XXX BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



this spokesman, with others of similar character from 

 the other clans, the opinions of the mothers were brought 

 before the exclusively masculine tribal council for debate 

 and final decision. In this way the women sitting in clan 

 council constituted the primary legislative body, while 

 their brothers sitting in tribal council formed a senate or 

 final legislative body whose decisions were binding on the 

 executives of clans and tribes; so that the social organi- 

 zation may be classed as adelphiarchal (like that of the 

 Seri Indians described in earlier reports) in princii)le, 

 though largely patriarchal in detail. As among the Seri, 

 too, the maternal features of the legislation were paral- 

 leled by recognition of large maternal rights in material 

 possessions — for example, throughout the Iroquoian tribes 

 the control or nominal ownership of lands was in the 

 women as the collective and perpetual mothers of the 

 tribe. These and other points of general interest are set 

 forth in Mr Hewitt's memoir, which was assigned to the 

 Twenty -first Annual Report. 



Work in Philology 



Throughout a considerable part of the year the Director 

 was occupied in developing and applying the system of 

 linguistic classification foreshadowed in the last report. 

 Primarily, languages are devices for the expression of 

 thought; secondarily, they are mechanisms for shaping 

 thought. The simplest languages are emotional and 

 largely demonstrative, comprising not only articulate vocal 

 utterances, but inarticulate sounds, gestures, facial ex- 

 pressions, etc., and these spontaneous expressions of feel- 

 ing and thought grow into the four leading lines of lin - 

 guistic development. The simplest of these is gesture 

 language (or sign language) , which arises largely in pan- 

 tomime, but matures under favorable conditions in highly 

 complex systems such as those investigated by the late 

 Colonel Mallery and more recently by Major H. L. Scott 

 (whose studies were unfortunately interrupted l)y the 

 Spanish -American war) . A far more important line of 



