532 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



wachira which have a principal chief and a vice-chief, respectively; 

 and so these two tribes are represented in council, when all are pres- 

 ent, by nine chiefs and nine vice-chiefs or messengers, the latter 

 of course have no voice in the deliberations except in case the chief 

 be, for some reason, unable to attend a council when he may deputize 

 for such council his messenger to act for him. In the nature of 

 things, every ohwachira of the Iroquoian tribes formerly possessed 

 and worshiped, in addition to those owned by individuals, one or 

 more tutelary deities or genii called ochinagenda, in modern usage, 

 but formerly named oiaron (or oyaron) with a larger meaning, 

 which customarily were in the secret custodianship or trusteeship of 

 certain wise women who were usually named physicians, but who 

 were in fact also so-called witches. 



The ohwachira or uterine family was the primary unit of the social 

 organization of all Iroquoian tribes. It must not be overlooked that 

 the members of an ohwachira could not marry one another, nor could 

 the members of a clan, composed of one, two, or more, such ohwa- 

 chira, which by thus uniting to form a single organic unit become 

 sisters, or .sister ohwachira, and the members of the unit so formed 

 become exogamous with relation to one another. The union of two 

 or more organic units naturally produced an organization of a higher 

 order and an enlargement and a multiplication of rights, obligations 

 and privileges. 



It will be needful to keep in mind the fact that the women of an 

 ohwachira who elected to marry had to do so only with men from 

 ohwachira which had a cousin relationship to their own, for they 

 must not commit incest by marrying men from their own ohwachira 

 or men from a sister ohwachira. Thus, every ohwachira which had 

 women who were married was interrelated with many cousin streams 

 of blood, and it is these outside ties which bound together the various 

 blood streams. Iroquoian society is then held together by the bonds of 

 affinity, while the tracing of the descent of blood through the women 

 preserved its purity and insured its continuity. 



When an ohwachira became an integral part of a clan — a higher 

 unit — it necessarily delegated some of its self-government to this 

 higher unit in such wise as to make this union of coordinate units 

 more cohesive and interdependent. Thus the institution of every 

 higher organic unit produced new privileges, duties, and rights, and 

 the individual came under a more complex control and his welfare 

 become more secure through tribunals exercising a greater number 

 of delegated powers in wider jurisdiction. 



Status in an Iroquoian tribe was secured only by being born into 

 it, by virtue of birth in one of its uterine families or by adoption 

 into it. But an alien could be and was adopted into citizenship in 

 the clan and tribe only by being adopted into an ohwachira (uterine 



