At the establishment of the confederacy, fifty sachems were founded and
a name assigned to each, by which they are still known, and these names
are kept as hereditary from the beginning to the present time. There were
also fifty sub-sachems, or war chiefs--that is, to every sachem was given
a war chief, to stand behind him to do his biddings. These sachemships
were, and are still confined to the five nations; the Tuscaroras were
admitted into the confederacy without enlarging the framework of the
league, by allowing them their own sachems and sub-sachems, or war
chiefs, as they inherited from their original nation of North Carolina.
But how, it may be asked, is a government so purely popular and so simple
and essentially advisory in its character, to be reconciled with the laws
of hereditary descent, fixed by the establishment of heraldic devices and
bringing its proportion of weak and incompetent minds into office, and
with the actual power it exercised and the fame it acquired. To answer
this question, and to show how the aristocratic and democratic principles
were made to harmonize in the Iroquois government, it will be necessary
to go back and examine the laws of descent among the tribes, together
with the curious and intricate principles of the clans or tribal bond.
Nothing is more fully under the cognizance of observers of the manners
and customs of the Indians, than the fact of the entire nation or tribe
being separated into distinct clans, each of them distinguished by the
name and device of some quadruped, bird, or other object in the animal
kingdom. This device is called by the Tuscaroras Or-reak-sa (clan). The
Iroquois have turned it to account by assuming it as the very basis of
their political and tribal bond.
A government wholly verbal must be conceded to have required this
proximity and nearness of access. The original five nations of the
Iroquois were, theoretically, separated into eight clans or original
families of kindreds, who are distinguished respectively by the clans of
the wolf, bear, turtle, deer, beaver, falcon, crane and the plover. I
find that there is a little difference in the clans of the Tuscaroras,
which are the bear, wolf, turtle, beaver, deer, eel and snipe. It is
contrary to the usage of the Indians that near kindred should intermarry,
and the ancient rule interdicts all intermarriage between persons of the
same clan. They must marry into a clan which is different from their own.
A Bear or Wolf male cannot marry a Bear or Wolf female. By this custom
the purity of blood is preserved, while the ties of relationship between
the clans themselves is strengthened or enlarged.
The line of descent is limited exclusively in the female's children.
Owing to this arrangement, a chieftain's son cannot succeed him in
office, but in case of his death, the right of descent being in his
mother, he would be succeeded, not by one of his male children, but by
his brother; or failing in this then by the son of his sister, or by some
direct, however remote, descendent of a maternal line.
It will be noticed that the children are not of the same clan as their
father, but are the same as their mother. Thus, he might be succeeded by
his own grandson, by the son marrying in his father's clan, and not by
his daughter. It is in this way that the chieftainship is continually
kept in a family dynasties in the female line.
While the law of descent is fully recognized, the free will of the female
to choose a husband from any of the clans, excluding only her own, is
made to govern and determine the distribution of political power, and to
fix the political character of the tribe. Another peculiarity may be here
stated. In choosing a candidate to fill a vacancy of the chieftainship,
made either by death or misconduct, the power is lodged in the older
women of the clan to choose the candidate, and then to be submitted for
the recognition of the chiefs and sachems in council, for the whole
nation. If approved, a day is appointed for the recognition also of the
Six Nations, and he is formally installed into office. Incapacity is
always, however, without exception, recognized as a valid objection to
the approval of the council.