RISE OF FATHERRIGHT 71 



goes on marriage to live among his wife's people in 

 their camp, and he who marries the eldest daughter has 

 the first claim upon her sisters. As the marriageable 

 age for girls was fourteen he presumably takes the 

 younger sisters, if he so please, as they grow up. It 

 would seem however that the girl is always consulted. 

 Her brother's voice is powerful in the family council 

 on the subject of her marriage, and even after that 

 event he continues to claim a sort of guardianship over 

 her. These customs are evidence of the former 

 existence of motherright, which is now unknown. 1 At 

 the same time the reckoning of patrilineal kinship is 

 ensured by their obvious tendency to vest the ultimate 

 headship of the family in the husband. The Dakota 

 the Kansas and other Siouan tribes follow similar 

 customs. 2 



The Pueblo peoples of the south-west of the 

 United States are among the most interesting of the 

 aboriginal tribes of North America. They inhabit 

 clustered dwellings tier above tier along terraces ledges 

 and the brows of the bare flat-topped hills, called mesas, 

 characteristic of that arid region. Invariably they are 

 organised in exogamous totem-clans. Invariably they 

 reckon kinship through females, and the husband on 

 marriage goes to live with the wife's kin and becomes an 

 inmate of her family. I f the house be not large enough, 

 additional rooms are built adjoining and connected with 

 those already occupied. Hence a family with many 

 daughters increases, while one consisting of sons dies 

 out. The women are the builders, the men supplying 



1 Mooney, Rep. Bur. Ethn. xvii. 232. 



2 Riggs, Dakota Cram, 205 ; Dorsey, Rep. Bur, Ethn, xv, 

 232. 



