Morgan, Lewis Henry (1818–1881)

US anthropologist. He pioneered the study of American Indian kinship systems. In particular, he studied the history, social organization, and culture of the Iroquois, including a detailed study of the Seneca tribe, which adopted him in 1846.

The results of his study of the Seneca were published as the League of the Iroquois 1851. In 1856 he began an extensive study of kinship terminologies, starting with the Iroquois. His researches led him to suggest a possible Asiatic origin for the American Indians. Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity 1871 was an attempt to classify kinship systems. From his interpretation of kin terminologies, he developed a comparative theory of the evolution of forms of the family.

Morgan was born near Aurora, New York. He practised law in Rochester, New York, before taking up anthropology. In 1872 he published the first anthropological work on Australian kinship. In Ancient Society 1877, he traced the development of social institutions from savagery to barbarism and then to civilization, showing the relationship between the development of technology and the level of culture. The German political thinkers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were attracted to Morgan's emphasis on the role of property in the evolution of culture and on the revolutionary character of cultural change. Engels based his Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State 1884 on Morgan's work.