of extending his ethnological investigations relative to tht Indians 

 of this continent to the other parts of the globe. 



As the results of his investigations are to be published in the 

 Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, I have been requested 

 by the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in this city, to 

 commend the matter to your favor. I will consequently thank you 

 to do whatever you conveniently can towards furnishing the infor- 

 mation desired. 



I am, gentlemen, 



Your obedient servant, 



LEWIS CASS. 



Department op State, 



Washington, bth January, 1860. 



Rochester, Monroe Co., N. Y., 



October 1st, 1<859. 



Dear Sir : I take the liberty to send you, herewith enclosed, a 

 printed schedule, with the request that you will take the trouble 

 to fill it up according to its design, with the names of the various 

 degrees of consanguinity and relationship which are in use among 

 the people or tribe with or near whom you reside. In order that 

 you may feel sufficient interest in the matter to induce you to com- 

 ply with this request from a stranger, I would ask your attention 

 to the object to which these inquiries are directed, to some of the 

 results already reached, and to others still more interesting and 

 important toward which they are manifestly tending. 



Several years ago the peculiar system of relationship of the 

 Iroquois, one of the principal American Indian families, .attracted 

 my attention. I found that, while it was very special and com- 

 plex, it rested upon definite ideas, which stood to each other in 

 such intelligent and fixed relations as to create a system. It is 

 entirely unlike our own, both in its method of classification and in 

 the ends it proposes to itself; as also unlike those of the remain- 

 ing Indo-European nations, all of whom have substantially one 

 and the same system. The fundamental idea of the Iroquois sys- 

 tem, upon which it is built up with great logical rigor is, that it 

 never suffers the bond of consanguinity to loose itself in the ever- 



