st-born is
able to find its own food and shelter other children come, and so the
process is continually extended. Thus arises the _family_, the
corner-stone of all life that is above that of brutes.

But the little household, living in a cave and fighting hand to hand
with wild beasts and equally wild men, has a hard struggle to maintain
itself. In time, however, through the marriage of the daughters--for
in savage life the young men usually roam off and take wives elsewhere,
while the young women stay at home--instead of the original single
family, we have the grown daughters, with their husbands, living still
with their parents and rearing children, thus forming a group of
families, closely united by kinship. In the next generation, by the
same process continued, we have a dozen, perhaps twenty, families, {19}
all closely related, and living, it may be, under one shelter, the men
hunting and providing food for the whole group, and the women working
together and preparing the food in common.

Moreover, they all trace their relationship through their mothers,
because the women are the home-staying element. In our group of
families, for instance, all the women are descendants of the original
single woman with whom we began; but the husbands have come from
elsewhere. This is no doubt the reason why among savages it seems the
universal practice to trace kinship through the mother. Again, in such
a little community as we have supposed, the women, being all united by
close ties of blood, are the ruling element. The men may beat their
wives, but, after all, the women, if they join together against any one
man, can put him out and remain in possession.

These points it is important to bear in mind, because they explain what
would otherwise appear very singular features of Indian life. For
instance, we understand now why a son does not inherit anything, not so
much as a tobacco-pipe, at his father's death. He is counted as the
mother's child. For the same reason, if the {20} mother has had more
than one husband, and children by each marriage, these are all counted
as full brothers and sisters, because they have the same mother.

Such a group of families as has been supposed is called a _clan_, or in
Roman history a _gens_. It may be small, or it may be very numerous.
The essential feature is that it is a body of people united by the tie
of common blood. It may have existed for hundreds of years and have
grown to