34 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
the relationship was not ideal, but a fact founded upon consanguinity, and 
upon faith in an assured lineage older than their dialects and coeval with 
their unity as one people. In the estimation of an Iroquois every member 
of his gens, in whatever tribe, was as certainly a kinsman as an own brother. 
This cross-relationship between persons of the same gens in the different 
tribes is still preserved and recognized among them in all its original force. 
It explains the tenacity with which the fragments of the old confederacy 
still cling together. If either of the five tribes had seceded from the con- 
federacy it would have severed the bond of kin, although this would have 
been felt but slightly. But had they fallen into collision it would have 
turned the gens of the Wolf against their gentile kindred, Bear against Bear; 
ina word, brother against brother. The history of the Iroquois demon- 
strates the reality as well as persistency of the bond kin, and the fidelity 
with which it was respected. During the long period through which the 
confederacy endured they never fell into anarchy nor ruptured the organi- 
zation. 
The ‘Long House” (Ho-de'-no-sote) was made the symbol of the con- 
federacy,' and they styled themselves the ‘People of the Long House” 
(Ho-de'-no-sau-nee). This was the name, and the only name, with which 
they distinguished themselves. The confederacy produced a gentile society 
more complex than that of a single tribe, but it was still distinctively a gentile 
society. It was, however, a stage of progress in the direction of a nation, 
for nationality is reached under gentile institutions. Coalescence is the 
last stage in this process. The four Athenian tribes coalesced in Attica into 
a nation by the intermingling of the tribes in the same area, and by the 
gradual disappearance of geographical lines between them. The tribal 
names and organizations remained in full vitality as before, but without the 
basis of an independent territory. When political society was instituted on 
the basis of the deme or township, and all the residents of the deme became 
a body politic, irrespective of their gens or tribe, the coalescence became 
complete 
The coalescence of the Latin and Sabine gentes into the Roman people 
1'The Long House was not peculiar to the Iroquois, but used by many other tribes, as the Pow- 
hattan Indians of Virginia, the Nyacks of Long Island, and other tribes. 
