mulations of provisions. Each house, as a rule, was occupied by related families, the mothers and their children belonging to the same gens, while their husbands and the fathers of these children belonged to other gentes; consequently the gens or clan of the mother largely predominated in the household. Whatever was taken in the hunt or raised by cultivation by any member of the household, as has elsewhere been stated, was for the common benefit. Provisions were made a common stock within the household.
Here was communism in living carried out in practical life, but limited to the household, and an expression of the principle in the plan of the house itself. Having found it in one stock as well developed as the Iroquois, a presumption of its universality in the Indian family at once arises, because it was a law of their condition. Evidence of its general prevalence has elsewhere been presented.
In a previous chapter the usages of the Iroquois in regard to eating have been given. It came practically to one cooked meal each day. The separate fires in each house were for convenience in cooking, all the stores in the house being common The plan of life within them was studied and economical. This is shown by the presence of a matron in each household, who made a division of the food from the kettle to each family according to their needs, and reserved what remained for future disposal. It shows system and organization in their long-houses, with a careful supervision of their stores, and forethought as well as equity in the management and distribution of their food. In these households, formed on the principle of kin, was laid the foundation for that "mother power" which was even more conspicuous in the tribes of the Old World, and which Professor Bachofen was the first to discuss under the name of gyneocracy and mother-right[1] Since the mothers who dwelt together were usually sisters, own or collateral, and of the same gens, and since their children were also of the gens of their mother, the preponderating number in the household would be of gentile kin. The right and the influence of the mother were protected and strengthened through the maternal as well as the gentile bond. The husbands were in the minority as to kindred. In case of separation it was the
- ↑ Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861
