ETHNOLOGY. 227 



the Iroquois, this la-w^ is religiously observed. Husband and wife, therefore, were 

 in every case of diflferent tribes. The children were of the tribe of the mother. 

 Here, then, we discover one of the central ideas of their laws of descent: to 

 place the father and mother in dififerent tribes, and to assign the children to the 

 tribe of the mother. Several important results followed, of which the most re- 

 markable was, the' perpetual disinheritance of the male line. As all titles, as 

 well as property, descended in the female line, and were hereditary in the tribe, 

 the son could never succeed to his father's title of sachem, nor inherit even his 

 tomahawk. 



"A tribe of the Iroquois, it thus appears, was not, like the Grecian and Ro- 

 man tribes, a circle or group of families, for two tribes were necessarily repre- 

 sented in every family ; neither, like the Jewish, was it constituted of the lineal 

 descendants of a common father ; on the contrary, it involved the idea of descent 

 from a common mother ; nor has it any resemblance to the Scottish clan, or to 

 the canton of the Switzer. It approaches, however, nearest to the Jewish. 

 Denying geographical boundaries, a tribe of the Iroquois was composed of a part 

 of a multitude of families, as wide spread as the territories of the race, but yet 

 united together by a common tribal bond. The mother, her children, and the 

 descendants of her daughters, in the female line, would, in perpetuity, be linked 

 with the fortunes of her own tribe ; while the father, his brothers and sisters, and 

 the descendants in the female line of his sisters would be united to another tribe, 

 and held by its affinities. No circumstances could work a translation from one 

 tribe to another, or even suspend the nationality of the individual. If a Cayuga 

 woman of the Hawk tribe married a Seneca, her children were of the Hawk tribe 

 and Cayugas, and her descendants in the female line, to the latest posterity, con- 

 tinued to be Cayugas and of the Hawk tribe, although they resided with the 

 Seneeas, and by successive intermarriage with them had lost nearly every particle 

 of Cayuga blood. Neither could intermarriage with one of a foreign nation con- 

 fer the Iroquois nationality upon the wife or children of the marriage, and the 

 same vice, versa. If a Mohawk married a Delaware woman, she and her children 

 were not only Delawares still, but ever continued aliens, unless naturalized as 

 Mohawks, with the forms and ceremonies prescribed in case of adoption. 



" Such property as they possessed, as planting lots, orchards, articles of apparel, 

 «tc., descended in the female line ; that is to say, the wife and children took 

 nothing from the father and husband, as they were of another tribe, except it was 

 given to them by the deceased before his death, in the presence of witnesses. 

 The property went to the brothers and sisters of the deceased, or to the children 

 of the sisters. Ths property of husband and wife was kept distinct during the 

 marriage, and held by separate ownership ; and upon the death of the mother, her 

 property was inherited by her children. Usually, planting lots, orchards, etc., 

 belonged to the female. In case of divorce, each took their separate efifects. 

 The children belonged to the mother, and the authority and control of the father 

 over them ceased from the moment of separation. 



" The next feature of importance in their system of descent was the breaking 

 op of the collateral line, by merging it in the lineal, whereby the number of those 

 who were bound together by the nearer family ties was largely multiplied. In 



