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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 70 



Certain words occurring in Iroquois texts show that the laws and 

 the rules of procedure among the Five Iroquois Tribes were not the 

 decrees of an autocrat or tyrant, but rather w-ere the formulated 

 wnsdom of a body of peers, wdio owed their official positions to the 

 suffrages of those who owned the titles to them, and that the form 

 of government was a limited democracy, or, strictly speaking, a 

 limited gyneocracy. 



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Fig. 116. — Lacrosse clubs of the Iroquois, 

 bow with arrows. 



A 



In this manner the following matters w'ere studied and analyzed : 

 The law defining the position, the powers, and the disabilities of 

 a chieftainess, or Goyanego'na' ; the law defining the position, the 

 powers, and the disabilities of the tribal chiefs, and of the federal 

 or Royancr chiefs of the league (or Extended Lodge), and the 

 manner of their nomination, installation, and removal for cause ; the 

 law of the extinction of the ohwachira (or uterine family), having 

 federal or Rovaner chief titles, called E"vondongwe'do'k'de"", ■/. c, 



