MORGAN, ] THE GENS FOUNDED UPON KIN. 3 
Grecian, and Sanskrit speaking tribes, with whom it became such a conspic- 
uous institution. It has been found in other branches of the Aryan family 
of nations, in the Semitic, Uralian, and Turanian families, among the tribes 
of Africa and Australia, and of the American aborigines. 
The gens has passed through successive stages of development in its 
transition from its archaic to its final form with the progress of mankind. 
These changes were limited in the main to two: firstly, changing descent 
from the female line, which was the archaic rule, as among the Iroquois, 
to the male line, which was the final rule, as among the Grecian and Roman 
gentes; and, secondly, changing the inheritance of the property of a 
deceased member of the gens from his gentiles, who took it in the archaic 
period, first to his agnatic kindred, and finally to his children. These 
changes, slight as they may seem, indicate very great changes of condition 
as well as a large degree of progressive development. 
The gentile organization, originating in the period of savagery, endur- 
ing through the three subperiods of barbarism, finally gave way, among 
the more advanced tribes, when they attained civilization—the requirements 
of which it was unable to meet. Among the Greeks and Romans political 
society supervened upon gentile society, but not until civilization had com- 
menced. The township (and its equivalent, the city ward), with its fixed 
property, and the inhabitants it contained, organized as a body politic, 
became the unit and the basis of a new and radically different system of 
government. After political society was instituted this ancient and time- 
honored organization, with the phratry and tribe developed from it, gradu- 
ally yielded up their existence. It was under gentile institutions that 
barbarism was won by some of the tribes of mankind while in savagery, 
and that civilization was won by the descendants of some of the same tribes 
while in barbarism. Gentile institutions carried a portion of mankind from 
savagery to civilization. 
This organization may be successfully studied both in its living and in 
its historical forms in a large number of tribes and races. In such an in- 
vestigation it is preferable to commence with the gens in its archaic form. 
I shall commence, therefore, with the gens as it now exists among the 
American aborigines, where it is found in its archaic form, and among whom 
