318 FOSSIL MEN. 



lated, while the men might be derived from different 

 tribes. It was consequently easy for large numbers of 

 families to live together in " long houses/' or in com- 

 munistic edifices, and to have all things in common, 

 for the women, on whom the domestic arrange- 

 ments devolved, were all relations, and had been 

 brought up together from infancy. The union of the 

 women in this way also gave them great power and 

 influence. These arrangements were widely spread, 

 probably almost universal, in primitive America, and 

 constitute the key to the social institutions of the 

 people as well as to their - reckoning of consanguinity. 

 It will be found in detail in Morgan's book already 

 referred to; and Lahontan enters into a curious defence 

 of it in an imaginary dialogue with a Huron chief, who 

 contrasts most unfavourably the selfishness and avarice 

 which arose from the European arrangements, with 

 the morality of his own people. Had the Huron chief 

 been instructed in the Old Testament, he might have 

 strengthened his argument by a reference to the 

 saying there attributed to the first man: "Therefore 

 shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall 

 cleave unto his wife/' which implies that the husband 

 goes with the wife rather than the wife with the 

 husband. If I am not mistaken, this also appears 

 in the negotiation of Eleazar for a wife for Isaac, and 

 in the claim of Laban that Jacob should remain in 

 his tribe as having married his daughters. It is pro- 

 bable that this primitive relation of the sexes was 

 before our Lord's mind when He quoted this passage 



