MORGAN. | FACT OF COMMUNION AMONG IROQUOIS. 65 
they lived from common stores. Each house had several fires, usually one 
for each four apartments, which was placed in the middle of the passage- 
way and without a chimney. Every household was organized under a 
matron who supervised its domestic economy. After the single daily meal 
was cooked at the several fires the matron was summoned, and it was her 
duty to divide the food, from the kettle, to the several families according to 
their respective needs. What remained was placed in the custody of another 
person until it was required by the matron. ‘The Iroquois lived in houses 
of this description as late as A. D. 1700, and in occasional instances a hun- 
dred years later. An elderly Seneca woman' informed the writer, thirty 
years ago, that when she was a girl she lived in one of these joint tenement 
houses (called by them long-houses), which contained eight families and 
two fires, and that her mother and her grandmother, in their day, had acted 
as matrons over one of these large households. This mere glimpse at the 
ancient Iroquois plan of life, now entirely passed away, and of which 
remembrance is nearly lost, is highly suggestive. It shows that their 
domestic economy was not without method, and it displays the care and 
management of woman, low down in barbarism, for husbanding their 
resources and for improving their condition A knowledge of these houses, 
and how to build them, is not even yet lost among the Senecas. Some 
years ago Mr. William Parker, a Seneca chief, constructed for the writer 
a model of one of these long-houses, showing in detail its external and 
internal mechanism. 
The late Rev. Ashur Wright, D. D., for many years a missionary among 
the Senecas, and familiar with their language and customs, wrote to the 
author in 1873 on the subject of these households, as follows: ‘As to their 
family system, when occupying the old long-houses, it is probable that some 
one clan predominated, the women taking in husbands, however, from the 
other clans; and sometimes, for a novelty, some of their sons bringing in 
their young wives until they felt brave enough to leave their mothers. 
Usually, the female portion ruled the house, and were doubtless clannish 
enough about it. The stores were in common; but woe to the luckless 
husband or lover who was too shiftless to do his share of the providing. 
1The late Mrs. William Parker, of Tonawanda. 
