North American Indians of the plains / by Clark Wissler.

  • Clark Wissler
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: North American Indians of the plains / by Clark Wissler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    92/160 (page 84)
    anthropology, is, after all, chiefly a study of culture, it is usual to place under one head all units having exactly the same culture when otherwise closely related by language and blood. Our previous list of tribes, therefore, represents those of approximately equal cultural values for the whole series of traits (p. 17). Using tribe to designate units with independent governing bodies, we find that these tribes are in turn composed of small units, each under the leadership of a chief, seconded by a few head men. These subdivisions are often designated in technical literature as bands — a chief and his followers. It frequently happens that the members of these bands inherit their memberships according to a fixed system. When this is reckoned through the mother, or in the female line, the term clan is used instead of band; when reckoned in the male line, gens. The clans and gentes of the Plains are of special interest because of the tendency to regulate marriage so that it must be exogamic, or between individuals from different clans and gentes and also because of the difficulty in discovering whether this is due to the mere accident of blood relationship or some other obscure tendency. On this point, there is a large body of special literature. An exogamic gentile system has been reported for the Omaha, Ponca, Iowa, Oto, Missouri, Osage, and Kansas. An exogamic clan system prevails among the Hidatsa, Crow, and probably among the Mandan. Among the Plateau group, the Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, Assiniboine, and probable also among the