28 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



well differentiated from higlier stages. In this stage the state is or- 

 ganized by kinship. Tribes are kinship bodies. In the main, de- 

 scent is in the female line — that is, mother-right prevails. In gen- 

 eral, too, these people are in the stone age. They have not yet 

 learned to use bronze ; nor have they developed hieroglyphic writ- 

 ing. People in this stage of culture are called savages. When 

 such tribes have changed their social structure so that father-right 

 prevails, then the patriarchy is established. At about the same 

 period of culture animals are domesticated, and doubtless the do- 

 mestication of animals and the necessity for nomadic life which re- 

 sults therefrom is one of the most important agencies in breaking 

 up mother-right and establishing father-right ; and when father- 

 right is established the patriarchy speedily follows. Such peoples 

 we call barbaric, and the stage of culture in which they live barbar- 

 ism. Barbaric people may be nomads ; savage people are never 

 nomadic. Some English anthropologists whose branch of investi- 

 gation is confined chiefly to institutions, or, as we call it, "soci- 

 ology," have traced back the history of Aryan civilization until 

 they have discovered the patriarchy, until they find the early peo- 

 ples from whom the present civilized States have descended in a 

 state of nomadism — patriarchies with their great tribal families 

 about them, together with their flocks and herds, all roaming from 

 one district of country to another in search of pasturage and water. 

 And they are accustomed to assume that this patriarchal condition, 

 this nomadism, is the primitive form of society. Sir Henry Maine 

 is one of the leading men of this school, and we are greatly indebted 

 to his researches for the materials with which to trace the develop- 

 ment of patriarchal institutions into national institutions. But 

 there is abundant evidence to show that there are institutions more 

 primitive than those of barbarism. The tribes of Australia and the 

 tribes of North America and of South America are discovered to 

 be in a state of culture lower and more primitive in structure than 

 the peoples of early Aryan history. Herbert Spencer has in the 

 same manner confounded tribal society, or savagery, with bar- 

 barism, and has entirely failed to understand the structure of the 

 hundreds of tribal States of North America and of many others 

 elsewhere throughout the world ; and to him may be largely attrib- 

 uted the erroneous habit of calling the tribes of North America 

 nomads. It should be distinctly understood that the North Ameri- 

 cans are not nomads, that they have not the partriarchal fo^m 



