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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COI-LECTIONS 



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 were the formulated 

 wisdom of a body of peers, who owed their ofificial positions to the 

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

 of government was a limited democracy, or, strictlx' speaking, a 

 limited gyneocracy. 



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Fig. 116. — Lacrosse clubs of the Iroquois. A 

 bow with arrows. 



In this manner the following matters were 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 Royaner 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 Royaner chief titles, called E"yohdohg"we'do'k'de"', /. c, 



