Background
Lewis Henry Morgan was born on November 21, 1818 in Aurora, New York, United States.
(A classic ethnographic study which decribes the history, ...)
A classic ethnographic study which decribes the history, government, social organization, relation, and artistic works of the Indians and pleads for their improved treatment and citizenship
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Lewis Henry Morgan was born on November 21, 1818 in Aurora, New York, United States.
He attended Cayuga Academy in Aurora before going to Union College, from which he was graduated in 1840.
He then returned to Aurora, where he studied law.
From these investments he acquired a modest fortune which he bequeathed to the University of Rochester.
He resided in Rochester until his death. Morgan’s ethnological career began when he joined a young men’s club, the Grand Order of the Iroquois, in Aurora after graduating from college.
He served two terms in the New York State legislature, one in the Assembly and one in the Senate.
He retired from his legal practice in 1862, although he continued to represent some of the Michigan corporations in which he had invested.
Morgan was adopted into the Seneca tribe in 1846, but he did not “live the life of an Indian among them for years, ” as some have assumed.
He returned to further consideration of the Seneca method of designating relatives, which differed radically from Anglo-American usage at many points.
In 1858 he discovered that the same system of terminology existed among the Ojibway Indians who lived at Marquette, Michigan.
It occurred to Morgan that this system might be widespread and that if it could be found in Asia, the Asiatic origin of the American Indians could be demonstrated.
His monumental Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1871, was the result.
He believed that his data definitely proved that the American Indians had migrated to America from Asia.
It is divided into four parts, titled (1) “Growth of Intelligence Through Inventions and Discoveries”; (2) “Growth of the Idea of Government”; (3) “Growth of the Idea of the Family”; (4) “Growth of the Idea of Property. ”
Two theories of evolution are used: an idealistic and a materialistic one.
The second theory rests on zoological, ecological, and technological explanations.
Man is seen as an animal species effecting life-sustaining adjustments to his habitat by technological means; culture evolves as control by these means is improved and extended. Morgan tended to view the evolution of culture as the progress of the human mind, but he did not avoid the word “evolution” as some have claimed.
He divided man’s career, which is “one in source, one in experience, and one in progress, ” into three great stages: savagery, barbarism, and civilization.
(A classic ethnographic study which decribes the history, ...)
National Academy of Sciences (1875)
In 1851 he married his cousin, Mary Elizabeth Steele, by whom he had three children.