the mother's name and belonging to her kindred or clan.

Nevertheless we cannot agree with Bachofen that a true matriarchy, or
government by women, ever existed. On the contrary, among all of these
maternal peoples, while the women may have much influence socially and
politically, the men, on account of their superior strength, are
intrusted with the work not only of protecting and providing for the
families and driving away enemies, but also largely with the work of
maintaining the internal government and order of the people. Strictly
speaking, therefore, there has never been a matriarchal stage of social
evolution, but rather a maternal or metronymic stage.

We have already said that this stage was probably the primitive one. How
are we to explain, then, that primitive man reckoned kinship through
mothers only? Was this due, as Morgan thought, to a primitive practice
of promiscuity which prevented tracing relationships through fathers?
The reply is, that among the many maternal peoples now well known, among
whom relationships are traced through mothers only, we find no evidence
of the practice of general promiscuity now or even in remote times. The
North American Indians, for example, had quite definite forms of the
family life and were very far removed from the practice of promiscuity,
though they traced relationship through mothers only. It is evident that
the causes of the maternal family and the maternal system of
relationship are not so simple as Morgan supposed. What, then, were the
causes of the maternal system? It is probable that man in the earliest
times did not know the physiological connection between father and
child. The physiological connection between mother and child, on the
other hand, was an obvious fact which required no knowledge of
physiology to establish; therefore, nothing was more natural than for
primitive man to recognize that the child was of the mother's blood, but