5. Seminoles. This tribe is of Creek descent. They are said to be organized into gentes, but the particulars have not been obtained.
Whether or not the Pawnees are organized in gentes has not been ascertained. Rev. Samuel Allis, who had formerly been a missionary among them, expressed to the author his belief that they were, although he had not investigated the matter specially. He named the following gentes of which he believed they were composed:
1. Bear. 2. Beaver. 3. Eagle. 4. Buffalo. 5. Deer. 6. Owl.
I once met a band of Pawnees on the Missouri, but was unable to obtain an interpreter.
The Arickarees, whose village is near that of the Minnitarees, are the nearest congeners of the Pawnees, and the same difficulty occurred with them. These tribes, with the Huecos and some two or three other small tribes residing on the Canadian river, have always lived west of the Missouri, and speak an independent stock language. If the Pawnees are organized in gentes, presumptively the other tribes are the same.
At the epoch of their discovery this great stock of the American aborigines occupied the area from the Rocky Mountains to Hudson's Bay, south of the Siskatchewun, and thence eastward to the Atlantic, including both shores of Lake Superior, except at its head, and both banks of the St. Lawrence below Lake Champlain. Their area extended southward along the Atlantic coast to North Carolina, and down the east bank of the Mississippi in Wisconsin and Illinois to Kentucky. Within the eastern section of this immense region the Iroquois and their affiliated tribes were an intrusive people, their only competitor for supremacy within its boundaries.
Gitchigamian[167] Tribes. 1. Ojibwas. The Ojibwas speak the same dialect, and are organized in gentes, of which the names of twenty-three have been obtained without being certain that they include the whole number. In the Ojibwa dialect the word _totem_, quite as often pronounced _dodaim_, signifies the symbol or device of a gens; thus the figure of a wolf was the totem of the Wolf gens. From this Mr. Schoolcraft used the words "totemic system," to express the gentile organization, which would be perfectly acceptable were it not that we have both in the Latin and the Greek a terminology for every quality and character of the system which is already historical. It may be used, however, with advantage. The Ojibwas have the following gentes: