Each gens furnished a number of “Keepers of the Faith,” both male and female, who together were charged with the celebration of these festivals.67 The number advanced to this office by each was regarded as evidence of the fidelity of the gens to religion. They designated the days for holding the festivals, made the necessary arrangements for their celebration, and conducted the ceremonies in conjunction with the sachems and chiefs of the tribe, who were, ex officio, “Keepers of the Faith.” With no official head, and none of the marks of a priesthood, their functions were equal. The female “Keepers of the Faith” were more especially charged with the preparation of the feast, which was provided at all councils at the close of each day for all persons in attendance. It was a dinner in common. The religious rites appertaining to these festivals, which have been described in a previous work,68 need not be considered further than to remark, that their worship was one of thanksgiving, with invocations to the Great Spirit, and to the Lesser Spirits to continue to them the blessings of life.
With the progress of mankind out of the Lower into the Middle, and more especially out of the latter into the Upper Status of barbarism, the gens became more the centre of religious influence and the source of religious development. We have only the grosser part of the Aztec religious system; but in addition to national gods, there seem to have been other gods, belonging to smaller divisions of the people than the phratries. The existence of an Aztec ritual and priesthood would lead us to expect among them a closer connection of religious rites with the gentes than is found among the Iroquois; but their religious beliefs and observances are under the same cloud of obscurity as their social organization.
IX. A common burial place.
An ancient but not exclusive mode of burial was by scaffolding the body until the flesh had wasted, after which the bones were collected and preserved in bark barrels in a house constructed for their reception. Those belonging to the same gens were usually placed in the same house. The Rev. Dr. Cyrus Byington found these practices among the Choctas in 1827; and Adair mentions usages among the Cherokees substantially the same. “I saw three of them,” he remarks, “in one of their towns pretty near each other; * * * Each house contained the bones of one tribe separately, with the hieroglyphical figures of each family [gens] on each of the odd-shaped arks. They reckoned it irreligious to mix the bones of a relative with those of a stranger, as bone of bone and flesh of flesh should always be joined together.”69 The Iroquois in ancient times used scaffolds and preserved the bones of deceased relatives in bark barrels, often keeping them in the house they occupied. They also buried in the ground. In the latter case those of the same gens were not always buried locally together unless they had a common cemetery for the village. The late Rev. Ashur Wright, so long a missionary among the Senecas, and a noble specimen of the American missionary, wrote to the author as follows; “I find no trace of the influence of clanship in the burial places of the dead. I believe that they buried promiscuously. However, they say that formerly the members of the different clans more frequently resided together than they do at the present time. As one family they were more under the influence of family feeling, and had less of individual interest. Hence, it might occasionally happen that a large proportion of the dead in some particular burying place might be of the same clan.” Mr. Wright is undoubtedly correct that in a particular cemetery members of all the gentes established in a village would be buried; but they might keep those of the same gens locally together. An illustration in point is now found at the Tuscarora reservation near Lewiston, where the tribe has one common cemetery, and where individuals of the same gens are buried in a row by themselves. One row is composed of the graves of the deceased members of the Beaver gens, two rows of the members of the Bear gens, one row of the Gray Wolf, one of the Great Turtle, and so on to the number of eight rows. Husband and wife are separated from each other and buried in different rows; fathers and their children the same; but mothers and their children and brothers and sisters are found in the same row. It shows the power of gentile feeling, and the quickness with which ancient usages are reverted to under favorable conditions; for the Tuscaroras are now christianized without surrendering the practice. An Onondaga Indian informed the writer that the same mode of burial by gentes now prevailed at the Onondaga and Oneida cemeteries. While this usage, perhaps, cannot be declared general among the Indian tribes, there was undoubtedly in ancient times a tendency to, and preference for this mode of burial.
Among the Iroquois, and what is true of them is generally true of other Indian tribes in the same status of advancement, all the members of the gens are mourners at the funeral of a deceased gentilis. The addresses at the funeral, the preparation of the grave, and the burial of the body were performed by members of other gentes.
The Village Indians of Mexico and Central America practiced a slovenly cremation, as well as scaffolding, and burying in the ground. The former was confined to chiefs and prominent men.
X. A council of the gens.
The council was the great feature of ancient society, Asiatic, European and American, from the institution of the gens in savagery to civilization. It was the instrument of government as well as the supreme authority over the gens, the tribe, and the confederacy. Ordinary affairs were adjusted by the chiefs; but those of general interest were submitted to the determination of a council. As the council sprang from the gentile organization the two institutions have come down together through the ages. The Council of Chiefs represents the ancient method of evolving the wisdom of mankind and applying it to human affairs. Its history, gentile, tribal, and confederate, would express the growth of the idea of government in its whole development, until political society supervened into which the council, changed into a senate, was transmitted.
The simplest and lowest form of the council was that of the gens. It was a democratic assembly because every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it. It elected and deposed its sachem and chiefs, it elected Keepers of the Faith, it condoned or avenged the murder of a gentilis, and it adopted persons into the gens. It was the germ of the higher council of the tribe, and of that still higher of the confederacy, each of which was composed exclusively of chiefs as representatives of the gentes.
Such were the rights, privileges and obligations of the members of an Iroquois gens; and such were those of the members of the gentes of the Indian tribes generally, as far as the investigation has been carried. When the gentes of the Grecian and Latin tribes are considered, the same rights privileges and obligations will be found to exist, with the exception of the I, II, and VI; and with respect to these their ancient existence is probable though the proof is not perhaps attainable.
All the members of an Iroquois gens were personally free, and they were bound to defend each other’s freedom; they were equal in privileges and in personal rights, the sachem and chiefs claiming no superiority; and they were a brotherhood bound together by the ties of kin. Liberty, equality, and fraternity, though never formulated, were cardinal principles of the gens. These facts are material, because the gens was the unit of a social and governmental system, the foundation upon which Indian society was organized. A structure composed of such units would of necessity bear the impress of their character, for as the unit so the compound. It serves to explain that sense of independence and personal dignity universally an attribute of Indian character.
Thus substantial and important in the social system was the gens as it anciently existed among the American aborigines, and as it still exists in full vitality in many Indian tribes. It was the basis of the phratry, of the tribe, and of the confederacy of tribes. Its functions might have been presented more elaborately in several particulars; but sufficient has been given to show its permanent and durable character.
At the epoch of European discovery the American Indian tribes generally were organized