equivalent. Thus the Senecas have two phratries, the first comprising gentes one to four, the second gentes five to eight. Closer investigation shows that these phratries generally represent the original gentes that formed the tribe in the beginning. For the marriage interdict necessitated the existence of at least two gentes in a tribe in order to realize its separate existence. As the tribe increased, every gens segmented into two or more new gentes, while the original gens comprising all the daughter gentes, lived on in the phratry. Among the Senecas and most of the other Indians "the gentes in the same phratry are brother gentes to each other, and cousin gentes to those of the other phratry"—terms that have a very real and expressive meaning in the American system of kinship, as we have seen. Originally no Seneca was allowed to marry within his phratry, but this custom has long become obsolete and is now confined to the gens. According to the tradition among the Senecas, the bear and the deer were the two original gentes, from which the others were formed by segmentation. After this new institution had become well established it was modified according to circumstances. If certain gentes became extinct, it sometimes happened that by mutual consent the members of one gens were transferred in a body from other phratries. Hence we find the gentes of the same name differently grouped in the phratries of the different tribes.
"The phratry, among the Iroquois, was partly for social and partly for religious objects." 1. In the ball game one phratry plays against another. Each one sends its best players, the other members, upon different sides of the field, watch the game and bet against one another on the result. 2. In the tribal council the sachems and chiefs of each phratry are seated opposite one another, every speaker addressing the representatives of each phratry as separate bodies. 3. When a murder had been committed in the tribe, the slayer and the slain belonging to different phratries, the injured gens often appealed to its brother gentes. These held a phratry council which in a body addressed itself to the other phratry, in order to prevail on the latter to assemble in council and effect a condonation of