oods, composed of smaller groups of the gentes; but
these need not here be considered. The gens was autonomic, at least to
all practical ends; it selected its own chieftain and decided all
matters relating to questions of property or blood-vengeance when these
concerned its own members. Each gens was represented in the council of
the tribe, which council selected the tribal chief. Members of one gens
could not intermarry; and, most important of all to our present purpose,
it was by the female line that descent was traced and that property
descended. Such is a brief sketch of the American tribal organization.

This, however, was the organization in theory only; when it came to the
matter of practice, it is very rarely, indeed, that we find the theory
preserved immutable. On the contrary, there were so many exceptions that
we must regard the rule only as one to be kept in sight for the purposes
of generalization. For example, the law of descent in the female line
was very often abrogated, even where the gentile system was in force;
and consanguineous marriages, and even incest,--rare though this is
among primitive peoples, probably because, as Darwin points out,
familiarity is not inducive of affection,--were not unknown. However,
there is enough stability in the theory to warrant the deduction of
certain general statements dependent upon it.

We are now prepared to take a view of the status of woman among the
tribes of primitive America. It is the general belief that she was a
mere chattel, having no rights whatever, existing merely upon the
sufferance of her husband, and in all ways a slave, a creature without
rights or privileges. Such a picture is far from the truth, even though
it contain many aspects of partial truth. As a matter of fact, the
matriarchal system prevailed in the majority of the American tribes; and
this alone is sufficient to show that woman had some rights. These were
not precisely personal, but rather gentile; yet they acted in many ways
as personal. For example, where the matriarchal system was in force, all
property rights, as between husband and wife, vested in the latter; she
alone could dispose of property,--and that at her discretion--, and it
was to her relatives and not to his that the property passed on the
death of the pair. Moreover, in the tribes wherein prevailed the theory
of maternal descent, the children did not look upon the father as a
relative; he was not of their gens, and they