REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 77 



and its influence if^ direct and easily traceable. A less direct factor of sim- 

 ilar tendency is found in the marital custom, or rather in the ol)servances 

 preceding and preparing the way for marriage. The girls' puljerty feast 

 is, indeed, one of the most imposing and widely heralded of the tri])al 

 ceremonies; commonly it brings together representatives of all the subtribes 

 or clans; and the proceedings are conducted with extreme formality and 

 dramatic impressiveness. The principal ceremony lasts through a night, 

 following a day of preparation and followed by another day of final feast- 

 ing, accompanied by games, etc. The central episode is the temporary 

 burial of the novitiate; a shallow pit is excavated, and in this a fire is made, 

 as for a fish bake; after the earth is thoroughly warmed the remaining fuel 

 and coals are removed, the girl is placed in the pit and buried to the neck 

 with the earth thrown out in making the excavation; there she spends the 

 night, and in the morning is extricated and brought liefore the assembled 

 tribesmen as a woman; and commonly a match is made with a repre- 

 sentative of some more or less remote branch of the tribe. Through the 

 ceremony community of thought is maintained in most effective fashion, 

 and through the resulting union family sentiments are united to the extent 

 that a common consequence of marriage is the breaking of a new path, 

 often many miles in length, through the luxurious herbage of the annually 

 flooded bottom land. The formal organization of the Cocopa tribe is in 

 large measure esoteric, so that it can be ascertained fully only after pro- 

 longed and intimate acquaintance with the tribesmen, but the preh'minary 

 investigation serves to show that the field of inquiry is one of promise. 



In his comparative study of myths, Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt has found 

 various references to social customs of such sort as to indicate clearly cer- 

 tain archaic institutions of the Iroquoian Indians. Thus the Onondaga 

 legends illumine the legislative and executive customs of the tribe, and, 

 while ostensibly giving traditional warrant for the customs, they really 

 picture a somewhat earlier stage in the development of institutions than 

 that found by the Caucasian pioneers. In this tribe all matters of public 

 policy, especially the selection of chiefs and the discontiiuiance of war, 

 were first considered by the elder women in fairly definite clan council;-. 

 Their conclusions were formally communicated to a male spokesman, 

 usually the elder brother (actual or putative) of the elder woman, and by 

 this spokesman, with others of similar character from the other clans, the 

 opinions of the mothers were brought before the exclusively masculine 

 tribal council for debate and final decision. In this way the women sitting 

 in clan council constituted the primary legislative body, while their broth- 

 ers sitting in tribal council formed a senate or final legislative body whose 

 decisions were binding on the executives of clans and tribes; so that the 

 social organization may be classed as adelphiarchal (like that of the 8eri 

 Indians described in earlier reports) in principle, though largely patri- 

 archal in detail. As among the Seri, too, the maternal features of the 

 legislation were paralleled by recognition of large maternal rights in 

 material possessions — e. g., throughout the Iroquoian tribes the control or 

 nominal ownership of lands was in the women as the collective and per- 

 petual mothers of the tribe. These and other points of general interest 

 are set forth fully in Mr. Hewitt's memoir, which has been assigned to 

 the Twenty-first Annual Keport. 



