ugh it is distorted; for at this
social stage there is no sign yet of any law in the juridic sense.

If we now take one of the two standard groups of a Punaluan family,
namely that of a series of natural and remote sisters (i. e., first,
second and more remote descendants of natural sisters), their children
and their natural or remote brothers on the mother's side (who according
to our supposition are not their husbands), we have exactly that circle
of persons who later appear as members of a gens, in the original form
of this institution. They all have a common ancestress, by virtue of the
descent that makes the different female generations sisters. But the
husbands of these sisters cannot be chosen among their brothers any
more, can no longer come from the same ancestress, and do not,
therefore, belong to the consanguineous group of relatives, the gens of
a later time. The children of these same sisters, however, do belong to
this group, because descent from the female line alone is conclusive,
alone is positive. As soon as the proscription of sexual intercourse
between all relatives on the mother's side, even the most remote of
them, is an accomplished fact, the above named group has become a gens,
i. e., constitutes a definite circle of consanguineous relatives of
female lineage who are not permitted to marry one another. Henceforth
this circle is more and more fortified by other mutual institutions of
a social or religious character and thus distinguished from other gentes
of the same tribe. Of this more anon.

Finding, as we do, that the gens not only necessarily, but also as a
matter of course, develops from the Punaluan family, it becomes obvious
to us to assume as almost practically demonstrated the prior existence
of this family form among all those nations where such gentes are
traceable, i. e., nearly all barbarian and civilized nations.

When Morgan wrote his book, our knowledge of group marriage was very
limited. We knew very little about the group marriages of the
Australians organized in classes, and furthermore Morgan had published
as early as 1871 the information he had received about the Punaluan
family of Hawaii. This family on one hand furnished a complete
explanation of the system of kinship in force among the American
Indians, which had been the point of departure for all the studies of
Morgan. On the other hand it formed a ready means for the deduction of
the maternal law gens. And finally it r