229 



" To render these degrees of relationship intelligible, it must be remembered, 

 that a part only of the kindred of an individual were of the same tribe with him- 

 self. Thus, Sago-ye-wat-ha, or Red Jacket, was of the Turtle tribe of the Sen- 

 eca nation. His brothers and sisters, his mother and her brothers and sisters, and 

 his maternal grandmother and her brothers and sisters, were necessarily of the 

 Turtle tribe ; so also were the children of his sisters, and thus down through the 

 female line. But his father, and his brothers and sisters, and his paternal grand- 

 father, and his brothers and sisters, would be of a different, and might be of several 

 different, tribes ; so, also, his sons, and the children of his sons, would be of a 

 different tribe, unless these sons should marry back into the Turtle tribe, against 

 which there was no prohibition. 



These laws of descent were not confined to a special class, but were of universal 

 application ; and to this day, among the descendants of the ancient Iroquois, they 

 are preserved and recognized unchanged, and are as familiar to the rudest Indian 

 as the alphabet is to us. 



To understand the practical use of this code of descent in its most important 

 relation, namely, the descent of the title of sachem, it wiU be necessary to exam- 

 ine briefly the structure of the League of the Iroquois. At the institution of the 

 league, fifty permanent sachemships or hereditary titles were created and named. 

 They were then distributed among the nations as follows : nine of them were 

 assigned to the Mohawk, nine to the Oneida, fourteen to the Onondaga, ten to the 

 Cayuga, and eight to the Seneca nation. These titles were made hereditary in 

 certain tribes, some of which received two or more, and others none. These 

 sachemships could never pass out of the tribe to which they belonged, except with 

 its extinction. "While the office of sachem was absolutely hereditary in the tribe, 

 it was, at the same time, elective as between certain of the male relatives of the 

 deceased sachem of the same tribe with himself. 



" The title of sachem was surrounded by insuperable barriers against the designs 



