18 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
segmentation is the striking characteristic of their condition. Each tribe 
was individualized by a name, by a separate dialect, by a supreme govern- 
ment, and by the possession of a territory which it occupied and defended 
as its own. ‘The tribes were as numerous as the dialects, for separation 
did not become complete until dialectical variation had commenced. Indian 
tribes, therefore, are natural growths through the separation of the same 
people in the area of their occupation, followed by divergence of speech, 
segmentation, and independence. 
The exclusive possession of a dialect and of a territory has led to the 
application of the term nation to many Indian tribes, notwithstanding the 
fewness of the people in each. Tribe and nation, however, are not strict 
equivalents. A nation does not arise, under gentile institutions, until the 
tribes united under the same government have coalesced into one people, as 
the four Athenian tribes coalesced in Attica, three Dorian tribes at Sparta, 
and three Latin and Sabine tribes at Rome. Federation requires indepen- 
dent tribes in separate territorial areas; but coalescence unites them by a 
higher process in the same area, although the tendency to local separation 
by gentes and by tribes would continue The confederacy is the nearest 
analogue of the nation, but not strictly equivalent. Where the gentile 
organization exists, the organic series gives all the terms which are needed 
for a correct description. 
An Indian tribe is composed of several gentes, developed from two or 
more, all the members of which are intermingled by marriage, and all of 
whom speak the same dialect. To a stranger the tribe is visible, and not 
the gens. The instances are extremely rare, among the American abo- 
rigines, in which the tribe embraced peoples speaking different dialects. 
When such cases are found it has resulted from the union of a weaker with 
a stronger tribe speaking a closely related dialect, as the union of the Mis- 
souris with the Otoes after the overthrow of the former. The fact that the 
great body of the aborigines were found in independent tribes illustrates 
the slow and difficult growth of the idea of government under gentile insti- 
tutions. A small portion only had attained to the ultimate stage known 
among them, that of a confederacy of tribes speaking dialects of the same 
