Lewis Henry Morgan was an American anthropologist and social philosopher. After graduating from Union College in 1840, he practiced law in Rochester, New York, from 1844 to 1864, but he devoted much of his time to anthropological research, which eventually became his exclusive interest. One of the most celebrated American scholars of his time, Morgan was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1875 and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1879. The results of his investigations into the life of various Indian tribes appeared in his League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee or Iroquois (Rochester, NY, 1851) and his later work, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity (Washington, DC, 1871); these two books were hailed as pioneering achievements of the first order in the study of kinship systems by even the most outspoken of his critics.

Morgan's aim was not merely to...