138 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



composed not of a man with wife and children, but of a wife with men 

 and children such family-forms being found not alone in societies of 

 embryonic and of infantine types, but also in considerably advanced 

 societies. 



A further assumption is that descent has always and everywhere 

 been in the male line. That it has from the earliest recorded times 

 of those peoples with whom Sir Henry Maine deals, must be admit- 

 ted ; and it may be admitted tliat male descent occurs also among 

 some rude peoples of other types, as the Kukis of India, the Beloo- 

 ches, the New-Zealanders, the Hottentots. It is by no means the rule, 

 however, among the uncivilized. Mr, McLennan, who has pointed 

 out the incongruity between this assumption and a great mass of 

 evidence, shows that in all parts of the world descent in the female 

 line prevails ; and the abundant proofs given by him I might, were 

 it needful, enforce by many others. This system is not limited to 

 groups so little organized that they might be set aside as preinfantine 

 (were that permissible) ; nor to groups that stand on a level with the 

 patriarchal, or so-called infantine, societies in point of organization ; 

 but it occurs in groups, or rather nations, that have evolved complex 

 structures. Ellis says that kinship was through females in the two 

 higher ranks of the Tahitians ; and Erskine says the like of the Ton- 

 gans. It was so, accordiag to Piedrahita, with the ancient Chib- 

 chas, who had made no insignificant strides in civilization. Among 

 the Iroquois, again, " titles, as well as property, descended in the 

 female line, and were hereditary in the tribe; the son could never suc- 

 ceed to his father's title of sachem, nor inherit even his tomahaAvk ;" 

 and these Iroquois had advanced far beyond the infantine stage 

 were governed by a representative assembly of fifty sachems, had a 

 separate military organization, a separate ecclesiastical organization, 

 definite laws, cultivated lands individually possessed, permanent for- 

 tified villages. So, too, in Africa, succession to rank and property 

 follows the female line among the coast-negroes, inland-negroes, 

 Congo people, etc., who have distinct industrial systems, four and five 

 gradations in rank, settled agricultures, considerable commerce, towns 

 in streets. How misleading is the limited observation of societies, is 

 shown by Marsden's remark respecting the Sumatrans of the Batta 

 district, that " the succession to the chiefships does not go, in the first 

 instance, to the son of the deceased, but to the nephew by a sister; " 

 and that "the same extraordinary rule, with respect to property in 

 general, prevails also among the Malays of that part of the island : " 

 the rule which he thus characterizes as " extraordinary " being really, 

 among the uncivilized and little civilized, the ordinary rule. 



Again, Sir Henry Maine postulates the existence of government 

 from the beginning patriarchal authority over wife, children, slaves, 

 and all who are included in the primitive social group. But those 

 who have read preceding chapters on " The Regulating System " and 



