Lewis Henry Morgan was a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist who worked as a railroad lawyer.
Background
He was born on November 21, 1818 in Aurora, Cayuga County, New York. According to Herbert Marshall Lloyd, an attorney and editor of Morgan's works, Lewis was descended from James Morgan, brother of Miles, who were Welsh pioneers of Connecticut and Springfield, Massachusetts, respectively.
Various sources record that the three sons of William Morgan of Llandaff, Glamorganshire, took passage for Boston in 1636. From there Miles went to Springfield, James to New London, Connecticut and John Morgan to Virginia.
Education
He attended Cayuga Academy in Aurora and Union College, graduating from the latter in 1840.
Career
In 1844 he went to Rochester, New York, where he lived for the remainder of his life.
Membership in the Grand Order of the Iroquois in Aurora, a secret society for the perpetuation of Iroquois lore, whose membership included a Seneca, led him to an exhaustive study of the Iroquoian tribes.
His League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois (1851) is considered one of the earliest objective ethnographic works.
In the 1856 Morgan concentrated on his law practice.
After attending a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1856, he resolved to pursue his anthropological interests scientifically.
Morgan noticed that the Seneca designate their consanguineous kin in a manner different from that of civilized peoples.
They merge collateral relatives, such as uncles, cousins, and nephews, into the direct line, classifying those relatives as fathers, brothers, and sons.
While the kinship terminologies of civilized peoples recognize a distinction between kin in one's direct line of descent, Seneca kinship terminology does not recognize that distinction.
He suspected that this system was characteristic of Indians.
He believed that if he could find evidence for the system in Asia the Asiatic origin of the American Indians would be proved.
He sent a questionnaire to likely informants.
Finding evidence for the classificatory system in India, he circulated an expanded questionnaire.
In Morgan's monumental Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871) he presented kinship terminologies, showing the widespread occurrence of the classificatory system in both the New and Old Worlds.
This work was the first in the important field of kinship terminology, and it represents his most lasting contribution.
Morgan believed that the classificatory system represented a survival from a time of promiscuity when it was impossible to tell fathers from uncles, brothers from cousins, and sons from nephews.
The "descriptive" system of kinship terminology developed out of the classificatory system.
Also, Morgan's scheme is a simplification of what is actually a complicated matter.
He recognized three stages in the cultural evolution of man: savagery, barbarism, and civilization.
Savagery and barbarism are divided into lower, middle, and upper stages.
These stages are defined in terms of means of subsistance or technological inventions.
Stages in the development of these ideas are associated with stages of savagery, barbarism, and civilization.
He saw the evolution of human culture as essentially a single development from the most primitive stage to civilization.
Further Reading An excellent biography of Morgan is Carl Resek, Lewis Henry Morgan: American Scholar (1960).
See also Bernhard Joseph Stern, Lewis Henry Morgan: Social Evolutionist (1931).
Morgan's work has undergone several reevaluations.
Franz Boas and his students devalued Morgan's Ancient Society in their opposition to the idea of cultural evolution.
A resurgence of interest in the concept of cultural evolution, begun by Leslie White, has tended to restore Morgan's reputation.
Membership in the Grand Order of the Iroquois in Aurora, a secret society for the perpetuation of Iroquois lore, whose membership included a Seneca, led him to an exhaustive study of the Iroquoian tribes.
Morgan's monumental Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family appeared in 1871; in it he not only founded the science of kinship, but also laid the foundation of his theory of social evolution, a theory which was expounded fully in Ancient Society, 1877.
Achievements
Politics
This latter work became a Marxist classic, being considered "of paramount importance for the materialistic analysis of primitive communism, " and has been translated many times into languages of Europe and Asia.
Views
In 1881, Karl Marx started reading Morgan's Ancient Society, thus beginning Morgan's posthumous influence among European thinkers.
Frederick Engels also read his work after Morgan's death. Although Marx never finished his own book based on Morgan's work, Engels continued his analysis.
Morgan's work on the social structure and material culture strongly influenced Engels' sociological theory of dialectical materialism (expressed in his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, 1884). Scholars of the Communist bloc considered Morgan as the preeminent anthropologist. Morgan's monumental Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family appeared in 1871; in it he not only founded the science of kinship, but also laid the foundation of his theory of social evolution, a theory which was expounded fully in Ancient Society, 1877.
Quotations:
Meanwhile, the organization had had activist goals from the beginning. In his initial New Gordius address Morgan had said: ". .. when the last tribe shall slumber in the grass, it is to be feared that the stain of blood will be found on the escutcheon of the American republic. This nation must shield their declining day. .. ."
Membership
He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Morgan served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1879.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
This work was described by the ethnologist and geologist Major J. W. Powell as "the first scientific account of an Indian tribe ever given to the world. "
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
Also interested in what leads to social change, he was a contemporary of the European social theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Connections
In 1851 Morgan summarized his investigation of Iroquois customs in his first book of note, League of the Iroquois, one of the founding works of ethnology. In it he compares systems of kinship.
In that year also he married his cross-cousin, Mary Elizabeth Steele, his companion and partner for the rest of his life. She had intended to become a Presbyterian missionary. On their wedding day he presented to her an ornate copy of his new book. It was dedicated to his collaborator, Ely Parker.