XXIV BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



Work in Sociology 



A portion of the year Wcas employed by the Dh'ector 

 and the Ethnologist in Charge in reviewing the abundant 

 data in the Bureau archives relating to aboriginal insti- 

 tutions, and in systemizing the principles of sociology in 

 the light of these data. One of the lines of inquiry, ren- 

 . dered important not only by inherent interest l)ut by 

 -current problems growing out of the recent expansion 

 of the territory of the United States, relates to slavery 

 among the primitive peoples, and the researches render 

 it clear that the relationships so designated vary widely 

 with intellectual plane or culture grade — indeed, the 

 social subordination of lower culture is so unlike the 

 slavery of civilization that . the application of the same 

 designation to both institutions is quite misleading. In 

 the slavery of civilization the slaves are not only aliens 

 but chattels, personal ownership of whom is definitely 

 established and maintained through laws relating to 

 tenure, bequest, conveyance, etc., but in savage society, 

 in which personal proprietary rights, are inchoate or non - 

 existent, in which the tenure inheres practically or abso- 

 lutely in the group, in which bequest is hardly, if at all, 

 recognized, and in which thrift sense is lacking and prop- 

 erty sense involved with mythic factors, such slavery is 

 simply impossible. True, there are many recorded in- 

 stances of slavery among lower tribes, but most of these 

 rest on casual or superficial observation, or on other testi- 

 mony stopping short of inquiry into the precise nature of 

 the relations between the supposed slaveholders and the 

 supposed slaves, while the convenience of the common 

 term for the expression of social inequality has contrib- 

 uted to mislead recorders and (still more seriously) 

 readers. 



To understand the so-called slavery of savagery it is 

 necessary to grasp the mode of social organization char- 

 acteristic of that culture grade. As shown chiefly through 

 the researches among the American aborigines, such 

 organization is based primarily on consanguinity (actual 



