The Life of Lewis henry morgan

He was born on a farm near Aurora, new york. He graduated from Rochester Union College with an excellent score of 1840, and then set up a law firm in Rochester, where he worked as a lawyer until his death. He is studious and good at speaking. Even when he was young, he became interested in studying Indian society. He organized an Indian Studies Society "The Great Iroquois Society" among the young people in his hometown to enhance feelings with Indians, acquire knowledge about Indians and help them solve their own problems.

Morgan happened to meet Parker, the son of a leader of seneca tribe in Iroquois Tribe Alliance, and was introduced by Parker. He got to know tribal leaders, and was able to directly understand the internal situation of Indian society and their struggle history, and get in touch with the practical problems of Indians.

At that time, the American government was occupying Indian land by various means. Ogden, a real estate company, lured the leaders of Seneca tribe to sign a treaty to sell their land and forced the Indians to move to the barren reservation in the Midwest. The Iroquois fought tenaciously for the right to live. Young people in the "greater Iroquois society" raised money to help Indians go to Washington and ask Congress and the President to abolish the treaty. Morgan worked hard for the Indians and sincerely hoped to make them equal members of the United States. Later, the Indians were finally allowed to buy back the deprived land.

1846 10 At the end of the year, Morgan and his two friends visited the seneca tribe in Iroquois. Because of their insistence, he was accepted as a member of the Eagle clan of seneca tribe and became the adopted son of the clan. Since then, Morgan has often gone to Iroquois settlements. Not only did he investigate the structure, economy and social life of clan, phratry, tribe and tribal alliance of Iroquois in detail, but his membership of Eagle clan enabled him to know their most secret customs and rituals that he never revealed to outsiders. In a few years, he gained a lot of knowledge about Indians and tirelessly wrote one article after another about Indians. On this basis, 185 1 published his first masterpiece, Iroquois Union. This book traces the history of the Iroquois, describes their religion, social organization, family, customs, economy and language in detail, and ends with a discussion on the fate of the Indians. With the theme of the internal organizational structure of the Union, the book comprehensively describes the primitive clan society of the Indians, which is in sharp contrast with some previous works saturated with the reactionary views and prejudices of the colonists. This book made Morgan gain a high reputation. Decades later, people still think that it is the first scientific book about Indians in the world and the best book about Iroquois. Even today, it is still a precious masterpiece of ethnology.

In 185 1 published by the Iroquois Union, Morgan married his cousin. He was 33 years old at this time. In the following five years, he temporarily suspended the study of Indians and devoted all his energy to the lawyer's business, because the study of Indians occupied a lot of his business time. However, he could never forget the Indians and could not restrain his strong desire to continue studying the Indians. Starting from 1857, he began a new exploration.

Morgan has long noticed that the kinship system of Iroquois contradicts their actual family relationship. For example, call your father and his brother and father, call your mother and her sister and mother, and so on. He wants to seek the law and find the correct answer. He investigated the kinship terms of Susie, Gibois and other tribes, and obtained the information of some Indian tribes in the western United States, Canada and America and Eskimos in Alaska through missionaries and travelers, and found that the kinship system of Iroquois was not an isolated phenomenon. He gradually formed the idea that the Iroquois kinship system also exists in other Indian tribes in America. They are of the same origin and may come from Asia. If we find the same kinship system as Indians among the indigenous peoples in Asia, we can confirm this argument. To this end, he conducted a long-term, extensive and in-depth investigation and study.

Since 1859, Morgan has been going to the Indian region every summer for four years. I went to central Kansas and Nebraska two years ago, 186 1 went to northern Minnesota, and 1862 went north to northwest from Kansas along the Missouri River. Morgan's four investigations not only studied the kinship system and social structure of Indians, but also conducted a comprehensive investigation on all aspects of social life of many tribes. This is the factual basis of Morgan's many outstanding discoveries in the future. In various reservations, Morgan witnessed the tragic situation of Indians and was deeply angry at the disasters caused by capitalist colonial policies. Later, he wrote to President abraham lincoln and President Rutherford Birchard Hayes, proposing suggestions to modify Indian policies and improve their situation, but without results. During the trip, he wrote down many investigation notes. 1859 Morgan India Magazine published in the United States (1859— 1862) is the record of these four trips.

Morgan is a loyal scientific researcher. He respects objective facts and is careful. Regarding the information provided by the interviewee, he paid great attention to distinguishing the first-hand information from the hearsay information. He is not satisfied with listening, but pays more attention to direct observation. Most of the Indian customs, ceremonies and games he described are the real situations he saw with his own eyes. After a long-term field investigation, Morgan has a keen observation and accurate judgment. Those who oppose him always try their best to find fault with him, especially his investigation of facts, but it turns out that they are wrong, not Morgan.

In addition to field investigation, Morgan also adopted a unique investigation method. He carefully designed a detailed questionnaire and sent it to all parts of the world through American embassies, missionaries and related people around the world to investigate local nationalities. This large-scale investigation lasted for 10 years, which provided Morgan with a lot of rich information. With the accumulation of information, the problem becomes more and more clear, and unusual discoveries often make Morgan extremely excited. He sometimes even closes the law firm and is immersed in the problems he wants to solve.

Through various forms of investigation, Morgan has mastered nearly 200 kinds of kinship systems in various countries around the world. He is writing at his desk day and night in his library. 1865, he completed his second important book, Kinship and In-laws System of Human Family. Due to the delay of publishing house, the book was postponed to 187 1 year. Morgan's research on kinship system was originally intended to solve the source problem of Indians, but the results of the research made him achieve much greater achievements than originally thought. Before11960s, no one had studied the history of human family. 186 1 year, Bakufen published "On Motherhood", and put forward the viewpoint that human beings developed from hybridization to monogamy. The early primitive era was matriarchal clan system, but he did not express these views clearly and thought that these changes were the result of the development of religious concepts. In his book, Morgan systematically put forward the theory of family evolution with a large number of new materials and established the history of human family development, which is an integral part of human social history. In his view, monogamy in class society is realized through the stage of group marriage and different forms from hybrid state and through the stage of pairing marriage. This completely overturns the previous theory that the family is always the cell of society and monogamous individual families have existed since ancient times. Ethnographers believe that Morgan's research on kinship system is groundbreaking and unprecedented.

In 1960s, Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) was published, which aroused strong repercussions in both natural and social sciences. People try to explain society with the theory of evolution. At first, Morgan was inclined to the view that species remain unchanged. After long-term scientific research, especially in the field of primitive society, he completely accepted Darwin's theory of evolution and further put forward the theory of human social evolution. In order to study social evolution, Morgan studied the activities of beavers. For several summers in succession, in the forests and swamps of Michigan Peninsula, I have observed for a long time how beavers cooperate to build weirs and nests. American Beavers and Their Activities was published in 1868. He compared the beaver's activity of building dams and nesting with the most primitive invention of human beings, studied the difference between human beings and animals, and put forward the view that human beings and animals are different but not completely different.

In the late 1960s, Morgan was elected to the state legislature. He proposed to the parliament to increase the funding for Indian education and submitted various protests against Indians.

1In June, 870, Morgan took his wife and son to Europe for a long trip of 14 months. He tirelessly visited historical sites during the day, took notes at night and wrote articles for a long time. Morgan's European Travel Diary, published by the United States in the 1930s, is one of the partial records. During this trip, Morgan met some famous scholars in Europe at that time. In London, he happily met Darwin, as well as Huxley and famous colleagues, such as Henry Mayne, McLennan and lubbock. The latter two launched a fierce attack on Morgan a few years later. When Morgan arrived in Paris, it happened shortly after the failure of the Paris Commune uprising. He was deeply impressed by the revolutionary slogans and the traces of bullets in the streets. He expressed deep sympathy for the heroic struggle of commune members.

From 187 1 to 1877, Morgan devoted himself to writing the most important book in his life, Ancient Society, and published a series of preparatory papers for this purpose. Ancient Society was published on 1877. This book studies the development process of human beings from barbarism to civilization, and shows from four aspects that human beings have developed from low level to high level and entered the threshold of civilization. The first is invention and discovery, which describes the economic and cultural development of human beings and the continuous progress in the way of seeking means of subsistence. Second, the development of political ideas has made it clear that human social organizations have developed from clan system to national production. The third is the development of the concept of family marriage, which discusses the history of family marriage and further develops his previous family evolution theory. The fourth is the development of the concept of property, which expounds the history of property. Property developed from public to private, and private property led to the emergence of class society.

/kloc-before the middle of the 0/9th century, people knew almost nothing about the social organization of primitive society, and various wrong theories prevailed. Morgan revealed the essence of clan by studying the ancient history of clan organizations of Indian tribes such as Iroquois, Greece and Rome, and other nationalities, and pointed out that clan was the basic cell of primitive society and a social organization in primitive times without class and country. Morgan's clan system theory laid the foundation for the study of primitive social history. Morgan's on-the-spot investigation among Indians and the information of kinship system collected from all ethnic groups in the world enabled him to determine that matrilineal clans take precedence over paternal clans. Engels spoke highly of this, pointing out that Morgan's rediscovery of the stage before the primitive matriarchal clan was the paternal clan of all civilized nations had the same significance for primitive history as Darwin's theory of evolution had for biology and Marx's theory of surplus value for political economy.

Morgan was in poor health in his later years, but in the summer of 1878, accompanied by his nephew, he made a short trip to Colorado and New Mexico, visited some archaeological sites and visited Indian villages. Those relics shining with ancient glory aroused Morgan's great interest and ignited the old and frail scholar's new life. His last book, Housing and Living Life of Native Americans, was published in 188 1. The book systematically describes the development process of housing in India and links this process with their social development.

Long-term field investigation, hard exploration and hard writing have seriously damaged Morgan's nerves. Suffering from illness, he spent the last years in his study and died on18811February 17. At age 63.