NO. 2 SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, I918 I07 



they will run out of persons, and so no more men will be available 

 for candidates for chiefships ; the law defining the position, the 

 powers, the disabilities, and the authority of the Onondaga chief, 

 De'hadoda"ho' ; and of his co-tribal Royaner chiefs ; individually and 

 in their collective capacity of Federal Fire-Keepers ; the law of the 

 method, the limitations, and the etfect of the action of these Fire- 

 Keepers in confirming, or in referring back for cause for review, 

 to the Council of their peers, any of its acts, whether unanimous or 

 not; the law limiting suffrage for the nomination of chiefs to the 

 mothers in the clans ; and the law recognizing descent of blood and 

 fixing the status of persons in the female line ; the law of the 

 sacredness of the lodge and of private property ; the law of hos- 

 pitality, good neighborhood, and good fellowship ; the law of mur- 

 der, and of rape, and of highway robbery ; the law of the police, or 

 the regulation of the internal aft'airs of the league, symbolized by the 

 Long Wing of the Gull and the Staff which were placed in the hands 

 of the great federal chief, De'hadoda"ho' ; the law of the domestic 

 relations ; the law of hunting and fishing ; the law of planting and the 

 protection of the crops ; the law fixing daytime and the place for 

 holding the sessions of the Federal Council and for the demeanor 

 of the Royaner or federal chiefs at such sessions ; the law defining 

 the position, the powers, and the limitations of the Merit, or the 

 so-called Pine-Tree chiefs ; the law^ for the adjustment of homicide, 

 obviating the former Lex talionis; the law of homicide by a Royaner 

 or federal chief ; and the law of the Union or Federation of Clans 

 and of Lands (or Peoples), with an extensive explanatory preface. 

 A number of other rituals and traditions of the Iroquois were 

 analytically studied, and ^Ir. Hewitt also collected a number of 

 Museum specimens, including a very fine wooden mask of a Disease 

 (lod, painted red; it is a work of art. Some of these are illustrated 

 in this paper. 



FIELD-WORK AMONG THE CHOCTAW AND CATAWBA 

 Dr. John R. Swanton, ethnologist, of the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, was in the field from the middle of April to the end of 

 May, 1918. On leaving Washington he went immediately to Char- 

 enton, Louisiana, where he spent about one week amplifying his 

 grammatical sketch of the Chitimacha language already prepared, 

 and clearing up some doubtful points which had developed during 

 its composition. 



After completing this work he proceeded to Philadelphia. Mis- 

 sissippi, in order to ascertain something regarding the present con- 



