Scattered over the territory claimed or held by a tribe were the houses and villages of the tribe or the sub-tribes. Powell states that “every tribe lived in a village, and every village constituted a distinct tribe.” But the village was often spread over a wide region. Speaking of this, Adair says: “A stranger might be in the middle of one of their populous, extensive towns without seeing half a dozen houses in the direct course of his path.”[366] But this was only in the interior of the country of a tribe. Along the frontier the towns would be more compactly arranged, in order that the people might easily be called to defend them. The villages were usually permanent, though they were frequently, some annually, abandoned temporarily at certain seasons for the pursuit of game or for some other good reason, all the people coming together again as the cold weather approached. The Navajos often have a winter home in the lower, sheltered lands of their territory, while in summer they proceed to the higher levels where the winter snows are deep and the summer grass is high. Each Amerind village always had at least one assembly place for which they had their special names, but the general term that is now often used by ethnologists is that of _kiva_,[367] borrowed from the Mokis, because the Moki kiva is a representative of the general assembly hall and council-chamber, or lodge. The kiva, besides being used for social purposes, as a lounging-place and a working-place for the men, is also used for religious functions. Those structures, therefore, which crowned the mounds of the United States and Mexico, and are usually designated as “temples,” were possibly more of the nature of kivas, a temple in our usage being a structure devoted solely to worship, whereas many Amerind buildings of this class were used for various purposes. Often there were several, depending on the size of the tribe. The tribe was organised on the basis of the gens or the clan, and each gens or clan might have its own kiva. They might also belong to some of the secret orders, so that we may enumerate three kinds: the tribal, or chief kiva, the kiva belonging to the gens or clan, and the kiva belonging to the phratry, or secret society. The gens and the clan were groups of blood relations, or, as put by Powell, “an organised body of consanguineal kindred.”[368] The members of a gens often lived in one house or in a group of houses; for example, among the Iroquois in the long-house,[369] with its row of camp-fires, while in some other tribes each family might have its own house or tent, but they would then generally pitch or build it contiguous to the other habitations of their gens. It was this principle, in vogue in almost all the tribes of America, which directed the character of most of the Amerind structures. Everybody in a tribe belonged to a gens or clan, otherwise he could not be in the tribe. The complete organisation of the tribe