413 



[Gushing 



The development of the key dwellers in this direction, is attested by 

 every key ruin — little or great — built so long ago, yet enduring the 

 storms that have since played havoc with the mainland ; is mutely yet even 

 more eloquently attested by every great group of the shell mounds on 

 these keys built for the chief's houses and temples ; by every lengthy 

 canal built from materials of slow and laborious accumulation from the 

 depths of the sea. Therefore, to my mind, there can be no question that 

 the executive, rather than the social side of government was developed 

 among these ancient key dwellers to an almost disproportionate degree ; 

 to a degree which led not only to the establishment among them of 

 totemic priests and headmen, as among the Pueblos, but to more than 

 this — to the development of a favored class, and of chieftains even in 

 civil life little short of regal in power and tenure of office. 



A curious side of their life may be seen to have almost unavoidably 

 helped toward such a development. "With agricultural peoples of the 

 desert, beginnings are almost always made normally, — in the totemic or 

 purely clanal condition of development. Thus the lands, the garnered 

 stores and the very houses, belong primarily to the women, and there- 

 fore the existence among them of men of a highlj' privileged class — as, of 

 any directly hereditary line of chieftains — is rarel}-, if ever, fostered. On 

 land, it was not until bj^the domestication of animals and the wandering 

 pastoral mode of life this involved was adopted, that formal patriarchal 

 or gentile organizations replaced mother right in property and the matri- 

 archal or clanal organization of society and government — since only then 

 did property come to be held by the men. For it was not until men held 

 all-important possessions that the}' took the lead, and by ever-increasing 

 competition in these, ushered in the growth of privileged classes, the 

 establishment of direct heredity, and so, of lines of patriarchal elders, 

 headmen or chieftains. But it may be seen that here on the keys the 

 case was different from the very outset. The one most important pos- 

 session of the key dwellers was the canoe. This was essentially a man's 

 possession. Thus what on land was effected by the possession (by the 

 men), of herds and beasts of burden, was here in the sea effected by that 

 of an inanimate (but supposedly animate) vehicle of burden, the 

 canoe. While the women stayed at home in the houses of the safe 

 and isolated keys, the men continually went forth over the surround- 

 ing waters in these canoes that were owned by themselves. Being 

 the possessors of property so important to the lives of the whole people, 

 here where the plan of social organization was still, no doubt, at 

 least traditionally totemic, it must nevertheless have become to a 

 limited extent patriarchal — virtually so, as far as the ruling class of men 

 was concerned. This property-right of the men, in canoes that were so 

 directly related to the public works which fostered the executive func- 

 tion in government, then, helped, I take it, toward the establishment of 

 king-like chieftainships ; and the main point of this seeming digression is, 

 that it was due to this kind of life and development originally, and to 



