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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.
Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1870)
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 Indian Journals were edited by Leslie A. White and published in 1959.
See biographies by B. J. Stern (1931, repr. 1967) and C. Resek (1960); study by T. R. Trautman (1987).
Lewis Henry Morgan Collection at the New York State Museum
The papers of Lewis Henry Morgan