OVIII ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT [eth. axn. 20 



part in tlie care of the flocks. B}- all of these agencies the con- 

 trol of" women and children is taken from elder brothers and 

 given to the husbands, and the practical accomplishment of this 

 change results in a new theorv f)f the fiimily — the children are 

 no longer considered the children of the bearing mother, Ijnt of 

 the generating father; that is, the children belong to the father, 

 not to the mother, for in tribal society there seems to l)e an 

 inability to conceive of nnitnal parenthood and authority. In 

 the clan the mother is the parent and owns the children, and 

 the father is but temporarily the guest of the wife and children. 



When the elder-man has the authority of the shaman, he 

 easily usurps the authority of the elder-man of his wife's clan, 

 especially when such authority is conducive to his industrial 

 interests ; for the same reason that impels the elder-man to this 

 acquisition of authority impels the elder-man of his wife's clan 

 to a corresponding assumption of authority, so the interest of 

 the one is the interest of the other. There may be many clans 

 in the tribe, and all the elder-men are interested in the like 

 acquisition of authority and are alike willing to give and take. 

 When this transfer is made into what we now call the gens, and 

 the elder-man or chief of the gens lias authority over his wife 

 and children, this authorit\' waxes very oreat, for he has a 

 double power — that of the elder-man and that of the shaman, 

 and we have the same state of aft'airs among the barbaric tribes 

 of America that is exhibited to us in the liistoric account of the 

 tribes of tlie Greek and Roman peoples, and in fact of all of 

 the Indo-European peoples. Under these conditions kinship 

 is reckoned in tlie male line and the clan is transformed into 

 the gens. The ruler of the gens is the patriarch who has a 

 right to control l)v reason of superioi- age, for the law that the 

 elder rules is still supreme; l)ut tlie elder iTiles with a rigor 

 unknown in savage society. 



The phratry does not become the gens, though it is etticient 

 in transforming the clan into the gens, and the phratry or 

 brotherhood becomes a fifth unit in the hierarchy of incorpora- 

 tions which constitute a ])arbaric society. The family remains 

 as a more or less distinct unit of organization composed of the 

 father, mother, and children, or it may hold together as a group. 



