150 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



CHAPTER II. 



SYSTEM OF RELATIONSHIP OF THE GANOWANIAN FAMILY— Continued. 



Position of the Iroquois— Area of their Occupation— Their Home Country- Epoch of the Establishment of the 

 League— Hodenosaunee, their Proper Name— Other Nations of the same Lineage- the Hurons or Wyandotes— 

 Neutral Nation— Eries—Susquehannocks—Nottoways—L Iroquois— Their System of Eelationship— Seneca Form 

 adopted as typical ; also as typical of the System of the Gauowiinian Family— Lineal Line— First Collateral 

 Line— Diagrams— Second Collateral Line— Diagrams— Indicative Relationships— Marriage Relationships— Third 

 and Fourth Collateral Lines— Diagrams— Methods of Verifying same.— Other Marriage Relationships— Necessary 

 Knowledge of Numerical Degrees— Consanguinei not allowed to Intermarry— Systems of Remaining Iroqnois 

 Nations— Identical with the Seneca— One Deviation from Uniformity— II. Hurons, or Wyandotes— Their System 

 identical with the Seneca— Common Origin of the System— Coeval with their Existence as one People. 



Dalwtan Nations. 



I. Hodenosaunian Nations. 1. Iroquois. 2. Hurons. 



Among the Indian nations found in possession "of the North American continent, 

 north of New Mexico, the Iroquois deservedly hold the highest rank. In energy 

 and intelligence, and the degree of development of their ciA'il institutions they are 

 far in advance of the Northern Indian nations. At the period of their discovery 

 (1609), or within fifty years of that event, they reached their culminating point. 

 It found them in acknowledged supremacy from the Hudson on the east, to the 

 Wabash on the west, and from the St. Lawrence, and lakes Ontario and Erie on 

 the north, to the Tennessee and the Upper Potomac on the south. After the 

 overthrow of the Hurons and Neutral Nation in the peninsula between lakes Huron, 

 Erie, and Ontario, their dominion was extended northward to the Otawa^ River and 

 Lake Nipessing. Within the boundaries named there were areas of several thou- 

 sand square miles which were unbroken solitudes, except as they were occasionally 

 traversed by war parties, or visited for hunting and fishing. Other portions of the 

 same area were occupied by Indian nations recognizing their supremacy. The pre- 

 sent State of New York was the home country of the Iroquois, first to the Genesee, 

 and afterwards to Lake Erie. Their presence, as an intrusive population, so near 

 the centre of the Algonkin area, sufiiciently attests their superiority over the 

 Algonkin nations. It also serves to explain the otherwise eccentric spread of the 

 latter along the Atlantic coast to the southern limits of North Carolina, implying 

 that the Iroquois area was originally Algonkin. The Iroquois were, as there are 

 reasons for believing, an early ofi'shoot, and one of the advanced bands of the 



' Pronounced O-ta'-wa 



