SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 655 



had small divisions similar to clans but without totemic names, and 

 such cantons or house groups were found among the Chickasaw 

 alongside of their totemic subdivisions. As has been said, one eastern 

 Siouan tribe, apparently one of those in Virginia, may have had 

 clans but they appear to have been nontotemic. It may be assumed 

 that the Nottoway and Meherrin had clans like their relatives the 

 Tuscarora but the fact cannot be established. Bare statements by 

 Smith as well as Lawson inform us that the coastal Algonquians 

 and the Piedmont tribes reckoned descent in the female line, but we 

 have no further information on the subject except from the Tutelo 

 after they had been living many years with the Iroquois, whose in- 

 stitutions they may have adopted. J. O. Dorsey was told of four 

 Tutelo clans. Bear, Deer, Wolf, and Turtle (Dorsey, J. O., 1897, p. 

 244). A document dated 1789 unearthed by Schaeffer lists part of 

 the Tutelo in two clans, the Snipe and Wolf, but it looks as if these 

 totemic names had been superposed upon as many originally distinct 

 tribes (Speck and Herzog, 1942). The surviving Natchez have to- 

 temic clans and matrilineal descent, and descent was prevailingly 

 matrilineal among the Natchez in the early eighteenth century, before 

 they were broken up and dispersed, but there is no proof that they 

 then had totemic clans. We may infer that the internal organization 

 of the Taensa and Avoyel was like that of the Natchez. There is no 

 further information regarding the tribes along the lower Mississippi 

 or anywhere adjacent to it. 



In 1763 there were four clans among the Kadohadacho called 

 Beaver, Otter, Wolf, and Panther but it is not known whether they 

 were exogamic groups, and in later times five clans were reported 

 among the western Caddo called Bison, Bear, Panther, Wolf, and 

 Beaver, which were not exogamous. They were arranged in a sort 

 of caste system in the order of strength as given and when a marriage 

 occurred between them and the mother belonged to a "stronger" animal, 

 the children all belonged to her clan whereas when the mother be- 

 longed to a weaker animal only the girls followed her. The Louisiana 

 Caddo are said to have had a true clan system with exogamous animal- 

 named divisions (Swanton, 1942, pp. 163-166). 



Table 4 (pp. 658-660) contains a list of totemic clans and gentes in 

 all parts of the area under discussion and in the Northeast as well. 

 The Choctaw and eastern Siouan clans are omitted because the former 

 were nontotemic and the status of clans among the latter is unknown. 



A fairly complete study of the distribution of clan names in the 

 eastern part of North America brings out the following facts. The 

 Bear, Wolf, Deer, and Beaver were widely, and rather uniformly, 

 distributed and were represented respectively in 33, 31, 24, and 19 

 tribes. The Bear, Deer, and Beaver were prominent among the 



