What are generally denominated tribes really are small nationalities, possessing essentially uniform speech and customs and therefore an accompanying sense of likeness and likemindedness, which in turn tended to prevent serious dissensions or internal conflicts. The genuinely political units were smaller units-corresponding rather to what it is customary to loosely call

'bands" or" villages." These were de facto self-governing, and it was they that each owned a particular territory, rather than that the nationality owned the over-all territory. Ordinarily, the nationality, miscalled tribe, was only an aggregate of miniature sovereign states normally friendly to one another. Comparing small things to great ones, an Indian so-called" tribe" was therefore likely to be much in the condition of the pre-1871 Germans who undoubtedly constituted a nationality in view of their common speech, culture, and ideology, but remained divided into 26 sovereign states. The events of history in 1871 converted this German nationality also into a German nation and state-as corresponding events produced about the same time an Italian national state.