544 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 11)18. 



clan of which either is a member. The same is true of sonship and 

 daughtership. 



This ascription of sex to groups — organic groups — of persons 

 measurably explains the potent motive which underlies the ap- 

 parently artificial rule of exogamy that controls certain groups of 

 persons as against other like groups of persons. 



By the prophet-statesmen of the early Iroquois and their cotribes- 

 men the League of the Five Tribes as an institution — as an organic 

 unity — was conceived at times as a bisexed being or person; i. e., as 

 an organic unity formed by the union of two persons of opposite 

 sexes. To those early prophet-statesmen life was omnipresent — 

 obtrusively so, for, unconsciously, their ancestors had imputed it to 

 all bodies and objects and processes of the complex world of human 

 experience. But it must be noted that the life so imputed was 

 human life, no other. And so as an institution the league was con- 

 ceived as an animate being, endowed with definite biotic properties 

 and functions, as the male and female sexes, fatherhood and mother- 

 hood, mind, eyesight, dream power, human blood, and the possession 

 of guardian spirits for its two highest organic members. 



In the ritual of the installation of chiefs in all the many addresses 

 and chants and songs, each of the two constituent organic members, 

 the father and the mother sides, is addressed as a single individual. 

 In the famous so-called six songs of the mourning and installation 

 council, which are so dramatically sung by a chief who represents 

 the dead chief or chiefs to be resurrected, each of the two constituent 

 persons is addressed, but in the fifth song, the totality, the league 

 as a unity is addressed as a person, to whom is sung this farewell 

 song of the departing chief. This is done evidently to secure the 

 departure of the ghost in peace. 



Again, the lamenting cry of " hai'i," hai'i," which is so tediously 

 recurrent in all the chants and songs, but one, of the mourning and 

 installation council, is employed, it is said, in order to console the 

 spirits or spirit of the dead. The reason for using this particular 

 cry is that it is reputed to be that made by spirits when moving from 

 place to place. But it was believed that should this cry be omitted 

 in the rituals the displeasure of the departed spirits would be mani- 

 fested in an epidemic of diseases affecting the spine and the head. 



The duties and obligations of the clan or sisterhood of clans of a 

 father to the clan of his children were by the founders of the league 

 made a part of the functions of the male member, or sisterhood of 

 tribes, in the organic structure of the league. In like manner the 

 duties and obligations of the clan or sisterhood of clans of a mother 

 to the clan or sisterhood of clans of the father of ^the children were 

 made a part of the functions of the female member, or sisterhood 

 of tribes, in the organic structure of the league. Thus the two con- 



