Morgan, Lewis Henry

Morgan, Lewis Henry, 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 patterns. His Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1870) presents this principle. Ancient Society (1877, repr. 1959), which classified the cultures of the world into progressive stages—savagery, barbarism, and civilization—attracted the attention of Marx and Engels, who interpreted its evolutionary doctrine as support for their materialistic theory of history. Morgan's work was accused of being overly speculative, and provoked a reaction against theories of cultural evolution within American anthropology that lasted well into 20th cent. Ethnographic and archaeological research has invalidated Morgan's specific evolutionary models, but his tireless research and his wide-ranging theoretical interests are credited with serving to advance the new field of anthropology. Morgan's Indian Journals were edited by Leslie A. White and published in 1959.

Bibliography

See biographies by B. J. Stern (1931, repr. 1967) and C. Resek (1960); study by T. R. Trautman (1987).

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Morgan, Lewis Henry

(born Nov. 21, 1818, near Aurora, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 17, 1881, Rochester, N.Y.) U.S. ethnologist and a principal founder of scientific anthropology. Morgan developed a deep interest in the American Indians and in 1846 was eventually adopted by the Seneca. His Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871) was a world survey of kinship systems that sought to establish connections between cultures and particularly to establish the Asiatic origin of the American Indians. This work led to a comprehensive theory of sociocultural evolution, set forth in Ancient Society (1877). He claimed that advances in social organization arose primarily from changes in food production and that society had progressed from a hunting-and-gathering stage (“savagery”) to one of settled agriculture (“barbarism”) to modern “civilization.” This theory, with the related theory that society originated in a state of sexual promiscuity and advanced through various forms of family life before culminating in monogamy, is now obsolete. For many years, however, Morgan was the dean of American anthropology, and his pioneering ideas influenced the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, among others.

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Morgan, Lewis Henry (1818–81) cultural anthropologist, legislator; born near Aurora, N.Y. He graduated from Union College in 1840, became a railroad lawyer, and served in the New York state assembly (1861) and senate (1868), all the while conducting investigations of native North American Indians, beginning with the customs and institutions of the Iroquois. He published his early results in The League of the Iroquois (1851); he had become so popular among one clan that he was adopted into it in 1847. His Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1869) formed the basis of the modern anthropological study of kinship. Karl Marx hailed his Ancient Society (1877), a study of the origins and evolution of government and property, as confirming the Marxist materialist theory of history. He is also remembered for his authoritative work, The American Beaver and His Works (1868), in which he argued that animals possess powers of rational thought. A temperance advocate and a strong Presbyterian, he was said to fear that his ethnological work was subversive of religion.