third, the tribe, an assemblage of gentes, usually organized in
phratries, all the members of which spoke the same dialect; and
fourth, a confederacy of tribes, the members of which respectively
spoke dialects of the same stock language. It resulted in a gentile
society (societas) as distinguished from a political society or
state (civitas). The difference between the two is wide and
fundamental. There was neither a political society, nor a citizen,
nor a state, nor any civilization in America when it was discovered.
One entire ethnical period intervened between the highest American
Indian tribes and the beginning of civilization, as that term is
properly understood.

The gens, though a very ancient social organization founded upon kin,
does not include all the descendants of a common ancestor. It was
for the reason that when the gens came in marriage between single
pairs was unknown, and descent through males could not be traced
with certainty. Kindred were linked together chiefly through the
bond of their maternity In the ancient gens descent was limited to
the female line. It embraced all such persons as traced their
descent from a supposed common female ancestor, through females, the
evidence of the fact being the possession of a common gentile name.
It would include this ancestor and her children, the children of her
daughters, and the children of her female descendants, through
females, in perpetuity, while the children of her sons and the
children of her male descendants, through males, would belong to
other gentes, namely, those of their respective mothers. Such was
the gens in its archaic form, when the paternity of children was not
certainly ascertainable, and when their maternity afforded the only
certain criterion of descents.