POWELL. | A STUDY OF TRIBAL SOCIETY. 63 
FUNCTIONS OF CIVIL GOVERMENT. 
It is the function of government to preserve rights and enforce the 
performance of duties. Rights and duties are co-relative. Rights im- 
ply duties, and duties imply rights. The right inhering in the party of 
the first part imposes a duty on the party of the second part. The right 
and its co-relative duty are inseparable parts of a relation that must be 
maintained by government; and the relations which governments are 
established to maintain may be treated under the general head of rights. 
In Wyandot government these rights may be classed as follows: 
First—Rights of marriage. 
Second—Rights to names. 
Third—Rights to personal adornments. 
Fourth—hights of order in encampments and migrations 
Fifth—Rights of property. 
Sixth—Rights of person. 
Seventh—Rights of community. 
Kighth—Rights of religion. 
To maintain rights, rules of conduct are established, not by formal 
enactment, but by regulated usage. Such custom-made laws may be 
called regulations. 
MARRIAGE REGULATIONS. 
Marriage between members of the same gens is forbidden, but con- 
Sanguineal marriages between persons of different gentes are permitted. 
For example, a man may not marry his mother’s sister’s daughter, as she 
belongs to the same gens with himself; but he can marry his father’s 
sister’s daughter, because she belongs to a different gens. 
Husbands retain all their rights and privileges in their own gentes, 
though they live with the gentes of their wives. Children, irrespective 
of sex, belong to the gens of the mother. Men and women must marry 
within the tribe. A woman taken to wife from without the tribe must 
first be adopted into some family of a gens other than that to which 
the man belongs. That a woman may take for a husband a man without 
the tribe he must also be adopted into the family of some gens other 
than that of the woman. What has been called by some ethnologists 
endogamy and exogamy are correlative parts of one regulation, and the 
Wyandots, like all other tribes of which we have any knowledge in 
North America, are both endogamous and exogamous. 
Polygamy is permitted, but the wives must belong to different gentes. 
The first wife remains the head of the household. Polyandry is pro- 
hibited. 
A man seeking a wife consults her mother, sometimes direct, and 
sometimes through his own mother. The mother of the girl advises 
with the women councilors to obtain their consent, and the young peo- 
