possessed very similar institutions. In studying the condition of
the Indian tribes in these periods we may recover some portion of
the lost history of our own race. This consideration lends incentive
to the investigation.

The first chapter is a condensation of four in "Ancient Society,"
namely, those on the gens, phratry, tribe, and confederacy of tribes.
As they formed a necessary part of that work, they become equally
necessary to this. A knowledge of these organizations is
indispensable to an understanding of the house life of the aborigines.
These organizations form the basis of American ethnology. Although
the discussion falls short of a complete explanation of their
character and of their prevalence, it will give the reader a general
idea of the organization of society among them.

We are too apt to look upon the condition of savage and of barbarous
tribes as standing on the same plane with respect to advancement.
They should be carefully distinguished as dissimilar conditions of
progress. Moreover, savagery shows stages of culture and of progress,
and the same is true of barbarism. It will greatly facilitate the
study of the facts relating to these two conditions, through which
mankind have passed in their progress to civilization, to
discriminate between ethnical periods, or stages of culture both in
savagery and in barbarism. The progress of mankind from their
primitive condition to civilization has been marked and eventful.
Each great stage of progress is connected, more or less directly,
with some important invention or discovery which materially
influenced human progress, and inaugurated an improved condition.
For these reasons the period of savagery has been divided into three
subperiods, and that of barbarism also into three, the latter of