TRIBE (Lat. tribua, a division, originally perhaps a third part, in reference to the three cantons whose coalescence formed the germ of Rome, q.v.), an aggregate of stocks. —a stock being an aggregate of persons considered to be kindred—or an aggregate of families, forming a community usually under the government of a chief. The chief is possessed of despotic power over the members of the tribe. It is commonly said that he has "patriarchal" power—such power, that is, as fathers in early times exercised over their children. The tribe has been the earliest form of the community among all the races of men. • In a very large proportion of existing tribes the tribe is an aggregate of several stocks or distinct bodies of kindred. The persons of whom the tribe consists are included in stocks which are, or are accounted, distinct from each other. This organization is sus tained by t so tribal customs—(1) persons of the same stock are forbidden to intermarry; and (2) kinship is reckoned through females only, so that children are accounted of the stock of their mother. Persons of the same stock, too, owe duties to each other, and are to some extent sharers in each other's liabilities. Thus, an injury done by a man is an injury done by his stock, which may be avenged upon any member of it; an injury done to a man is an injury done to his stock, for which every member of it is bound to seek vengeance. In consequence of the customs above mentioned, a husband must be of a different stock from his wife or wives; he must therefore be accounted of a different. stock from his children; and when he has wives of different stocks, their respective children are accounted of different stocks. More than one stock is thus represented in every household; and since a man owes duties to his stock—the duties of acknowledged blood-relationship—while to those of his family who are not of his stock, nothing but the accident of birth (only accident) unites him, the family among these tribes has neces sarily little cohesion. The tribal customs which have been referred to ignore the family altogether; they are 'founded upon the idea of stock. They are the customs of people.
with whom the conception of stock was a powerful social influence, when that of the family was impotent—of people who must have been divided into stocks at a time when, possibly, they had no family system. It is inconceivable that such customs should have arisen in the face of a family system anything like that which prevails among civilized peoples, or even of such an approach to the family as many of those tribes now possess. And it follows that the family has grown, among these tribes. It is obviously now grow ing among them. Now, in many cases, the only obstacle to its rapid development is the firm hold which the idea of stock has taken of the tribal life. Ou the other hand, the prevalence of customs founded upon the idea of stock proves a prior existence of stocks, or bodies of kindred. The separation into stocks must be older than the customs, at least as customs associated with the idea of stock. And keeping this in view, and con• sidering how difficult it is to conceive of several stocks herding together at the early time when every stranger was an enemy, unless there was some natural connection between them—such a connection as. the marriage-law and the system of kinship, when they arose, would establish—it may safely be concluded that each stock was originally a sepa rate tribe. Into the tribe conceived of as a single stock the marriage-law and system of kinship would gradually bring a variety of neighboring stocks; and thus the tribe would become what it is—an aggregate of stocks. The progress of such tribes appears to have been from the tribe conceived of as a group of kindred to the tribe consisting of several stocks or groups of kindred; and now, though the family is not yet fully developed among them, they seem to be tending to become aggregates of families. The tribes of Australasia are the most perfect examples of the organization above described; but it also exists (or it exist'd) among the tribes of North, and most of those of South America, among a majority of the known tribes of Africa, and a large proportion of the ruder tribes of Asia.