Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/771

 RELATION OF SEX TO PRIMITIVE SOCfAL CONTROL 757

admitted to the maternal household. Thus each household was composed of a mixture of persons of different gentes, but this would not prevent the numerical ascendency of the particular gens to whom the house belonged. In a village of one hundred and twenty houses, as the Seneca village of Tiotohatton described by Mr. Greenbalge in 1677, there would be several houses belonging to each gens. It presented a general picture of the Indian life in all parts of America at the epoch of European discovery. 1

Morgan also quotes the Rev. Ashur Wright, for many years a missionary among the Senecas, and familiar with their lan- guage and customs :

As to their family system, when occupying the old log houses, it is prob- able that some one clan predominated, the women taking in husbands, however, from the other clans, and sometimes for novelty, some of their sons bringing in their young wives until they felt brave enough to leave their mothers. Usually the female portion ruled the house, and were doubtless clannish enough about it. The stores were in common, but woe to the luck- less husband or lover who was too shiftless to do his share of the providing. 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 attempt to disobey ; the house would become too hot for him, and, unless saved by the intercession of some aunt or grandmother, he must retreat to his own clan, or, as was often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other. The women were the great power among the clans, as everywhere else. They did not hesitate, when occasion required, to " knock off the horns," so it was technically called, from the head of a chief and send him back to the ranks of the warriors. The orig- inal nomination of the chiefs, also, always rested with them. 2

Traces of the maternal system are everywhere found on the American continent, and in some regions it is still in force. McGee says of the Seri stock of the southwest coast, now reduced to a single tribe, that the claims of a suitor are pressed by his female relatives, and, if the suit is favorably regarded by the mother and uncles of the girl, the suitor is pro- visionally installed in the housr, without purchase price and presents. He is then expected to show his worthiness of a per- manent relation by demonstrating his ability as a provider, and by showing himself an implacable foe to aliens. He must sup-

1 L. H. MORGAN, //ousts and House- Life of th n Aborigines, p. 64.

L II. '