Morgan, Lewis Henry

Morgan, Lewis Henry (1818–81),called “the Father of American Anthropology,” became interested in ethnology through his membership in a New York secret society, the Gordian Knot, later called The Grand Order of the Iroquois, superficially patterned after the Iroquois Confederacy. The casual desire to know more about Indian matters led Morgan into a serious investigation of the Iroquois, which in turn led to research concerning other tribes and eventually world anthropology. His League of the Ho‐dé‐no‐sau‐nee, or Iroquois (1851) is considered the first scientific account of an Indian tribe. His discovery that the kinship system of the Iroquois was similar to that of all American Indians was set forth in Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871), an important work on primitive society in general. This led him to propound the doctrine of a common origin and psychic unity of all races, and a theory of social evolution in Ancient Society; or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress (1877). He wrote many pamphlets and articles on related matters of ethnology and made an important study of the minds of lower animals in The American Beaver and His Works (1868). A small selection from his unpublished diary was issued in 1938, and his Indian Journals, 1859–1862 was published in 1958.