marriage, the Wolf, Bear, Beaver and Turtle Tribes, were brothers to each other, and cousins to the remaining four. They were not allowed to intermarry. The opposite four tribes were also brothers to each other, and cousins to the first four; and were also prohibited from intermarrying. Either of the first four tribes, however, could intermarry with either of the last four; thus Hawk could intermarry with Bear or Beaver, Heron with Turtle; but not Beaver and Turtle, nor Deer and Deer. Whoever violated these laws of marriage incurred the deepest detestation and disgrace. In process of time, however, the rigor of the system was relaxed, until finally, the prohibition was confined to the tribe of the individual, which among the residue of the Iroquois, is still religiously observed. They can now marry into tribe but their own. Under the original as well as modern regulation, the husband and wife were of different tribes. The children always followed the tribe of the mother.

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As the whole Iroquois system rested upon the tribes as an organic division of the people, it was very natural that the separate rights of each should be jealously guarded. Not the least remarkable among their institutions, of which most appear to have been original with the race, was that which confined the transmission of all titles, rights and property in the female line to the exclusion of the male. It is strangely unlike the canons of descent adopted by civilized nations, but it secured several important objects. If the Deer Tribe of the Cayugas, for example, received a sachemship or warchiefship at the original distribution of these offices, the descent of such title being limited to the female line, it could never pass out of the tribe. It thus became instrumental in giving the tribe individuality. A still more marked result, and perhaps leading object, of this enactment was, the perpetual disinheritance of the son. Being of the tribe of his mother, it formed an impassable barrier against him; and he could neither succeed his father as a sachem, nor inherit from him even his medal, or his tomahawk. The inheritance, for the protection of tribal rights, was thus directed from the descendants of the sachem, to his brothers, his sisters, children, or some individual of the tribe at large under certain circumstances; each and all of whom were in his tribe, while his children being in another's tribe, as before re

marked, were placed out of the line of succession.

By the operation of this principle, also, the certainty of descent in the tribe, of their principal chiefs, was secured by a rule infallible; for the child must be the son of its mother, although not necessarily of its mother's husband. If the purity of blood be of any moment, the lawgivers of the Iroquois established the only certain rule the case admits of, whereby the assurance might be enjoyed that the ruling sachem was of the same family or tribe with the first taker of the title.

The Iroquois mode of computing degrees of consanguinity was unlike that of the civil or canon law; but was yet a clear and definite system. No distinction was made between the lineal and collateral line, either in the ascending or descending series. The maternal grandmother and her sisters were equally grandmothers; the mother and her sisters were equally mothers; the children of a mother's sisters were brothers and sisters; the children of a sister would be nephews and nieces; and the grandchildren of a sister would be his grandchildren-that is to say, the grandchil dren of the propositus, or individual from whom the degree of relationship is reckoned. These were the chief relatives within the tribe, though not fully extended to number. Out of the tribe, the paternal grandfather and his brothers were equally grandfathers; the father and his brothers equally fathers; the father's sisters were aunts, while, in the tribe, the mother's brothers were uncles; the father's sister's children would be cousins as in the civil law; the children of these cousins would be nephews and nieces, and the children of these nephews and nieces would be his grandchildren, or the grandchildren of the propositus. Again: the children of a brother would be his children, and the grandchildren of a brother would be his grandchildren; also, the children of a father's brothers, are his brothers and sisters, instead of cousins, as under the civil law; and lastly, their children are his grandchildren, or the grandchildren of the propositus.

It was the leading object of the Iroquois law of descent, to merge the collateral in the lineal line, as sufficiently appears in the above outline. By the civil law, every departure from the common ancestor in the descending series, removed the

collateral from the lineal; while, by the law under consideration, the two lines were finally brought into one.* Under the civil law mode of computation, the degrees of relationship become too remote to be traced among collaterals; while, by the mode of the Iroquois, none of the collaterals were lost by remoteness of degree. The number of those linked together by the nearer family ties, was largely multiplied by preventing, in this manner, the subdivision of a family into collateral branches.

The succession of the rulers of the Confederacy is one of the most intricate subjects to be met with in the political system of the Hodénosaunee. It has been so difficult to procure a satisfactory exposition of the enactments by which the mode of succession was regulated, that the sachemships have sometimes been considered elective; at others, as hereditary. Many of the obstacles which beset the inquiry are removed by the single fact, that the titles of sachem and war-chief are absolutely hereditary in the tribe to which they were originally assigned; and can never pass out of it, but with its extinction. How far these titles were hereditary in that part of the family of the sachem or war-chief, who were of the same tribe with himself, becomes the true question to consider. The sachem's brothers, and the sons of his sisters, are of his tribe, and consequently in the line of succession. Between a brother and a nephew of the deceased, there was no law which established a preference; neither between several brothers, on the one hand, and several sons of a sister, on the other, was there any law of primogeniture; nor, finally, was there any positive law, that the choice should be confined to the brothers of the deceased ruler, or the descendants of his sister in the female line, until all these should fail, before a selection could be made from the tribe at large. Hence, it appears, so far as positive enactments were

concerned, that the offices of sachem and war-chief, as between the eight tribes, were hereditary in the particular tribe in which they ran; while they were elective, as between the male members of the tribe itself.

In the absence of laws, designating with certainty the individual upon whom the inheritance should fall, custom would come in and assume the force of law, in directing the manner of choice, from among a number equally eligible. Upon the decease of a sachem, a tribal council assembled to determine upon his successor. The choice usually fell upon a son of one of the deceased ruler's sisters, or upon one of his brothers-in the absence of physical and moral objections; and this preference of one of his near relatives would be suggested by feelings of respect for his memory. Infancy was no obstacle it uniting only the necessity of setting over him a guardian, to discharge the duties of a sachem until he reached a suitable age. It sometimes occurred that all the relatives of the deceased were set aside, and a selection was made from the tribe generally; but it seldom thus happened, unless from the great unfitness of the near relatives of the deceased.

When the individual was finally determined, the nation summoned a council, in the name of the deceased, of all the sachems of the league; and the new sachem was raised up by such council, and invested with his office.

In connection with the power of the tribes to designate the sachems and warchiefs, should be noticed the equal power of deposition. If, by misconduct, a sachem lost the confidence and respect of his tribe, and became unworthy of authority, a tribal council at once deposed him; and, having selected a successor, summoned a council of the Confederacy to perform the ceremony of his investiture.

Still further to illustrate the characteristics of the tribes of the Iroquois, some reference to their mode of bestowing

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names would not be inapt.* Soon after the birth of an infant, the near relatives of the same tribe selected a name. the first subsequent council of the nation, the birth and name were publicly announced, together with the name and tribe of the father, and the name and tribe of the mother. In each nation the proper names were so strongly marked by a tribal peculiarity, that the tribe of the individual could usually be determined from the name alone. Making, as they did, a part of their language, they were, consequently, all significant. When an individual was raised up as a sachem, his original name was laid aside, and that of the sachemship itself assumed. The war-chief followed the same rule. In like manner, at the raising up of a chief, the council of the nation which performs the ceremony, took away the former name of the incipient chief and assigned him a new one, perhaps, like Napoleon's titles, commemorative of the event which led to its bestowment. Thus, when the celebrated Red-Jacket was elevated by election to the dignity of a chief, his original name, O-te-ti-an-i (Always Ready) was taken from him, and in its place was bestowed Sa-go-ye-wat-ha, (Keeper Awake,) in allusion to the powers of his eloquence.

It now remains to define a tribe of the Hodénosaunee. From the preceding considerations it sufficiently appears, that it was not, like the Grecian and Roman, a circle or group of families; for two tribes were, necessarily, represented in every family neither, like the Jewish, was it constituted of the lineal descendants of a common father; on the contrary, it distinctly involved the idea of descent from a common mother: nor has it any resemblance to the Scottish clan, or the Canton of the Switzer. In the formation of an Iroquois tribe, a portion was taken from many households, and bound together by a tribal bond. The bond consisted in the ties of consanguinity; for all the members of the tribe, thus composed, were connected by relationships, which, under their law of descents, were easily traceable. To the tribe attached the incident of descent in the female line, the prohibition of intermarriage, the capacity of holding and exercising political rights, and the ability

to contract and sustain relationships with the other tribes.

The wife, her children, and her descendants in the female line, would, in perpetuity, be linked with the destinies of her own tribe and kindred; while the husband, his brothers and sisters, and the descendants of the latter, in the female line, would, in like manner, be united to another tribe, and held by its affinities. Herein was a bond of union between the several tribes of the same nation, corresponding, in some degree, with the crossrelationship founded upon consanguinity, which bound together the tribes of the same emblem in the different nations.

Of the comparative value of these institutions, when contrasted with those of civilized countries, and of their capability of elevating the race, it is not necessary here to inquire. It was the boast of the Iroquois that the great object of their confederacy was peace :-to break up the spirit of perpetual warfare, which wasted the red race from age to age. Such an insight into the true end and object of all legitimate government, by these who constructed this tribal league, excites as great surprise as admiration." It is the highest and the noblest aspect in which human institutions can be viewed; and the thought itself-universal peace among Indian races possible of attainment-was a ray of intellect from no ordinary mind. To consummate such a purpose, the Iroquois nations were to be concentrated into one political fraternity; and in a manner effectively to prevent off-shoots and secessions. By its natural growth, this fraternity would accumulate sufficient power to absorb adjacent nations, moulding them, successively, by affiliation, into one common family. Thus, in its nature, it was designed to be a progressive confederacy. What means could have been employed with greater promise of success than the stupendous system of relationships, which was fabricated through the division of the Hodénosaunee into tribes? It was a system sufficiently ample to infold the whole Indian race. Unlimited in their capacity for extension; inflexible in their relationships; the tribes thus interleagued would have suffered no loss of unity by their enlargement, nor loss of strength by the increasing distance between their

"COURTESY and honor," exclaimed the very reverend Doctor Dulldrum, "are virtues of the WORLD; alms-giving and peace-making, of the CHURCH."

This was on occasion of a long-winded argument between the doctor and my patron, touching that famous distinction of "the Church and the World," familiar to Christians of the old stamp.

If I were to be hanged for a bad memory, I could not now tell you the whole order of their discourse; I dare only affirm, that my patron gave the doctor the lie, (scholastically, which, you know, though it touch you ever so nearly, cannot be construed as an affront,) and to it they went, in such a longbreathed, many-sided, every-wherepointed, learned, subtile, subtle, involving, involved, intricate, intricating, ratiocinative, puzzling, plodding, pleasing, niggling, notional, noetic, nominate, mad, muddling, metagrabolizing piece of argumentation-my brain is unsettled with the commotion of it! Cleric and lay, sacred and profane, Hermes! they mammocked the question!

The doctor took ground in divinity, and what with St. Augustin his catapult, St. Chrysostom his arrowy storm, St. Bernard his thunder, and the lightning of the persuader of the Gentiles, did so confound, astonish, and overwhelm my patron, that had not his intellect been of that fine mail wherewith the champion Hume used to cover over the region of his heart, he had been utterly overthrown, nay, shot through, and scorched into silence.

"The difference between a scholastic argument and one of use, is like that be tween the grinding of chaff and the grind ing of wheat; the same organs are at work, the same noise is heard, the same power is exhausted; but the product of the one is wholesome food, that of the other, dust and dirt." Pantol. dec. I. K. cap. 10., v. 1. k. t. a.

My patron considered the matter differently. As money is to a Jew, so was an argument to him; he lived for it; had he lived by it, he would have treated it less affectionately; for, with the learned author just quoted, "no man loves what he lives by." Ib. Swed. is. a. ho. ax. 1. 2. A paradox say you? Not at all, love and greed' are as different as love and lust.' To say I love money, what is it but a foolish figure of speech?

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I have reason to believe that the argument of my patron with the doctor was the great one of his life. It happened on the evening of the sixtieth anniversary of his own birth, and the sixteenth of mine; from which particulars, acute chronologers will infer, that, first, we saw the light on the same day of the year; and second, that the chances and changes of five of his wintry humors had befallen me under that roof. At twelve I was a good listener; at sixteen, a tolerable logician; 1 might therefore, receive as much of such an argument as might enter by understanding into the receipt of reason. The whole matter lay in a difference of words: for my patron argued, that as courtesy is, questionless, a virtue, and honor, if possible, something better, they are parts and elements in the Highest Good: Christianity, he added, if it be anything at all, is the Highest Good; ergo, courtesy and honor are Christian virtues.

The metagrabolizing Dulldrum quoted Augustin, to show that the Church is not the World; Austin, to show that said virtues are of the World; ergo, said he,

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they are not of the Church." Then he showed from Bernard, that the Church is the Highest Good; allowed that Christianity is also the highest good; which concludes, that honor and courtesy are not compulsory on Christians, much less upon churchmen.

My patron replied to this, that he thought the logic very good, but the