57o 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Lewis Henry Morgan. 



N. Y., in 1818, and died in Rochester 

 in 1881, was by profession a lawyer 

 and man of affairs, interested in the 

 first development of the railway system 

 in the middle west, a member of the 

 legislature, both house and senate. He 

 was thus the type of man more usually 

 found among the hereditary upper 

 classes of Great Britain than in our 

 industrial democracy. In view of the 

 increasing specialization of science, 

 there appears to be but little place for 

 the amateur and perhaps this is not to 

 be regretted. But those who begin as 

 amateurs and become serious students 

 with science for their main concern, 

 arc selected from large numbers in ac- 

 cordance with interests and talent, and 



the threatened disappearance of such 

 a group is a serious loss to science. 



As a young man Morgan became in- 

 terested in the League of the Iroquois 

 Indians and an intimate friend of 

 Hasa-no-dii-da, or Ely S. Parker, a 

 Seneca Indian, later commissioner of 

 Indian affairs. He was adopted into 

 a clan of the Seneca nation and ad- 

 mitted fully to its society. His inti- 

 mate knowledge resulted in the publi- 

 cation of a book on " The League of 

 the Iroquois," the first scientific ac- 

 count of an Indian tribe. Morgan then 

 became well acquainted with the Al- 

 gonquins and other families and pre- 

 pared his volume on " Systems of Con- 

 sanguinity and Affinity of the Human 



