41 



even from those, to whom from their language 

 they have some relation. 



They claim the same separation in the mis- 

 sions ; which seldom prosper, when any attempt 

 is made, to associate them with other mix- 

 ed communities, that is with villages, where 

 every hut is inhabited by a family belong- 

 ing to another nation, and speaking another 

 idiom. The chiefs of the independant Ca- 

 ribbees are hereditary in the male line only, 

 the children of sisters being excluded from the 

 succession. This is founded on a system of mis- 

 trust, which denotes no great purity of man- 

 ners ; it is the custom of India, of the Ashantees 

 (in Africa), and among several tribes* of the 



* Among the Hurons (Wiandots) and the Natchez, the 

 succession to the magistracy is continued by the women : 

 it is not the son who succeeds, but the son of the sister, or of 

 the nearest relation in the female line. This mode of suc- 

 cession is said to be the most certain, because the supreme 

 power remains attached to the blood of the last chief ; it is a 

 practice that ensures legitimacy. (Filson, p. 183.) I have 

 found ancient traces of this strange mode of succession, so 

 common in Africa and in the East Indies, in the dynasty of 

 the kings of the West India islands. *' In testamentis autem 

 quam fatue sese habeant intelligamus : ex sorore prima pri- 

 mogeniture si insit, relinquunt regnorum haeredem ; sin minus, 

 ex altera, vel tertia, si ex secunda proles desit : quia a suo 

 sanguine creatam sobolem earn certum est. Filios autem 

 uxorum suarum pro non legitimis habent. Uxores ducunt 

 quotquot placet. Ex uxoribus chariores cum regulo sepeliri 

 patiuntur." Petr, Mart, Ocean,, Dec. 3, lib. ix, p. 63, B. 



