al
footing. The council of the gens is the supreme ruling power in the
gens. Among some of the northern tribes, all the members in the gens,
both male and female, had a voice in this council. In the Mexican gens,
the council itself was more restricted. The old men, medicine men, and
distinguished men met in council--but even here, on important occasions,
the whole gens met in council.

Each gens would, of course, elect its own officers. They could remove
them from office as well, whenever occasion required. The Mexican gentes
elected two officers. One of these corresponded to the sachem among
northern tribes. His residence was the official house of the gens. He
had in charge the stores of the gens; and, in unimportant cases, he
exercised the powers of a judge. The other officer was the war-chief. In
times of war he commanded the forces of the gens. In times of peace he
was, so to speak, the sheriff of the gens.

The next division of the tribe was the phratry--the word properly
meaning a brotherhood. Referring to the outline below, we notice that
the eight gentes were reunited into two phratries. Mr. Morgan tells us
that the probable origin of phratries was from the subdivision of an
original gens. Thus a tradition of the Seneca Indians affirms that the
Bear and the Deer gentes were the original gentes of that tribe.<15> In
process of time they split up into eight gentes, which would each
have all the rights and duties of an original gens--but, for certain
purposes, they were still organized into two divisions.

First Phratry, Bear
or Wolf Gens.
Brotherhood. Beaver
Turtle
TRIBE.
Second Phratry, Deer
or Snipe Gens.
Brotherhood. Heron
Hawk

Each of these larger groups is called a phratry. All of the Iroquois
tribes were organized into phratries, and the same was, doubtless, true
of the majority of the tribes of North America. The researches of Mr.
Bandelier have quite conclusively established the fact, that the ancient
Mexican tribe consisted of twenty gentes reunited as four phratries,
which constituted the four quarters of the Pueblo of Mexico.

It is somewhat difficult to understand just what the rights and duties
of a phratry were. This division doe