CIV ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT [eth. a.n.v. 20 



ecclesiastical authorities may 1)6 more ])Owerful tliau the civic 

 authorities, and tlie hereditar}- line of special ecclesiastical 

 g-overnors may gradually overpower the civic constitution and 

 absorb it as a secondary element in the ecclesiastic constitu- 

 tion. It nuist be remembered that the chief priests are men, 

 and tiiat the women plav a very small part in ecclesiastical 

 affairs. Now, as the luen manage ecclesiastical affairs as chief 

 priests, so civil affairs are managed mainlv by men as elder 

 men. The conilict which sometimes arises between the two 

 forms of government is mainly between men and men, or 

 between- able elder-men and able shamans; l)ut sometimes 

 both officers are combined in one person, and the great elder- 

 man may also be the great shaman. 



BARBARISM 



In barbarism the tribe is composed of groups wliich we call 

 gentes, and is said to have a gentile organization. Among the 

 Romans such persons were known as agnates. A grouj) of 

 agnates is composed of persons who reckon kinship through 

 males. Gentile organization is best known through the early 

 history of the Romans and Greeks: it was well developed 

 among the peoples of early history who spoke the Sanskrit 

 language; it appears among the early Anglo-Saxons; a few 

 tribes in North America have gentile organization, and it has 

 been at one time or another Avidely s]3read thi-oiighout tlie 

 earth. As a clan is a group of people wlio reckon kinsliij) 

 through females to some ancestral female, real or conventional, 

 so a gens is a group of people wlio i-eckon kinship through 

 males to some ancestral male, real or conA'entional. It seems 

 that the jirimordial constitution of the tribe is bv clanshi}i and 

 that the claiisliip tribe is developed into the gentile tribe. 

 Most of the trilies of North America have clansliip organiza- 

 tion, yet there is a goodly number with gentile organization, 

 while perlia])s it may be said that a majoritv of the clanship 

 tribes have some elements of the "-entile oro-anization, and 

 there is scarcely a gentile tribe whicli has not some feature of 

 clanship organization as a survival; so that it mav be justly 

 affirmed that a great many of the tribes on this continent are 



