474 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



to procure subsistence for the common household led to communism in 

 living. This probable organization of society in the primitive ages, 

 and which continued long after the intermarriage of brothers and sis- 

 ters was abolished, has not been sufficiently estimated in its relation to 

 the early condition of mankind. Without being able to affirm the fact, 

 there are strong grounds for supposing that most barbarous nations at 

 the present time, although marriage between single pairs exists, are 

 now organized more or less into such families, and practise com- 

 munism as far as the same can be carried out in practical life. The 

 American aborigines have lived, and still live, to a greater or less 

 extent, in communal families, consisting of related persons, and prac- 

 tise communism within the household. This feature of their ancient 

 mode of life can still be definitely and widely traced amongst them. 

 It also entered into and determined the character of their architecture, — 

 as witness the long bark house of the Iroquois, designed to accommo- 

 date twenty families of related persons ; the polygonal dirt lodge of the 

 Minnitarees and Mandans, designed for several families ; the long hou?es 

 of the Columbia River Indians, each large enough to accommodate sev- 

 eral hundred persons ; and, finally, the massive communal edifices of the 

 Village Indians of New Mexico, Mexico, and Yucatan, some of them 

 large enough for fifty or a hundred families, and giving rise to fables 

 of palaces, which, without much doubt, were communal houses filled 

 with Indians living in communism. In the communal family, as first 

 described, is to be recognized the family in its first stage. 



6. The Malayan System of Relationship. — This holds the rank of 

 a domestic institution, and takes its place in the series as the basis of 

 the Turanian system. 



7. The Tribal Organization. — That this institution was designed to 

 work out a reformation with respect to the intermarriage of brothers 

 and sisters may be fairly inferred from the conspicuous manner in 

 which it accomplishes this result. The* state of society revealed by 

 the Malayan system demonstrates its necessity. The origin of this 

 most ancient and remarkable organization seems from the stand-point 

 of this discussion to find a full and satisfactory explanation. It is 

 not supposable that it came into existence all at once, as a complete 

 institution ; but rather that it was of organic growth, and required 

 centuries upon centuries for its permanent establishment, and still 

 other centuries for its spread amongst existing nations. It was proba- 

 bly the greatest of all the institutions of mankind in the primitive 



