XXXII BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



the clan the uncle or mother's brother has chief authority, and 

 superior age always gives authority in savagery. This is the 

 theory upon which the savage proceeds; but superior age is 

 conventional age, and men may be advanced from number to 

 number in age; a younger son may be advanced over an elder 

 son, and when this occurs they exchange kinship names: a 

 nephew may be promoted over his uncle, when they also 

 exchange kinship names. 



In addition to the family and the clan a still higher group 

 is organized. All persons who claim relationship by consan- 

 guinity are included in this group; this is the tribe. Marriage 

 is forbidden within the clan; it is, therefore, an incest group; 

 but men and women of different clans mate, and thus marriage 

 is within the trilje. If a person not a member of the tribe 

 wishes to man-y a person within the tribe, he must be adopted 

 into some clan other than that of his mate, and if a person 

 wishes to marry within the clan, he must be adopted into some 

 other clan; so that incest in this stage of society is prohibited 

 marriage within a conventional group of persons, and is thus 

 based on convention and not on degree of consanguinity. 

 Again, while the mother's brothers and sisters belong to her 

 clan, the children of the brothers belong to the clan in which 

 they are married. The, children of the sisters of the clan call 

 one another brothers and sisters, but the children of the brotli- 

 ers call the children of the sisters by a term which may be 

 rendered by the English tei'm cousin. 



Tribes are also organized into confederacies. Such organ- 

 izations seem always to result from war, but when peace is 

 established a convention is made, and the contracting parties 

 assume artificial relationship. They may be brothers, in which 

 case they are elder brothers and younger brothers. They 

 may, by convention, be fathers and sons, or even grandfathers 

 and grandsons, or uncles and nephews, the conquering })artv 

 taking the name which implies superior age. But several 

 tribes may be organized into a confederacy ; then kinship 

 terms are parceled out among them in compliance with ])re- 

 viously arranged conventional kinship. 



In all the American tribes of savagery we find that peculiar 



