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CHAPTER X 
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION 
IROQUOIAXS AND PACIFIC COAST TPIHES 
111 the last chapter we considered only the most migratory tribes 
of Canada, those that wandered continually from place to place in 
search of a hazardous food supply. We saw that the primitive 
economic conditions under which they lived reflected themselves in 
a primitive social organization, and that the amelioration of these 
conditions among the plains’ tribes through the introduction of the 
horse aiul firearms, combined with an increase of inter-tribal contacts, 
brought about a notable development in social and political life. We 
are jirejiared, therefore, to expect rather more comjilex types of 
society, and more intricate political organizations, among the less 
migratory tribes in southeastern Ontario and along the Pacific coast, 
who dwelt in semi-permanent villages and possessed food resources 
that were fairly stable and assured. 
The history and organization of the Iroquoian tribes are obscure 
until the closing years of the sixteenth century, when they were 
grouped into three confederacies, the Huron arounrl lake Simcoe, the 
Neutral around lake Erie,^ and the League of the Iroquois south of 
the St. Lawrence. The two first were crushed by the third in the 
seventeenth century, and our information about them is very incom- 
plete. However, all three confederacies appear to have been formed 
on the same pattern, so that it is necessary to describe only the 
League of the Iroquois. 
This league contained several tribes- which were comjdetely 
independent in domestic matters, but delegated their authority in 
external affairs to a council that represented them all. Every tribe 
was divifled into four or more clans bearing animal names such as 
bear and turtle; and each clan was an exogamous unit, so that its 
1 Tlic Erie tribe adjacent to the Neutrals remained outside of these eonfederneies, hut shared the 
fate of the Neutrals and Hurons. The small Tobacco tribe, which in 1640 had nine villages in Grey 
and Simcoe counties, also stood aloof, allhongh it perished w'itli the Hurons. 
2 Five in earlier days, the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. .■Viout 1722 the 
Tuscarora moved north from Carolina and entered the league, converting it into the ‘‘Six Nations.’ 
The Huron confederacy contained four tribes: the. number in the Neutral is not known. 
