Marriage, among the Iroquois, appears to be a verbal contract between the parties, which does not affect the rights of property. Goods, personal effects, or valuables of any kind, personal or real, which were the wife’s before, remain so after marriage. Should any of these be used by the husband, he is bound to restore the property or its worth, in the event of separation. It is not uncommon at present to find a husband indebted to a wife for moneys loaned of her, derived from payments or property, which she owned, and still owns, in her own right; and it is a cause of union in some cases where, without this obligation, a separation would probably ensue.
Marriage is therefore a personal agreement, requiring neither civil nor ecclesiastical sanction, but not a union of the rights of property. Descent being counted by the female may be either an original cause or effect of this unique law.
IV. ARCHÆOLOGY.
In considering the subject of American antiquities it may facilitate the object, to erect separate eras of occupancy, to which the facts may be referred. Such a division of the great and almost unknown period, which preceded the arrival of Europeans, will at least serve as convenient points to concentrate, arrange and compare the facts and evidences brought forward; and may enable the observer, the better to proceed in any future attempts to generalize.
There appear to have been three eras in the aboriginal occupancy of the continent, or more strictly speaking, three conditions of occupancy, which may be conveniently grouped as eras, although the precise limits of them, may be matters of some uncertainty. To make this uncertainty less than it now is, and to erect these eras on probable foundations, the proofs drawn from monuments, mounds, fortifications, ditches, earth-works, barrows, implements of art, and whatever other kind of evidence antiquity affords, may, it is thought, be gathered together in something like this shape, namely:
1. Vestiges and proofs of the original era of the aboriginal migration from other parts of the globe. These, so far as arts or evidences of a material character are denoted, must necessarily be exceedingly limited, if any, of undoubted authenticity, shall indeed now be found. The departments of physiology, and philology, which have heretofore constituted the principal topics of research, are still an attractive, and by no means a closed field.
2. Proofs and vestiges of their continental migrations, wars, affinities and general ethnological characteristics, prior to the discovery of the continent. Such are the grouping of languages; the similarity, or dissimilarity of arts, modes of defence, and means of subsistence.
3. Proofs and vestiges of occupancy, change, and progress, subsequent to the Columbian period.
With regard to the first era, it is almost wholly the subject of general and profound scientific and philosophical investigations, which require a union of great advantages for successful study. The second and third eras, fall within the compass of ordinary observation. Both kinds of proof may exist at the very same localities. They do not necessarily imply diverse or remote geographical positions. We know that some of the leading tribes, the Cherokees, (till within a few years,) and the Iroquois, for instance, have continued to live in the very same positions in which they were found by the first explorers.