Research topic: Lewis Henry Morgan

Lewis Henry Morgan 1818-81, American anthropologist, b. Aurora, N.Y., grad. Union College, Schenectady, 1840. Practicing as a lawyer, he became interested in the Native Americans of his locality, and in 1847 he was made an adopted member of the Seneca tribe. His League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee or Iroquois (1851, repr. 1954) is unexcelled among early descriptive reports. Morgan was interested in social organization, and developed a theory correlating kinship terminologies with forms of marriage and rules of descent, holding that matriarchal patterns had originally prevailed over all other kinship... Read more