JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 51 
under no united leadership ; each clan, under its own elected chief, 
strove for the mastery over the others in hopes of winning ultimate 
supremacy. 
Adventurous hunters and builders of canoes joined their ranks, 
The flint arrow makers had followed the queen. Physically both 
parties of the divided Neutre Nations were the finest body of men 
on the continent. 
This faction having thrown to the winds the most sacred trad- 
itions of their forefathers now gave free indulgence to their worst 
passions, As through the act of their queen failure and loss of pres- 
tige had fallen upon them, the sex which had hitherto been so 
venerated and chivalrously held in their estimation and conduct, 
should thereafter be degraded and made to suffer. As a nation 
they had lost standing and rule among nations through the weak- 
ness of a woman; the law regarding restitution governing their 
national procedure should now, proportionately, be put into effect 
regarding women. In the tribal communal respect and veneration 
was paid to women among all North American Indians, in respect to 
prisoners who were tortured to death women were not to be sub- 
jected to the agonies of fire. This law was now broken. The 
revolted Neutrals not only caused female captives taken in their 
raids but also of their own women whom they knew or suspected 
still sympathized with Gegosasa to undergo the atrocious torture of 
fire, but delighted with fiendish revelry in their suffering death cries. 
The richness and fertility of their soll—the abundance of veg- 
etables, fruit and game to be found without almost any exertion—left 
the duty of providing entirely to the women. Now that the men 
felt free from any tribal or national obligations to lead respectable 
lives, they gave themselves up to the enjoyment of every animal 
instinct. Luxury and self-indulgence has ruined more than one nation 
which, unchecked by moral law, rendered no homage to, or destroyed 
the spiritual nature of woman. 
Decadence rapidly followed this new mode of life. 
A generation of sloth, gluttony and licentiousness of the most 
depraved character,with now and again as a bloody pastime, rousing 
themselves to perpetrate cowardly and ferocious raids against weaker 
tribes of the Algonkin race living to the west of them, brought on 
swift retribution. 
