These functions and attributes gave vitality as well as
individuality to the organization and protected the personal rights
of its members. 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.

For a detailed exposition of these characteristics the reader is
referred to Ancient Society, pp. 72-85.

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.

At the epoch of European discovery the American Indian tribes
generally were organized in gentes, with descent in the female line.