory discussion of the facts was undertaken. 

 Mr. Morgan's final conclusion and philosophic treatment of the subject 

 were reserved for a subsequent volume. 



During the earlier years of Morgan's work upon the " Systems of 

 Consanguinity and Affinity," he carried on an extensive law business, 

 and was engaged in a railroad enterprise upon the Michigan Peninsula. 

 The latter necessitated frequent visits to what was then a forest wilder- 

 ness on the shores of Lake Superior, and here he became interested in 

 the study of the beaver, which resulted in the piiblication, in 1868, of 

 a volume entitled "The American Beaver and his Works." In his 

 preface to this volume Mr. Morgan thus describes the circumstances 

 imder which these studies were made : 



Having been associated in this enterprise from its commencement, as one of 

 the directors of the railroad company, and as one of its stockholders, business 

 called me to Marquette first in 1855, and nearly every summer since to the 

 present time. After the completion of the railroad to the iron-mines, it was 

 impossible to withstand the temptation to brook-trout fishing, which the streams 

 traversing the intermediate and adjacent districts offered in ample measure. 

 My friend Gilbert D. Johnson, Superintendent of the Lake Superior Mine, had 

 established boat-stations at convenient points upon the Carp and Esconauba 

 Rivers, and to him I am specially indebted, first, for a memorable experience in 

 brook-trout fishing, and, secondly, for an introduction to the works of the beaver 



