MORGAN.] ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. 39 
office first named, thus showing that the succession has been regularly 
maintained. ‘The creation of two principal war-chiefs instead of one, and 
with equal powers, argues a subtle and calculating policy to prevent the 
domination of a single man even in their military affairs. They did with- 
out experience precisely as the Romans did in creating two consuls instead 
of one, after they had abolished the office of rex. Two consuls would 
balance the military power between them, and prevent either from becom- 
ing supreme. Among the Iroquois this office never became influential. 
In Indian ethnography the subjects of primary importance are the 
gens, phratry, tribe, and confederacy. They exhibit the organization of 
society. Next to these are the tenure and functions of the office of sachem 
and chief, the functions of the council of chiefs, and the tenure and func- 
tions of the office of principal war-chief. When these are ascertained the 
structure and principles of their governmental system will be known. A 
knowledge of their usages and customs, of their arts and inventions, and 
of their plan of life will then fill out the picture. In the work of Ameri- 
can investigators too little attention has been given to the former. They 
still afford a rich field in which much information may be gathered. Our 
knowledge, which is now general, should be made minute and comparative. 
The Indian tribes in the Lower and in the Middle Status of barbarism 
represent two of the great stages of progress from savagery to civilization. 
Our own remote forefathers passed through the same conditions, one after 
the other, and possessed, there can scarcely be a doubt; the same, or very 
similar institutions, with many of the same usages and customs. However 
little we may be interested in the American Indians personally, their expe- 
rience touches us more nearly, as an exemplification of the experience of 
our own ancestors. Our primary institutions root themselves in a prior 
gentile society in which the gens, phratry, and tribe were the organic 
series, and in which the council of chiefs was the instrument of government. 
The phenomena of their ancient society must have presented many points 
in common with that of the Iroquois and other Indian tribes. This view 
of the matter lends an additional interest to the study of comparative insti- 
tutions of mankind. 
