XL BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
artificial system as that which, on further development, matures 
in civilization, i. e., sometimes the gentes are united in such 
manner that a single kinship group combines two totems; the 
kinship terminology is incomplete in such way as to suggest 
curtailment through disuse; through seasonal migrations and 
other causes there is a constant breaking up of family groups, 
followed by intermingling in new combinations in the form of 
colonies of patriarchal or even feudalistic character; there is 
clear recognition of patriarchal property right in the waters in 
which the material values of their arid territory inhere; while 
the governmental control, though nominally vested in patri- 
archal shamans, is really regulated by an officer selected 
through popular approval, who may be designated the people’s 
attorney. It is noteworthy that the Spanish invaders of the 
Western Hemisphere assimilated the aboriginal much more 
completely than the Anglo-Saxon invaders of more northerly 
regions, so that in many instances the social institutions pre- 
vailing in Mexico today have sprung from aboriginal germs. 
This is especially true of the patriarchal organization charac- 
teristic of the Mexican provinces remote from the greater cities 
and railways, which differs in no essential particular from the 
organization still found among the Papago Indians and recorded 
in their time-honored traditions. 
Now, the comparative studies of the Seri and Papago social 
organizations, with the analogue of the latter among the mod- 
ern Mexicans, gives opportunity for clearing up certain misap- 
prehensions concerning primitive society. In barbaric culture, 
in which descent is reckoned in the male line, the govern- 
mental control is vested in an elder man (whose seniority may 
be either real orassumed), so that the organization is patriarchal, 
and it has been inferred, without adequate observation and 
with undue influence growing out of the convenience of anti- 
thetic terms, that in savage culture, in which descent is reck- 
oned in the female line, the social organization is matriarchal. 
The case of the Seri Indians is perhaps the most striking among 
many examples, indicating that, even when descent is traced 
exclusively through the female line to the extent that the father 
has no control over his wife’s property or his own children, the 
