This organization may be successfully studied both in its living and
in its historical forms in a large number of tribes and races. In
such an investigation it is preferable to commence with the gens in
its archaic form I shall commence, therefore, with the gens as it
now exists among the American aborigines, where it is found in its
archaic form, and among whom its theoretical constitution and
practical workings can be investigated more successfully than in the
historical gentes of the Greeks and Romans. In fact, to understand
fully the gentes of the latter nations a knowledge of the functions
and of the rights, privileges, and obligations of the members of the
American Indian gens is imperatively necessary.

In American ethnography tribe and clan have been used in the place
of gens as equivalent terms from not perceiving the universality of
the latter. In previous works, and following my predecessors, I have
so used them. A comparison of the Indian clan with the gens of the
Greeks and Romans reveals at once their identity in structure and
functions. It also extends to the phratry and tribe. If the identity
of these several organizations can be shown, of which there can be
no doubt, there is a manifest propriety in returning to the Latin
and Grecian terminologies, which are full and precise as well as
historical.

The plan of government of the American aborigines commenced with the
gens and ended with the confederacy, the latter being the highest
point to which their governmental institutions attained. It gave for
the organic series: first, the gens, a body of consanguinei having a
common gentile name; second, the phratry, an assemblage of related
gentes united in a higher association for certain common objects;