The Discovery of America Part 5

[Footnote 70: As among the Hervey Islanders; Gill, _Myths and Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 36. Sir John Lubbock would account for the curious and widely spread custom of the _Couvade_ as a feature of this change. _Origin of Civilization_, pp. 14-17, 159; cf. Tylor, _Early Hist. of Mankind_, pp. 288, 297.]

[Sidenote: The exogamous clan in ancient America.]

In aboriginal America, as already observed, kinship through females only was the rule, and exogamy was strictly enforced,--the wife must be taken from a different clan. Indissoluble marriage, whether monogamous or polygamous, seems to have been unknown. The marriage relation was terminable at the will of either party.[71] The abiding unit upon which the social structure was founded was not the family but the exogamous clan.

[Footnote 71: "There is no embarra.s.sment growing out of problems respecting the woman's future support, the division of property, or the adjustment of claims for the possession of the children. The independent self-support of every adult healthy Indian, male or female, and the gentile relationship, which is more wide-reaching and authoritative than that of marriage, have already disposed of these questions, which are usually so perplexing for the white man. So far as personal maintenance is concerned, a woman is, as a rule, just as well off without a husband as with one. What is hers, in the shape of property, remains her own whether she is married or not. In fact, marriage among these Indians seems to be but the natural mating of the s.e.xes, to cease at the option of either of the interested parties." Clay MacCauley, "The Seminole Indians of Florida", in _Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, Washington, 1887, p. 497. For a graphic account of the state of things among the Cheyennes and Arrapahos, see Dodge, _Our Wild Indians_, pp. 204-220.]

[Sidenote: Intimate connection of aboriginal architecture with social life.]

I have been at some pains to elucidate this point because the house-life of the American aborigines found visible, and in some instances very durable, expression in a remarkable style of house-architecture. The manner in which the Indians built their houses grew directly out of the requirements of their life. It was an unmistakably characteristic architecture, and while it exhibits manifold unlikenesses in detail, due to differences in intelligence as well as to the presence or absence of sundry materials, there is one underlying principle always manifest.

That underlying principle is adaptation to a certain mode of communal living such as all American aborigines that have been carefully studied are known to have practised. Through many gradations, from the sty of the California savage up to the n.o.ble sculptured ruins of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza, the principle is always present. Taken in connection with evidence from other sources, it enables us to exhibit a gradation of stages of culture in aboriginal North America, with the savages of the Sacramento and Columbia valleys at the bottom, and the Mayas of Yucatan at the top; and while in going from one end to the other a very long interval was traversed, we feel that the progress of the aborigines in crossing that interval was made along similar lines.[72]

[Footnote 72: See Morgan's _Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines_, Washington, 1881, an epoch-making book of rare and absorbing interest.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Seneca-Iroquois long house.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ground-plan of long house.]

[Sidenote: The long houses of the Iroquois.]

The principle was first studied and explained by Mr. Morgan in the case of the famous "long houses" of the Iroquois. "The long house ... was from fifty to eighty and sometimes one hundred feet long. It consisted of a strong frame of upright poles set in the ground, which was strengthened with horizontal poles attached with withes, and surmounted with a triangular, and in some cases with a round roof. It was covered over, both sides and roof, with long strips of elm bark tied to the frame with strings or splints. An external frame of poles for the sides and of rafters for the roof were then adjusted to hold the bark shingles between them, the two frames being tied together. The interior of the house was comparted[73] at intervals of six or eight feet, leaving each chamber entirely open like a stall upon the pa.s.sageway which pa.s.sed through the centre of the house from end to end. At each end was a doorway covered with suspended skins. Between each four apartments, two on a side, was a fire-pit in the centre of the hall, used in common by their occupants. Thus a house with five fires would contain twenty apartments and accommodate twenty families, unless some apartments were reserved for storage. They were warm, roomy, and tidily-kept habitations. Raised bunks were constructed around the walls of each apartment for beds. From the roof-poles were suspended their strings of corn in the ear, braided by the husks, also strings of dried squashes and pumpkins. s.p.a.ces were contrived here and there to store away their acc.u.mulations of provisions. Each house, as a rule, was occupied by related families, the mothers and their children belonging to the same gens, while their husbands and the fathers of these children belonged to other gentes; consequently the gens or clan of the mother largely predominated in the household. Whatever was taken in the hunt or raised by cultivation by any member of the household ... was for the common benefit. Provisions were made a common stock within the household."[74]

[Footnote 73: This verb of Mr. Morgan's at first struck me as odd, but though rarely used, it is supported by good authority; see _Century Dictionary_, s. v.]

[Footnote 74: The Iroquois ceased to build such houses before the beginning of the present century. I quote Mr. Morgan's description at length, because his book is out of print and hard to obtain. It ought to be republished, and in octavo, like his _Ancient Society_, of which it is a continuation.]

"Over every such household a matron presided, whose duty it was to supervise its domestic economy. After the single daily meal had been cooked at the different fires within the house, it was her province to divide the food from the kettle to the several families according to their respective needs. What remained was placed in the custody of another person until she again required it."[75]

[Footnote 75: Lucien Carr, "On the Social and Political Position of Woman among the Huron-Iroquois Tribes," _Reports of Peabody Museum_, vol. iii. p. 215.]

[Sidenote: Summary divorce.]

Not only the food was common property, but many chattels, including the children, belonged to the gens or clan. When a young woman got married she brought her husband home with her. Though thenceforth an inmate of this household he remained an alien to her clan. "If he proved lazy and failed to do his share of the providing, woe be to him. No matter how many children, or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at any time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge; and after such orders it would not be healthful for him to disobey; the house would be too hot for him; and unless saved by the intercession of some aunt or grandmother [of his wife] he must retreat to his own clan, or, as was often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other....

The female portion ruled the house."[76]

[Footnote 76: This was not incompatible with the subjection of women to extreme drudgery and ill-treatment. For an instructive comparison with the case among the tribes of the Far West, see Dodge, _Our Wild Indians_, chap. xvi.]

[Sidenote: Hospitality.]

Though there was but one freshly-cooked meal, taken about the middle of the day, any member of the household when hungry could be helped from the common stock. Hospitality was universal. If a person from one of the other communal households, or a stranger from another tribe (in time of peace), were to visit the house, the women would immediately offer him food, and it was a breach of etiquette to decline to eat it. This custom was strictly observed all over the continent and in the West India Islands, and was often remarked upon by the early discoverers, in whose minds it was apt to implant idyllic notions that were afterward rudely disturbed. The prevalence of hospitality among uncivilized races has long been noted by travellers, and is probably in most cases, as it certainly was in ancient America, closely connected with communism in living.

[Sidenote: Structure of the clan.]

The clan, which practised this communism, had its definite organization, officers, rights, and duties. Its official head was the "sachem," whose functions were of a civil nature. The sachem was elected by the clan and must be a member of it, so that a son could not be chosen to succeed his father, but a sachem could be succeeded by his uterine brother or by his sister's son, and in this way customary lines of succession could and often did tend to become established. The clan also elected its "chiefs," whose functions were military; the number of chiefs was proportionate to that of the people composing the clan, usually one chief to every fifty or sixty persons. The clan could depose its sachem or any of its chiefs. Personal property, such as weapons, or trophies, or rights of user in the garden-plots, was inheritable in the female line, and thus stayed within the clan. The members were reciprocally bound to help, defend, and avenge one another. The clan had the right of adopting strangers to strengthen itself. It had the right of naming its members, and these names were always obviously significant, like Little Turtle, Yellow Wolf, etc.; of names like our Richard or William, with the meaning lost, or obvious only to scholars, no trace is to be found in aboriginal America. The clan itself, too, always had a name, which was usually that of some animal,--as Wolf, Eagle, or Salmon, and a rude drawing or pictograph of the creature served as a "totem" or primitive heraldic device. A mythological meaning was attached to this emblem. The clan had its own common religious rites and common burial place. There was a clan-council, of which women might be members; there were instances, indeed, of its being composed entirely of women, whose position was one of much more dignity and influence than has commonly been supposed. Instances of squaw sachems were not so very rare.[77]

[Footnote 77: Among the Wyandots there is in each clan a council composed of four squaws, and this council elects the male sachem who is its head. Therefore the tribal council, which is the aggregate of the clan-councils, consists one fifth of men and four fifths of women. See Powell, "Wyandot Government: a Short Study of Tribal Society," in _First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, Washington, 1881, pp.

59-69; and also Mr. Carr's interesting essay above cited.]

[Sidenote: Origin and structure of the phratry.]

The number of clans in a tribe naturally bore some proportion to the populousness of the tribe, varying from three, in the case of the Delawares, to twenty or more, as in the case of the Ojibwas and Creeks.

There were usually eight or ten, and these were usually grouped into two or three phratries. The phratry seems to have originated in the segmentation of the overgrown clan, for in some cases exogamy was originally practised as between the phratries and afterward the custom died out while it was retained as between their const.i.tuent clans.[78]

The system of naming often indicates this origin of the phratry, though seldom quite so forcibly as in the case of the Mohegan tribe, which was thus composed:[79]--

I. WOLF PHRATRY.

_Clans:_ 1. Wolf, 2. Bear, 3. Dog, 4. Opossum.

II. TURTLE PHRATRY.

_Clans:_ 5. Little Turtle, 6. Mud Turtle, 7. Great Turtle, 8. Yellow Eel.

III. TURKEY PHRATRY.

_Clans:_ 9. Turkey, 10. Crane, 11. Chicken.

Here the senior clan in the phratry tends to keep the original clan-name, while the junior clans have been guided by a sense of kinship in choosing their new names. This origin of the phratry is further indicated by the fact that the phratry does not always occur; sometimes the clans are organized directly into the tribe. The phratry was not so much a governmental as a religious and social organization. Its most important function seems to have been supplementing or reinforcing the action of the single clan in exacting compensation for murder; and this point is full of interest because it helps us to understand how among our Teutonic forefathers the "hundred" (the equivalent of the phratry) became charged with the duty of prosecuting criminals. The Greek phratry had a precisely a.n.a.logous function.[80]

[Footnote 78: H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, vol. i. p. 109.]

[Footnote 79: Morgan, _Houses and House-Life_, p. 16.]

[Footnote 80: See Freeman, _Comparative Politics_, p. 117; Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 98-104; Grote, _History of Greece_, vol. iii. pp. 74, 88. It is interesting to compare Grote's description with Morgan's (_Anc. Soc._, pp. 71, 94) and note both the closeness of the general parallelism and the character of the specific variations.]

[Sidenote: Structure of the tribe.]

The Indian tribe was a group of people distinguished by the exclusive possession of a dialect in common. It possessed a tribal name and occupied a more or less clearly defined territory; there were also tribal religious rites. Its supreme government was vested in the council of its clan-chiefs and sachems; and as these were thus officers of the tribe as well as of the clan, the tribe exercised the right of investing them with office, amid appropriate solemnities, after their election by their respective clans. The tribal-council had also the right to depose chiefs and sachems. In some instances, not always, there was a head chief or military commander for the tribes, elected by the tribal council. Such, was the origin of the office which, in most societies of the Old World, gradually multiplied its functions and acc.u.mulated power until it developed into true kingship. Nowhere in ancient North America did it quite reach such a stage.

[Sidenote: Cross-relationships between clans and tribes: the Iroquois Confederacy.]

Among the greater part of the aborigines no higher form of social structure was attained than the tribe. There were, however, several instances of permanent confederation, of which the two most interesting and most highly developed were the League of the Iroquois, mentioned above, and the Mexican Confederacy, presently to be considered. The principles upon which the Iroquois league was founded have been thoroughly and minutely explained by Mr. Morgan.[81] It originated in a union of five tribes composed of clans in common, and speaking five dialects of a common language. These tribes had themselves arisen through the segmentation of a single overgrown tribe, so that portions of the original clans survived in them all. The Wolf, Bear, and Turtle clan were common to all the five tribes; three other clans were common to three of the five. "All the members of the same gens [clan], whether Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, or Senecas, were brothers and sisters to each other in virtue of their descent from the same common [female] ancestor, and they recognized each other as such with the fullest cordiality. When they met, the first inquiry was the name of each other's gens, and next the immediate pedigree of each other's sachems; after which they were able to find, under their peculiar system of consanguinity, the relationship in which they stood to each other....

This cross-relationship between persons of the same gens in the different tribes is still preserved and recognized among them in all its original force. It explains the tenacity with which the fragments of the old confederacy still cling together."[82] Acknowledged consanguinity is to the barbarian a sound reason, and the only one conceivable, for permanent political union; and the very existence of such a confederacy as that of the Five Nations was rendered possible only through the permanence of the clans or communal households which were its ultimate units. We have here a clue to the policy of these Indians toward the kindred tribes who refused to join their league. These tribes, too, so far as is known, would seem to have contained the same clans. After a separation of at least four hundred years the Wyandots have still five of their eight clans in common with the Iroquois. When the Eries and other tribes would not join the league of their kindred, the refusal smacked of treason to the kin, and we can quite understand the deadly fury with which the latter turned upon them and butchered every man, woman, and child except such as they saw fit to adopt into their own clans.

[Footnote 81: In his _League of the Iroquois_, Rochester, 1851, a book now out of print and excessively rare. A brief summary is given in his _Ancient Society_, chap. v., and in his _Houses and House-Life_, pp. 23-41. Mr. Morgan was adopted into the Seneca tribe, and his life work was begun by a profound and exhaustive study of this interesting people.]

[Footnote 82: _Houses and House-Life_, p. 33. At the period of its greatest power, about 1675, the people of the confederacy were about 25,000 in number. In 1875, according to official statistics (see table appended to Dodge's _Plains of the Great West_, pp. 441-448), there were in the state of New York 198 Oneidas, 203 Onondagas, 165 Cayugas, 3,043 Senecas, and 448 Tuscaroras,--in all 4,057. Besides these there were 1,279 Oneidas on a reservation in Wisconsin, and 207 Senecas in the Indian Territory. The Mohawks are not mentioned in the list.

During the Revolutionary War, and just afterward, the Mohawks migrated into Upper Canada (Ontario), for an account of which the reader may consult the second volume of Stone's _Life of Brant_. Portions of the other tribes also went to Canada. In New York the Oneidas and Tuscaroras were converted to Christianity by Samuel Kirkland and withheld from alliance with the British during the Revolution; the others still retain their ancient religion. They are for the most part farmers and are now increasing in numbers. Their treatment by the state of New York has been honourably distinguished for justice and humanity.]

[Sidenote: Structure of the confederacy.]

Each of the Five Tribes retained its local self-government. The supreme government of the confederacy was vested in a General Council of fifty sachems, "equal in rank and authority." The fifty sachemships were created in perpetuity in certain clans of the several tribes; whenever a vacancy occurred, it was filled by the clan electing one of its own members; a sachem once thus elected could be deposed by the clan-council for good cause; "but the right to invest these sachems with office was reserved to the General Council." These fifty sachems of the confederacy were likewise sachems in their respective tribes, "and with the chiefs of these tribes formed the council of each, which was supreme over all matters pertaining to the tribe exclusively." The General Council could not convene itself, but could be convened by any one of the five tribal councils. The regular meeting was once a year in the autumn, in the valley of Onondaga, but in stirring times extra sessions were frequent.

The proceedings were opened by an address from one of the sachems, "in the course of which he thanked the Great Spirit [i. e. Ioskeha, the sky-G.o.d] for sparing their lives and permitting them to meet together;"

after this they were ready for business. It was proper for any orator from among the people to address the Council with arguments, and the debates were sometimes very long and elaborate. When it came to voting, the fifty sachems voted by tribes, each tribe counting as a unit, and unanimity was as imperative as in an English jury, so that one tribe could block the proceedings. The confederacy had no head-sachem, or civil chief-magistrate; but a military commander was indispensable, and, curiously enough, without being taught by the experience of a Tarquin, the Iroquois made this a dual office, like the Roman consulship. There were two permanent chieftainships, one in the Wolf, the other in the Turtle clan, and both in the Seneca tribe, because the western border was the most exposed to attack.[83] The chiefs were elected by the clan, and inducted into office by the General Council; their tenure was during life or good behaviour. This office never encroached upon the others in its powers, but an able warrior in this position could wield great influence.

[Footnote 83: Somewhat on the same principle that in mediaeval Europe led an earl or count, commanding an exposed border district or _march_ to rise in power and importance and become a "margrave" [_mark_ + _graf_ = march-count] or "marquis."

Compare the increase of sovereignty accorded to the earls of Chester and bishops of Durham as rulers of the two princ.i.p.al march counties of England.]