304 



CLAN AND GENS 



[b. a. e. 



Iroquois in later times by the League 

 council. (5) The right to the protection 

 of the tribe. (6) The right to the titles 

 of thechiefshipsand subchiefships heredi- 

 tary in its ohwachiras. (7) The right to 

 certain songs, chants, and religious ob- 

 servances. (8) The right of its men or 

 women, or both together, to hold councils. 



(9) The right to certain personal names, 

 to be bestowed upon its members. 



(10) The right to adopt aliens through 

 the action of a constituent ohwachira. 



(11) The right to a common burial 

 ground. (12) The right of the child- 

 bearing women of the oJuvaddras in 

 which such titles are hereditary to elect 

 the chief and subchief. (13) The right 

 of such women to impeach and thus in- 

 stitute proceedings for the deposition of 

 chiefs and subchiefs. (14) The right to 

 share in the religious rites, ceremonies, 

 and public festivals of the tribe. The 

 duties incident to clan membership were 

 the following: (1) The obligation not to 

 marry within the clan, formerly not even 

 within the phratry to which the clan be- 

 longed; the jihratry being a brotherhood 

 of clans, the male members of it mutu- 

 ally regarded themselves as brothers and 

 the female members as sisters. (2) The 

 joint obligation to purchase the life of a 

 member of the clan which has been for- 

 feited by the homicide of a member of 

 the tribe or of an allied tribe. (3) The 

 obligation to aid and defend fellow- 

 members by supplying their needs, re- 

 dressing their wrongs and injuries, and 

 avenging their death. (4) The joint obli- 

 gation to obtain prisoners or other persons 

 to replace members lost or killed of any 

 ohwachira of a clan to which they are 

 related as father's clansmen, the matron 

 of such ohivachira having the right to ask 

 that this obligation be fulfilled. All these 

 rights and obligations, however, are not 

 always found together. 



The clan or gentile name is not usually 

 the common name of the animal or ob- 

 ject after which the clan may be called, 

 but denotes some salient feature or char- 

 acteristic or the favorite haunt of it, or 

 may be an archaic name of it. One of the 

 Seneca clans is named from the deer, 

 commonly called neoge", 'cloven foot', 

 while the clan name is liadiniongwaiiu' , 

 ' those whose nostrils are large and fine- 

 looking.' Another Seneca clan is named 

 from the sandpiper, which has the ono- 

 matopoetic name doivisdou'V , but the clan 

 name is hodi'nesikj\ 'those who come 

 from the clean sand,' referring to the 

 sandpiper's habit of running along the 

 water's edge where the sand is washed 

 by the waves. Still another clan is called 

 after the turtle, commonly named han- 

 owa from its carapace, but the clan desig- 

 nation is hadiniadhV, 'they have upright 



necks.' The number of clans in the dif- 

 ferent Iroquois tribes varies. The small- 

 est number is 3, found in the Mohawk 

 and Oneida, while the Seneca have 9, the 

 Onondaga 8, and the Wyandot 12. 



Clans and gentes are generally organized 

 into phratries and phratries into tribes. 

 Usually only 2 phratries are found in 

 the modern organization of tribes. The 

 Huron and the Cayuga appear formerly 

 to have had 4, but the Cayuga to-day 

 assemble in 2 phratries. One or more 

 clans may compose a phratry. The clans 

 of the phratries are regarded as brothers 

 one to another and cousins to the mem- 

 bers of the other phratry, and are so 

 addressed. The phratry has a certain 

 allotted place in every assembly, usually 

 the side of the fire opposite to that held 

 by the other phratry. A clansman in 

 speaking of a person of the opposite 

 phratry may also say "He is my father's 

 clansman," or "He is a child whom I 

 have made," hence the obligation resting 

 on members of a phratry to "find the 

 word" of the dream of a child of the 

 other phratry. The phratry is the unit 

 of organization of the people for ceremo- 

 nial and other assemblages and festivals, 

 but as a phratry it has no officers; the 

 chiefs and elders of the clans composing 

 it serve as its directors. 



The government of a clan or gens, 

 when analytically studied, is seemingly a 

 development from that of the ohwachira. 

 The government of a tribe is developed 

 from that of the clan or gens, and a con- 

 federation, such as the League of the 

 Iroquois, is governed on the same prin- 

 ciple. 



The simpler unit of organization sur- 

 rendered some of its autonomy to the 

 higher unit so that the whole was closely 

 interdependent and cohesive. The estab- 

 lishment of each higher unit necessarily 

 produced new duties, rights, and privi- 

 leges. 



According to Boas the tribes of the 

 N. W. coast, as the Tlingit, Haida, Tsim- 

 shian, Heiltsuk, and Kitamat, have ani- 

 mal totems, and a "maternal organiza- 

 tion" in which the totem groups are 

 exogamic. The Kwakiutl, however, al- 

 though belonging to the same stock as 

 the last two, do not have animal totems, 

 because they are in "a peculiar transi- 

 tional stage." The Kwakiutl is exoga- 

 mic. In the N. part of this coast area a 

 woman's rank and privileges always de- 

 scend to her children. As the crest, or 

 totemic emblem, descends in the female 

 line through marriage among the Kwa- 

 kiutl, a somewhat similar result has been 

 brought about among them. Among the 

 Haida and the Tlingit there are respec- 

 tively 2 phratries; the Tsimshian have 4, 

 the Heiltsuk 3, and the Kitamat 6. The 



