LEWIS HENRY MORGAN, LL.D. 431 



of the Society," but is referred to as "an Essay on the Constitutional ■ 

 Government of the Six Nations of Indians." The substance of it is 

 probably included in the series of fourteen " Letters on the Iroquois " 

 addressed to Albert Gallatin, LL.D., the president of the society, 

 and published in the several numbers of the " American Review," * 

 from February to December, 1847, under the nom de plume of Sken- 

 andoah. 



These letters were followed by several instructive reports to the 

 Regents of the University of the State of New York, upon Indian 

 remains in that State, and on the " Fabrics of the Iroquois," all bear- 

 ing evidence of his great interest and activity in the study of Indian 

 life and institutions. These several papers were afterwards rewritten 

 and enlarged, and published in book form in 1851, under the well- 

 known title of " League of the Iroquois." This work at once at- 

 tracted general attention, and secured for its author a well-earned 

 position in literature. It contains a careful analysis of the social 

 organization and government of the powerful and famous confederacy, 

 with many details relating to Indian life. 



In 18-17 Mr. Morgan again attended a council of the Iroquois, 

 and on Oct. 31, 1847, he was regularly adopted into the Hawk gens 

 of the Senecas, and given the name of Ta-yd-da-icah-hugh (one lying 

 acrossf), as the son of Jemmy Johnson, the interpreter, and gi-andson 

 of the famous Red Jacket. As a member of the Seneca tribe he was 

 better able than before to continue his studies of the social institutions 

 of the remnants of the tribes forming the ancient confederacy. Ten 

 years after this, at the Montreal meeting of the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science, he read a paper on " The Laws of 

 Descent of the Iroquois," which furnished the basis of one of the 

 most important generalizations in relation to American ethnology. 

 In 1858, in an encampment of Ojibwa Indians at Marquette, he found 

 that their system of kinship was substantially the same as that of the 

 Iroquois. The conclusions which he drew from this discovery are 

 clearly given in the paper which he read before the Academy at its 

 meeting on Feb. 11, 1868, entitled "A Conjectural Solution of the 

 Origin of the Classificatory System of Relationship." % This paper is 



* The American Review : a Whig Journal of Politics, Literature, Art, and 

 Science, vols. v. and vi. New York, 1847. 



t The meaning of this name is that he was to put himself across the path- 

 way of communication, and preserve friendship between the two races. 



X Tills paper is printed in full in the Proceedings of the Academy, Vol. VII. 

 pp. 43G-477. 



