still are gentile names in a majority of all Indian tribes. And the above named constitution is essentially applicable to all of them, except that many did not reach the point of forming leagues of related tribes.
But once the gens was given as a social unit, we also see how the whole constitution of gentes, phratries and tribes developed with almost unavoidable necessity—because naturally—from the gens. All three of them are groups of differentiated consanguine relations. Each is complete in itself, arranges its own local affairs and supplements the other groups. And the cycle of functions performed by them includes the aggregate of the public affairs of men in the lower stage of barbarism.
Wherever we find the gens as the social unit of a nation, we are justified in searching for a tribal organization similar to the one described above. And whenever sufficient material is at hand, as in Greek and Roman history, there we shall not only find such an organization, but we may also be assured, that the comparison with the American sex organizations will assist us in solving the most perplexing doubts and riddles in places where the material forsakes us.