Note 29 — Front matter

The clan or gens among the American Indians is an intertribal, exogamic group of persons actually or theoretically consanguine. See J. N. B. Hewitt in Bul. 30, B. A. E., and J. W. Powell in the 17th Rep., B. A. E., Part I, 1898, page 29 passim. Throughout all of the American tribes of savagery it has been found that peculiar groups of persons are organized and known as shamanistic societies or phratries, viz: banded religious bodies. The term however must be extended that it may include the ceremonies which the savage believed to be religious. Peace and warfare, health and disease, welfare and want, pleasure and pain, all, whether good or evil, are believed to be under control of such societies as noted. The gens is to be found in Greek and Roman history, where it is known as the agnatic kindred. The tribe remains a body of consanguineal kindred: it is composed of groups of gentes that are incest groups, and the mates in marriage must belong to different gentes. See appendix A.