PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 137 



The " camp-fire," whether among the Dakotas, Winnebagoes, or 

 Omahas, is the " gens." And among the Omahas this " camp-fire " 

 has another name, Uba'na", meaning " A clump of shoots from a 

 common stock or root ; " and a sub-gens is styled " u'kigdha'sne " 

 (from uga'sne, to split a log), and denotes " One of the divisions 

 of the common stock." 



This exhibit of the Omaha Gentile System is far from being 

 exhaustive. 



At each review of the subject new ideas have been suggested, the 

 correctness or incorrectness of which, I hope, may be revealed by 

 future investigations. 



Mr. J. W. Powell remarked on this paper as follows : 



The great interest in Mr. Dorsey's discussion of his subject at the 

 present time arises from the condition of discussions concerning 

 barbarism. Government has been supposed to have had its origin 

 in patriarchy, but this view is apparently overthrown by the argu- 

 ments and discussions of Mr, Lewis H. Morgan, upon kinship 

 which he holds to be the foundation of social organization, and 

 therefore of government. 



Among the North American Indians we find not indeed the 

 lowest known form of human society but certainly a very primi- 

 tive one, which exemplifies one of the earliest stages in the progress 

 of man from barbarism to civilization, and from the researches of 

 ethnologists in other regions, the general features of this stage of 

 development appear to have been characteristic of all portions of 

 the human race. Mr. Dorsey has given an account of the Dakota 

 nations from which it appears that the gentes originated from the 

 sub-division of older gentes. Among the Greeks and Romans two 

 or more very nearly equal bodies constituted the curia or phratry. 

 This imagined integration of smaller units was supposed to have 

 arisen from the recognition of the necessity of some larger unit 

 than the gentes. But among the Iroquois and Dakotas, the phratry 

 is older than the gens. Here the process is rather one of differen- 

 tiation. In also appears that the Indian social organization is not 

 by any means simple, but is very elaborately organized. 



In the case of the Wyandottes, the head of the household is a 

 woman, and the line of descent is through the female. In the 

 Omahas it is through the male. The Wyandotte gens has at its 

 head four women wbo choose a male chief. There are eleven gentes, 



