Dr. Brinton says, concerning mother-right among the Indians of North America (412. 48):--
"Her children looked upon her as their parent, but esteemed their father as no relation whatever. An unusually kind and intelligent Kolosch Indian was chided by a missionary for allowing his father to suffer for food. 'Let him go to his own people,' replied the Kolosch, 'they should look after him.' He did not regard a man as in any way related or bound to his paternal parent."
In a certain Polynesian mythological tale, the hero is a young man, "the name of whose father had never been told by his mother," and this has many modern parallels (115. 97). On the Gold Coast of West Africa there is a proverb, "Wise is the son that knows his own father" (127.1. 24), a saying found elsewhere in the world,--indeed, we have it also in English, and Shakespeare presents but another view of it when he tells us: "It is a wise father that knows his own child."
In many myths and folk-and fairy-tales of all peoples the discovery by the child of its parent forms the climax, or at least one of the chief features of the plot; and we have also those stories which tell how parents have been killed unwittingly by their own children, or children have been slain unawares by their parents.
In his interesting study of "Royalty and Divinity" (75), Dr. von Held has pointed out many resemblances between the primitive concepts "King" and "God." Both, it would seem, stand in close connection with "Father." To quote from Dr. von Held: "Fathership (Vaterschaft, _patriarcha_), lordship (Herrentum), and kingship (Konigtum) are, therefore (like _rex_ and [Greek: _Basileus_]), ideas not only linguistically, but, to even a greater degree really, cognate, having altogether very close relationship to the word and idea 'God.' Of necessity they involve the existence and idea of a people, and therefore are related not only to the world of faith, but also to that of intellect and of material things."
The Emperor of China is the "father and mother of the empire," his millions of subjects being his "children"; and the ancient Romans had no nobler title for their emperor than _pater patrice_, the "father of his country," an appellation bestowed in these later days upon the immortal first President of the United States.