exhausted its provisions, another family immediately came to its aid.[1]
But maternal filiation was, or is, in force even where the clans did not live in common houses, as we find it still among the Mohicans, the Delawares, the Narrangasetts, the Pequots, the Wyandots, the Missouris, the Minnitaris, the Crows, the Creeks, the Chickasaws, the Cherokees, etc.
With the Iroquois and the Hurons, the father, says Charlevoix, was almost a stranger to his children. "Among the Hurons," continues the same observer, "dignity and succession are inherited through the women. It is the son of the sister who succeeds, and in default of him the next relative in the female line."[2]
"With these peoples," says Lafitau, "marriages are arranged in such a way that the husband and wife do not leave their own family to establish a family and a cabin independently. Each one remains at home, and the children born of these marriages belong to the families that have produced them, and are counted as members of the family and cabin of the mother, and not at all as belonging to those of the father. The possessions of the husband do not go to his wife's cabin, to which he is himself a stranger; and in his wife's cabin the daughters are heirs in preference to the males, who have nothing there but mere subsistence."[3]
"Besides this," continues Lafitau, "the wife's cabin has rights over the product of the husband's, hunting; all of this must be contributed during the first year, and a half only afterwards."[4]
The mothers negotiated the marriages, and naturally did so without consulting the interested parties. When the affair was once settled, presents had to be made to the gentile relatives of the bride. It was the care of these relatives, in case of conjugal dissensions between the married pair, to attempt a reconciliation and to prevent a divorce.[5] At the present time, among the Santi-Dakotas,
