A constitutional league of peace in the stone age of America

by J. N. B. Hewitt

Status in an Iroquoian tribe was secured only by being born into it, by virtue of birth in one of its uterine families or by adoption into it. But an alien could be and was adopted into citizenship in the clan and tribe only by being adopted into an ohwachira (uterine family) of some clan. The ceremony of adoption was so potent that where two alien sisters were adopted, each into a clan which intermarried with the other, their children intermarried as coming from exogamous groups.

Whatever land was held by the ohwachira for cultivation and on which fuel and berries and nuts and roots and bark and medicines and poisons were procured, belonged exclusively to the women of the ohwachira.

Ordinarily, the members of an ohwachira were obligated to purchase the life of one of its members who had forfeited it by a homicide and to pay for the life of the victim as well.

It was seen that the earth produced things which were fixed in her breast; all the things that grow whether corn, beans, squashes, berries, or nuts, are nourished directly by the earth. In like manner it appeared that woman, the mother, was a producer, and nourished what she produced on her breast; hence, the woman and the earth are sisters. So the cultivation of the things that grow out of the earth is especially the duty and pleasure of woman. While the pursuit of game, and fish, and birds, and men who are not fixed in the earth was strictly within the prerogative of the men.

The ohwachira through its matron exercised the right to spare, or to take, if needs be, the life of prisoners of war in its behalf and offered to it for adoption. Such briefly is the ohwachira of Iroquoian social organization.

The Iroquoian clan is an intratribal exogamic body of uterine kin, real, or such by legal fiction, regimented for the purpose of securing and promoting their social and political welfare. The clan has a name, which serves as a class or preferably unit name for its members, and which is derived usually from some animal or bird or reptile belonging to the habitat of the ancestors of this body of kin, or to its customary tutelary genius. The lineal descent of blood, the inheritance of property, both personal and common, and the hereditary right of eligibility to public office and trust are traced in the clan through the female line attained through the action and interaction of its constitutive units—the ohwachira (the uterine families).

The Iroquoian clan is constituted organically of one or more ohwachira; its chief or chieftains came to it through its constituent ohwachira which may have possessed such officers. A large number of the characteristics of the ohwachira may be predicated of the clan, for the reason that the ohwachira gave up for administration to this larger grouping a number of their functions. So that a clear knowledge of the ohwachira is first needed to understand what a clan is.

The following summary of the characteristic rights and privileges of an Iroquoian clan may be enlightening: (1) The right to a distinctive name, which an invariable custom derives from some animal, bird, or reptile, characteristic of the habitat, which may have been regarded as a guardian genius or protecting deity. (2) Representation by one or more chiefs in the tribal council. (3) An equitable share in the communal property of the tribe. (4) The right and obligation to have its nominations for chief and subchief of the clan confirmed and installed by officers of the tribal council in earlier times, but since the institution of the league, by officers of the federal council. (5) The right to the protection of the tribe of which it is a constituent member. (6) The right of the titles of the chiefships and subchiefships hereditary in its ohwachira(s). (7) The right to certain songs, chants, dances, and religious observances. (8) The right of its men or women, or both together, to meet in council. (9) The right to the use of certain names of persons, which are given to its members. (10) The right to adopt aliens through the action of a constituent ohwachira. (11) The right of its members to a common burial ground. (12) The right of the mothers of constituent ohwachira(s), in which such official titles are inherent, to nominate candidates for chief and subchief; some clans have more than one of each class of chiefs. (13) The right of these same mothers to take the prescribed steps for impeaching and deposing their chiefs and subchiefs. (14) The right to share in the religious rites, ceremonies, and public festivals of the tribe.

The duties incidental to clan membership are the following: The obligation not to marry within the clan, formerly not even within the sisterhood or phratry of clans, to which the one in question belonged; the effect of membership in the sisterhood of clans was to make all men either mother’s brothers or brothers, and all women mothers or sisters. (2) The joint obligation to purchase the life of a member of the clan which has been forfeited by homicide or the murder of a member of the tribe or of an allied tribe. (3) The duty and obligation to aid and to defend its members in supplying their wants, redressing their wrongs and injuries through diplomacy or by force of arms, and in avenging their death. (4) The joint obligation to replace with prisoners or other persons other members who have been lost or killed, belonging to any ohwachira of a clan to which they may be related as father’s brothers or father’s clansmen, the matron of such ohwachira having the right to ask that this obligation be fulfilled.

The clan name is not usually among the Iroquois the common designation of the animal or bird or reptile after which the clan may be called, but very commonly denotes some marked feature or characteristic or the favorite haunt of it, or it may be just a survival of an archaic name of it.