TRIBAL SOCIETY 243 



dians lived in a community house which was long and 

 narrow, with compartments for each family of the clan. 

 The clan dominated the long house because it was pri- 

 marily the clan house, and the clan was the most impor- 

 tant body in local affairs. Since the clans were 

 metronymic, the oldest woman in the long house was the 

 matron who ran the house with supreme authority over 

 all its inmates in domestic affairs. If a mere man of- 

 fended, he was thrust out by the order of the house 

 matron. All adults, men and women, had equal voice in 

 the clan council, but in the tribal council women had no 

 voice. Thus we see that among the Iroquois Indians 

 the position of woman was on an equality with that of 

 man. The rather widespread notion that among primi- 

 tive peoples woman had a degraded position is not borne 

 out by the study of many tribal groups. Among the 

 Iroquois clans there was general recognition of the 

 obligation not to marry within the clan. That is, men of 

 the Bear clan must seek for wives, women of the Turtle 

 clan or of some other clan, they must not marry women 

 of their own clan, the Bear clan. This usage is con- 

 nected with the idea that all persons bearing the same 

 crest, or totem, or clan name, are related by blood and 

 hence marriage between them is tabooed. A clan which 

 follows the custom of requiring its members to marry 

 individuals in another clan is called an exogamous clan. 

 The usage is called exogamy. 



One further unit of organization in the structure of 

 Iroquois society must be mentioned. It is the phratry. 

 The Iroquois tribes had a total of thirty-eight clans, and 

 in four of these tribes the clans were combined into a 

 total of eight phratries. The phratry was a brother- 

 hood of clans, probably originally one clan, which, be- 



