The earliest form of organized society was that into classes founded on the basis of sex,80 under which the right of individuals to intermarry was restricted to one-fourth of the group. This division of the early race, and the regulations prohibiting conjugal relations with three-fourths the members of the related community, is thought to represent the first coercive abridgment or formal restriction of the then existing conjugal rights, and was inaugurated for the purpose of averting the evil effects arising from intercourse between near relations. Of this early form of society, however, and of the ages during which no organized form existed, little may be known except that which is suggested by the instincts and habits of the highest animals, and that which may be inferred from an investigation of the next higher organization, that into gentes on the basis of kin. Although untold ages intervened between the ancient division of society into classes founded on the basis of sex, and the higher and more important organization into gentes on the basis of kin, this124 last-named plan for the further development of mankind became universal at a comparatively early stage of human history.  
By an investigation of the fundamental principles of the gens, we shall be enabled to observe the similarity existing between the instincts which governed early human action and those which controlled the highest orders of life below mankind. All facts bearing on the primitive conditions of the human race, which in these later times have been brought to light through the investigations directed toward peoples in the various stages of development, only serve to emphasize the importance of the altruistic principle in the formation of organized society and in the establishment of human institutions. Although the gens is the earliest form of organized society of which we have any accurate knowledge, still as within it were encysted the germs of all the principles of justice and equality which our better human nature is beginning again to recognize, and which must characterize a higher stage of progress, a knowledge of its underlying principles is necessary to a correct understanding, not only of the past development of the race and all the existing human institutions, but of the course to be pursued toward the future advancement of mankind. Of the gens, Mr. Morgan says:
 
The gentile organization opens to us one of the oldest and most widely prevalent institutions of mankind.125 It furnished the nearly universal plan of government of ancient society, Asiatic, European, African, American, and Australian. It was the instrumentality by means of which society was organized and held together. Commencing in savagery, and continuing through the three sub-periods of barbarism, it remained until the establishment of political society, which did not occur until after civilization had commenced. The Grecian gens, phratry, and tribe, the Roman gens, curia, and tribe find their analogues in the gens, phratry, and tribe of the American aborigines. In like manner, the Irish sept, the Scottish clan, the phrara of the Albanians, and the Sanskrit ganas, without extending the comparison further are the same as the American-Indian gens, which has usually been called a clan. As far as our knowledge extends, this organization runs through the entire ancient world upon all the continents, and it was brought down to the historical period by such tribes as attained to civilization.... Gentile society wherever found is the same in structural organization and in principles of action; but changing from lower to higher forms with the progressive advancement of the people. These changes give the history of the development of the same original conceptions.81
 
Early society, as observed under gentile institutions, was established on purely personal and social relations, or, on the basis of the relations of the individual to the rest of the community, a community in which each member could trace her or his origin back to the head of the gens who126 was a woman. Under gentile institutions, or until the latter stage of barbarism was reached, each individual, female and male, constituted a unit in an aggregation or community whose interests were identical, and as such, to a certain extent, was held responsible for the safety and general welfare of every member composing the group.
 
Extreme egoism, as it is the outgrowth of a later age, was unknown; and sympathy, the chief promoter of the well-being of mankind, a sprout from the well-established root, maternal affection, was the predominant characteristic of these primitive groups and the bond which held society together. Although the manner of reckoning descent had been changed from the female to the male line, the purely social organization of the gens, on the basis of kin, was, as has been observed, in operation at the beginning of our present civilization, at which time political society supervened, and individuals were no longer recognized through their relations to a gens or tribe, but through their relations to the state, county, township, or deme, to which institutions they must henceforward look for protection and for the redress of injuries done either to person or property.
 
Although, until a comparatively recent time, the writers who have dealt with the subject of primitive society have been of the opinion that the tribe constituted the earliest organization of society, and that the gens and the family followed, later investigations show conclusively that the127 gens, next to the remote and obscure division into classes, represents the oldest and most widely spread form of organized society, and that it was through segmentation or division of this archaic group that the tribe was formed.
 
The natural way in which a tribe is formed is from a family or group, which in time increases and divides into many households, still recognizing one another as kindred, and this kinship is so thoroughly felt to be the tie of the whole tribe, that even when there has been a mixture of tribes, a common ancestor is often invented to make an imaginary bond of union.82
 
The gens, until a comparatively recent time in the history of the human race, was composed of a female ancestor, all her children and all the children of her daughters, but not of her sons. The sons’ children and their descendants belonged to the gens of their respective mothers. The family, as it appears at the present time, was unknown. The gens was founded on thoroughly democratic principles, each individual composing the group, both female and male, having a voice in the regulation and management of all matters pertaining to the general government of the community. Any injury done to a gentilis was a wrong committed against the entire gens of which she or he was a member, hence to her or his kinsmen each individual looked for protection and for redress of personal wrongs.
 
128
 
The fundamental doctrine of tribal life is unity of blood. Although the early groups, under the system of female descent, were united by the actual bond of kinship as traced through mothers, later, when descent came to be traced through fathers, kinship was to a considerable extent feigned. Kinship, under the system of male descent, meant not that the blood of the great father actually flowed in the veins of all the members of the group, but that under a pretence of unity of blood, they were bound together by common duties and responsibilities from which no one of them could escape. By the terms of the compact, every member must stand by her or his own clan. In fact, in all their movements, they must act as one individual; their interests were identical and the quarrel of any member of the group became the quarrel of all counted within the bond of kinship. If homicide were committed, they judged and punished the culprit, but if one of their number was slain by an outsider, the law of blood-feud, which demanded blood in return, was immediately put into execution. Of the gens Mr. Morgan says:
 
Within its membership the bond of kin was a powerful element for mutual support. To wrong a person was to wrong his gens; and to support a person was to stand behind him with the entire array of this gentile kindred.83
 
129
 
Although in the later ages of gentile government, all the members of a group were not necessarily bound by blood, from the nature of the rights conferred, and the obligations imposed, the bond uniting them was doubtless stronger than that which now unites mere kindred. Of this tie uniting early groups J.?G. Frazer says:
 
All the members of a totem clan regard each other as kinsmen or brothers and sisters, and are bound to help and protect each other. The totem bond is stronger than the bond of blood or family in the modern sense.84
 
As Arabia, at the time of Mohammed, was still under gentile organization, there is perhaps at the present day no country which affords a better opportunity for the study of several of the successive stages of human development. At the time indicated, the entire Arabian peninsula was composed of a multitude of groups varying in civilization, which were bound together by common privileges, obligations, and responsibilities and by a real or pretended bond of kinship traced through males.
 
In early Arabia a group bound together by a real or feigned unity of blood was the type or unit of society. Sometimes a confederation of these smaller groups was formed, but so strong was the bond between the more closely related130 groups that they soon broke up into their original units. The genealogists assert that these groups which were patriarchal tribes founded on male descent are subdivisions of an original stock.
 
At the time of the Prophet the Arabians claimed to trace their descent from two brothers the sons of Wail. Prof. W. Robertson Smith informs us, however, that the name of one of these “brothers” is a feminine appellation and that it is the designation of a tribe and not of a person. He says: “The gender shows that the tribal name existed before the mythical ancestor was invented,” and adds: “The older facts down to the time of Al-Farazdac personify Taghlib as the daughter not the son of Wail. It is not unlikely that the mythical legend of Taghlib and Bakr originated at a time when the female principle in human affairs and in the Deity was beginning to give place to the male.”85
 
Within the traditions of the oldest races of which we have any account, are evidences of a desperate struggle between two races or between the followers of two opposing principles. In all parts of Arabia “these two races maintained their ancestral traditions of bitter and persistent feud.”
 
Although in Arabia, in the time of the Prophet, descent was traced in the male line, the evidence is almost unlimited, going to show that it was not always so, but, on the contrary, that at an earlier131 age, relationships were reckoned through women, mothers being the recognized heads of families and tribal groups. In his work on Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, Prof. W.?R. Smith says:
 
If a kinship tribe derives its origin from a great father, we may argue with confidence that it had the rule that children were of their father’s tribe and kin; while on the other hand if we find, in a nation organized on the principle of unity of tribal blood, tribes which trace their origin to a great mother instead of a great father, we can feel sure that at some time the tribe followed the rule that the children belong to the mother and are of her kin. Now among the Arabs the doctrine of the unity of tribal blood is universal, as appears from the universal prevalence of the blood-feud. And yet among the Arab tribes we find no small number that refer their origin to a female eponym. Hence it follows that in many parts of Arabia kinship was once reckoned not in the male but in the female line.
 
In reply to the suggestion that the several families of polygamous fathers might be designated by the names of their several mothers, Professor Smith observes:
 
The point before us, however, is not the use of the mother’s name by individuals for purposes of distinction, but the existence of kindred groups whose members conceive that the tie of blood which unites them into a tribe is derived from and limited by descent132 from a common ancestress. That the existence of such a group proves kinship through women to have been once the rule is as certain as that the existence of patronymic groups is evidence of male kinship. In most cases of the kind the female eponym is mythical, no doubt, and the belief in her existence is a mere inference from the rule of female kinship within the tribe, just as mythical male ancestors are inferred from a rule of male kinship. But even if we suppose the ancestress to be historical, the argument is much the same, for where the bond of maternity is so strong that it binds together the children of the same mother as a distinct kindred group against the other children of their father, there also we may be sure that the children of one mother by different fathers will hold together and not follow their father. And this is the principle of female kinship.86
 
It is stated that the designation of tribal unity by a feminine appellation “is not an arbitrary fiction of later facts,” but that it is “one of the old standing figures of Semitic speech.” In Hebrew, em, which means mother, means also stock, race, or community.
 
The name for a tribal group in Arabia was hayy, a term which indicates life. It is observed that in Hebrew and Arabic hayy is used in the same sense. “Hawwa is simply a phonetic variation of hayy with a feminine termination,” and133 “Eve, or Hawwa, is so called because she is the mother of all living, or, more literally, of every hayy.” We are given to understand that, originally, there was no rule of reckoning kinship in Arabia except by the female line, and that the change in descent from the female to the male line affected society to its very roots.
 
There seems to be little, if any, doubt that a system of reckoning descent through women once prevailed throughout all the tribes and races of mankind. In Greece, as late as the beginning of the historic period, traces of this early custom are to be observed, and, indeed, at the present time, among many peoples, evidences of it are still extant. The fact that throughout an earlier age of human existence descent and all the rights of succession were traced through women, is at the present time so well established as to require no detailed proofs to substantiate it. Noting this custom among early races, and observing also the natural conclusions to be drawn from such a state of society, a few writers who have dealt with the subject of primitive races have taken much pains to show that it does not naturally follow that under these usages the influence of women was supreme; and their theories to explain this (to them) no doubt singular phenomenon show the extent to which prejudice and long-established habits of thought have influenced their investigations. On this subject C. Staniland Wake remarks:
 
There is strong reason for believing that the practice of tracing kinship in the female line was very widely134 observed from a very early period, but this is very different from the establishment of the supremacy of women. Where this was found it was due to the development of the gentile institution and the female kinship which accompanied it, on which, indeed, that institution was founded.87
 
If, however, during the earlier ages of human existence a system of kinship through women had been established which was able to produce the gentile institution, or, if this institution, which was “founded” on female kinship and dependent upon it, was able through untold ages to direct all the processes of evolution, even though no other evidence were at hand to prove it, then women’s influence must have been well-nigh supreme.
 
So deeply intrenched has become the idea of woman’s subjection that it is impossible for many male writers to contemplate a state of society in which women are not dominated and controlled by men.
 
Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory to explain the universal system of kinship traced through woman involves the same idea of woman’s subserviency to man, especially in the sexual relation, and is an illustration of the reasoning usually employed in dealing with this subject.
 
Although135 “the very lowest races now existing, Fuegians, Australians, and Andamanese, show us that, however informally they have originated, sexual relations of a more or less enduring kind exist,” he is certain that among the earliest races a state of “lawlessness” must have prevailed and that “promiscuity” must have been the rule among them; and this too notwithstanding the fact that among the lower orders of life from which man has descended, and among the earliest races of mankind the female chooses her mate and refuses to pair with any individual except the one of her choice. To account for the universal system of reckoning descent through the female, Mr. Spencer says that as the connection between mother and child is more “obvious” than that existing between the father and his offspring the custom arose of reckoning descent through females.88 The fact is observed that maternal affection without which organized society would have been impossible, and which alone can explain the system of kinship traced through women, is entirely ignored by Mr. Spencer.
 
Noting the reasoning employed by many writers to prove that in the earliest ages of human existence, the maternal bond was ignored, and that the child was accounted as being related only to the group, Mr. Darwin remarks:
 
But it seems almost incredible that the relationship of the child to its mother should ever be completely ignored, especially as the women in most savage tribes nurse their infants for a long time, and as the lines of136 descent are traced through the mother alone, to the exclusion of the father.89
 
We must bear in mind that under archaic usages not only did mothers nurse their infants two, three, and even four years, but that maternity was the bond which held together related groups and the source whence proceeded all property rights and tribal honours; also, that under the system of female kinship, male parentage was known but habitually disregarded. Notwithstanding all this, Mr. Spencer can see no reason for concluding that in the most primitive groups there were no “individual possessions of women by men.”90
 
The late Sir A. Smith, who had travelled widely in South Africa and was acquainted with the habits of savages there and elsewhere, expressed the strongest opinion that “no race exists in which woman is considered as the property of the community.”91 The reasoning employed by Mr. Spencer to disprove the early supremacy of women seems scarcely to justify his lofty pretensions to intellectual greatness.
 
In a state of society in which women were the recognized heads of families and eponymous groups where children took the mother’s name, and in which all rights of succession were traced through them, it is reasonable to suppose that female137 influence was in the ascendency over that of the male, and especially so as primitive human beings were largely controlled by instincts inherited from the orders of life in which the female chooses her mate and controls the sex-functions.
 
A knowledge of the customs and tribal usages of the Iroquois Indians throws much light on the early position of women. When this tribe first came under the observation of Europeans it was in the first stage of barbarism, and as the manner and order of development of the various races of mankind are said to be substantially the same, and as many of the facts connected with the history of this truly interesting people through nearly three ethnical periods are accessible, it is thought that by it, as well as by the Arabians, is afforded an excellent opportunity for the study of the general history of mankind during these periods. To Mr. Morgan we are indebted for the results of a thorough research into the customs, manners, and laws of this people.
 
Through a knowledge of the rights, privileges, and obligations which were conferred and imposed on the members of the Iroquois gens while in the second state of barbarism, we are enabled to perceive the principles of true democracy upon which gentile institutions are based; and this is important, for the reason that later in this work I intend to trace the decline of those principles of liberty and equality established under female influence and to show the reasons for138 the subsequent rise of monarchy, aristocracy, and slavery.
 
The rights, privileges, and obligations of the Iroquois tribe of Indians, as enunciated by Mr. Morgan, are as follows:
 
The right of electing its sachem and chiefs. The right of deposing its sachem and chiefs. The obligation not to marry in the gens. Mutual rights of inheritance of the property of deceased members. Reciprocal obligations of help, defence, and redress of injuries. The right of bestowing names upon its members. The right of adopting strangers into the gens. Common religious rites. A common burial place. A council of the gens.92
 
As this writer truly remarks: “These functions and attributes gave vitality as well as individuality to the organization, and protected the personal rights of its members.”
 
Eligibility to the office of chief was based on personal merit, and continuance in office depended on the acknowledged fitness of the individual occupying it. The qualifications required for this office were personal bravery, ability to lead, and eloquence in council. The chief exercised no kingly authority over the tribe by which he was appointed; on the contrary, his personality was respected and his counsels heeded, not because of his official prerogatives, but on account of the qualities by which his character was digni139fied; therefore so soon as he proved himself unworthy of the trust confided to him he was deposed by the same agency which had elected him. Hence may be observed the truly democratic character of the gens.
 
Concerning the position occupied by women, and the influence which they exerted in the management of the clan, Ashur Wright, who was for many years missionary to the Senecas, in 1873, wrote to Mr. Morgan the following:
 
As to their family system when occupying the old long houses, it is probable that some one clan predominated, the women taking in husbands, however, from the other clans; and sometimes, for a novelty, some of their sons bringing in their young wives until they felt brave enough to leave their mothers. Usually the female portion ruled the house, and were doubtless clannish enough about it. The stores were in common; but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too shiftless to do his share of the providing. No matter how many children or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at any time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge; and after such orders it would not be healthful for him to attempt to disobey. The house would be too hot for him; and, unless saved by intercession of some aunt or grandmother, he must retreat to his own clan; or, as was often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other. The women were the great power among the clans, as everywhere else. They did not hesitate, when occasion required, “to knock off the horns,” as it was technically called, from the140 head of a chief, and send him back to the ranks of the warriors. The original nomination of the chiefs also always rested with them.93
 
In the Lower Status of barbarism we find intermarriage within the gens prohibited, and the obligation not to marry those accounted as kin as strong as a religious duty.
 
Although during the latter ages of savagery the idea of property was slightly developed, it is thought that it lay nascent until the latter part of the first period of barbarism. Indeed, until the first stage of barbarism was reached, the idea of personal possession had gained only a slight foothold in the mental constitution of mankind. Egoism, selfishness, or the desire to better one’s individual condition at the expense of the rest of the gens was unknown. All lands were controlled by the group, and as the property of early society consisted for the most part of personal effects and proprietary rights in communal houses and gardens, one of the most fruitful causes for dissensions in more advanced stages of society was avoided. Under primitive conditions, quarrels arising over disputed ownership within the gens were unknown, and liberty, equality, and fraternity, the cardinal virtues and principl............