ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT CVII 



but such families have lineal aud coUatei'al lines of kinship 

 involving' both parents. A larger group than that composed 

 of parents and children is organized in the crudest society 

 known. For this purpose all of these persons reckoning con- 

 sanguineal kinship through the female line are regimented or 

 organized in a clan. The term clan should always be used 

 to designate this group, though it is sometimes improperly 

 used to designate other groups. The husband and wife do not 

 belong to the same clan, but the husband belongs to the clan of 

 his mother, while the wife belongs to the clan of her mother. 

 It is thus that the first constitutive unit of organized society 

 is based on kinship reckoned thx'ough the female line. The 

 next unit recognizes kinship by affinity, and a number of related 

 clans that intermarry constitute the tribe. The term tribe 

 should always be used in tliis manner. Curiously enough all 

 of the terms which are used in defining the units of regimen- 

 tation are often used promiscuously, so that clan, gens, tribe, 

 and confederacy, with many other terms which are s^niony- 

 mous, have a vague meaning in popular estimation; but in 

 science we are compelled to give a definite meaning to funda- 

 mental terms. A clan, then, is a union of persons who reckon 

 consanguiueal kinship in the female line; a tribe is compounded 

 of clans whose members reckon kinship by consanguinity" and 

 affinity, while a confederacy, which is more or less ephemeral, 

 is a union of tribes reckoning kinship as a legal fiction. 



In the clan the group is ruled by an elder man. But this 

 elder man may or may not be the oldest living male in the 

 clan; to understand this it becomes necessary to understand 

 the method of kinship naming in vogue in savagery. In the 

 clan the children of one woman are not only brothers and sis- 

 ters to each other, but also "brothers" and "sisters" to such of 

 their cousins as reckon kinship in the female line. Thus, if 

 there be three sisters their children call one another by recip- 

 rocal kinship names, as "brothers" aud "sisters;" but if there 

 be three brothers their children do not call one another by 

 common kinship names, but by the kinship names determined 

 through their mothers ; that is, they call one another cousins. 

 Among the collateral descendants through the female line 

 there are thus a number of persons of varying ages calling 



