Note 26 — Chapter XIII · THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION IN NATIVE AMERICA

The contrary has been alleged. To dispose of the allegations seriatim would involve the minute examination of much evidence. Clan organization is here used in reference to arbitrary, named, intratribal exogamic groups to which the individual belongs inalienably by virtue of his birth, his descent being necessarily reckoned on one side only; and totemic phenomena being usually though not always associated with the group. A segregation of society into groups based primarily on blood kinship, co-residence, town quarters, occupation, social rank, or subordination to a chieftain is not a clan organization. Nor is the unilateral reckoning of descent a sufficient criterion. Our modern family names descend patrilineally without any historical connection between them and a clan organization. In general, statements as to the existence of clan systems in Middle America, at least among the advanced nations of Mexico and Peru, rest either on a loose use of terms; on the assumption that they must have existed at the time of discovery; or on a forward projection into the historic period of the belief that they had once existed. This belief is accepted here without such projection.