OFTHEHUMANFAMILY. 141 



munal houses constructed of adobe brick, or of rubble-stone and mud mortar, or of 

 stone and mortar, and several stories high. This class had made considerable pro- 

 gress in civilization, but without laying aside their primitive domestic institutions. 

 The Village Indians of New Mexico, of Mexico, and Yucatan are examples of this 

 class. Between these two great divisions of the American aborigines there was a 

 third or intermediate class, which exhibited all the gradations of condition be- 

 tween them, apparently forming the connecting links uniting them in one great 

 family. The gradations were so uniform as to be substantially imperceptible, unless 

 the extremes were contrasted. These intermediate nations were the partially 

 Roving and partially Village Indians, who united agricultural subsistence with 

 that upon fish and game, and resided for the greater part of the year in villages. 

 Of this class the Iroquois, the Hurons, the Powhattan Indians of Virginia, the 

 Creek, Choctas, Natches, Sauks and Foxes, Mandans, and Minnetaries, are ex- 

 amples. The two classes of nations, with those intermediate in condition, represent 

 all the phases of Indian society, and possess homogeneous institutions, but under 

 different degrees of development. 



In their civil organizations there are, and have been, but three stages of progres- 

 sive development, which are represented by the tribe, the nation, and the confede- 

 racy of nations. The unit of organization, or the first stage, was the tribe, all the 

 members of which, as consanguinei, were held together by blood affinities. The 

 second stage was the nation, which consisted of several tribes intermingled by mar- 

 riage, and all speaking the same dialect. They were held together by the affinities 

 of an identical speech. To them, as a nation, appertained the exclusive possession 

 of an independent dialect, of a common government, and of territorial possessions. 

 The greater proportion of the Ganowanian family never advanced beyond the 

 national condition. The last, and the ultimate stage of organization was the con- 

 federacy of nations. It was usually, if not invariably, composed of nations speaking 

 dialects of the same stock-language. The Iroquois, Otawa, Powhattan, and Creek 

 Confederacies, the Dakota League of the Seven Council Fires, the Aztec Confede- 

 racy between the Aztecs, Tezcucans, and Tlacopans, and the Tlascalan Confede- 

 racy are familiar examples. It thus appears, that whilst we have for our own 

 political series, the town, the county, the state, and the United States, which are 

 founded upon territory, each in turn resting upon an increasing territorial area cir- 

 cumscribed by metes and bounds, the American aborigines have for theirs, the tribe, 

 the nation, and the confederacy of nations, which are founded respectively upon 

 consanguinity, dialect, and stocJc-language. The idea of a state, or of an empire 

 in the proper sense of these terms, founded upon territory, and not upon persons, 

 with laws in the place of usages, with municipal government in the place of the 

 unregulated will of chiefs, and with a central executive government in the place 

 of a central oligarchy of chiefs, can scarcely be said to have existed amongst any 

 portion of our aboriginal inhabitants. Their institutions had not developed to this 

 stage, and never could have reached it until a knowledge of property and its iises 

 had been formed in their minds. It is to property considered in the concrete that 

 modern civilization must ascribe its origin. 



With respect to their numbers, there are no reasons for believing that they were 



