d. Therefore the tribal council,
which is the aggregate of the clan-councils, consists one fifth
of men and four fifths of women. See Powell, "Wyandot
Government: a Short Study of Tribal Society," in _First Annual
Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, Washington, 1881, pp.
59-69; and also Mr. Carr's interesting essay above cited.]

[Sidenote: Origin and structure of the phratry.]

The number of clans in a tribe naturally bore some proportion to the
populousness of the tribe, varying from three, in the case of the
Delawares, to twenty or more, as in the case of the Ojibwas and Creeks.
There were usually eight or ten, and these were usually grouped into two
or three phratries. The phratry seems to have originated in the
segmentation of the overgrown clan, for in some cases exogamy was
originally practised as between the phratries and afterward the custom
died out while it was retained as between their constituent clans.[78]
The system of naming often indicates this origin of the phratry, though
seldom quite so forcibly as in the case of the Mohegan tribe, which was
thus composed:[79]--

I. WOLF PHRATRY.

_Clans:_ 1. Wolf, 2. Bear, 3. Dog, 4. Opossum.

II. TURTLE PHRATRY.

_Clans:_ 5. Little Turtle, 6. Mud Turtle, 7. Great Turtle, 8. Yellow
Eel.

III. TURKEY PHRATRY.

_Clans:_ 9. Turkey, 10. Crane, 11. Chicken.

Here the senior clan in the phratry tends to keep the original
clan-name, while the junior clans have been guided by a sense of kinship
in choosing their new names. This origin of the phratry is further
indicated by the fact that the phratry does not always occur; sometimes
the clans are organized directly into the tribe. The phratry was not so
much a governmental as a religious and social organization. Its most
important function seems to have been supplementing or reinforcing the
action of the single clan in exacting compensation for murder; and this
point is full of interest because it helps us to understand how among
our Teutonic forefathers the "hundred" (the equivalent of the phratry)
became charged with the duty of prosecuting criminals. The Greek phratry
had a precisely analogous function.[80]

[Footnote 78: H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific
States_, vol. i. p. 109.]

[Footnote 79: Morgan, _Houses and House-Life_, p. 16.]

[Footnote 80: See Freeman, _Comparative Politics_, p. 117;
Stubbs, _Cons