XXXIV BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



body of consanguineal kindred; it is composed of groups of 

 gentes that are incest groups, and tlie mates in mamage must 

 bel(^nof to different g'entes. 



We next find a peculiar develojjment in the organization and 

 government of shamanistic bodies or phratries. In barbarism 

 the head of the family presides over the religious observances 

 of the family and all the household. Tlie chief of the gens is 

 in the same manner the chief of its phratries ; the chief of the 

 tribe is also ex officio the chief of its phratries, and the chief of 

 the confederacy is in like maimer chief of all the phratries. 

 Thus the phratries are organized into a hierarchy of bodies as 

 households, gentes, tribes, and confederacies, and the chief of 

 the confederacy has authority over all the units of organization. 

 Yet throughout both savap•er^' and barbarism tribal org-aniza- 

 tion is founded on kinship, real or conventional, and seems to 

 be developed from the constitution of the family. 



Now institutions are necessarily collective, but the institu- 

 tional factors may be analyzed in such manner as to be recom- 

 posed with reference to («) the natural element or element 

 of actual kinship, and (J)) the conventional or more strictly 

 demotic element. When this is done, it becomes clear that, while 

 the more personal institutional activities tend to perpetuate 

 themselves through heredity, the general course of institu- 

 tional development is determined by the artificial or demotic 

 element, which gains strength through the integ'ration and 

 combination normally attending the growth of groups. 



4. The lanffuao-es of the American Indians have thrown 

 much light on the course of linguistic development. Like the 

 institutional activities, they are essentially collective; and they 

 reflect the esthetic, industrial, and institutional activities with 

 close fidelity, and are themselves reflected in activities of a 

 still his'her order. The lowliest known lana'uaoes of the tribes- 

 men display a spontaneous element, which may take the form 

 of exclamatory and often inarticulate utterance or of gesture, 

 these jJi'iiiiitive forms of expression being especially character- 

 istic of lower culture, while all the tribes possess regulated 

 systems of expression in articulated speech, and at least inchoate 

 systems of graphic symbolism. Most of the aboriginal tongues 



