Snake and Porcupine the fourth.

This unit in their organization has a mythologic basis, and is chiefly
used for religious purposes, in the preparation of medicines, and in
festivals and games.

The eleven gentes, as four phratries, constitute the tribe.

Each gens is a body of consanguineal kindred in the female line, and
each gens is allied to other gentes by consanguineal kinship through
the male line, and by affinity through marriage.

To be a member of the tribe it is necessary to be a member of a gens;
to be a member of a gens it is necessary to belong to some family; and
to belong to a family a person must have been born in the family so
that his kinship is recognized, or he must be adopted into a family
and become a son, brother, or some definite relative; and this
artificial relationship gives him the same standing as actual
relationship in the family, in the gens, in the phratry, and in the
tribe.

Thus a tribe is a body of kindred.

Of the four groups thus described, the gens, the phratry, and the
tribe constitute the series of organic units; the family, or household
as here described, is not a unit of the gens or phratry, as two gentes
are represented in each--the father must belong to one gens, and the
mother and, her children to another.

_GOVERNMENT._

Society is maintained by the establishment of government, for rights
must be recognized and duties performed.

In this tribe there is found a complete differentiation of the
military from the civil government.

_CIVIL GOVERNMENT._

The civil government inheres in a system of councils and chiefs.

In each gens there is a council, composed of four women, called
_Y[u.]-wai-yu-wa-na_. These four women councillors select a chief of
the gens from its male members--that is, from their brothers and sons.
This gentile chief is the head of the gentile council.

The coucil of the tribe is composed of the aggregated gentile
councils. The tribal council, therefore, is composed one-fifth of men
and four-fifths of women.

The sachem of the tribe, or tribal chief, is chosen by the chiefs of
the gentes.

There is sometimes a grand council of the gens, composed of the
councillors of the gens proper and all the heads of households and
leading men--brothers and sons.

There is also sometimes a grand council of the tribe, composed of the
council of the tribe proper and the heads of households of the tribe,
and all the leading men of the tribe.

These