We perceive in this system, an effective provision for breaking dynasties, and securing at each mutation of the chieftainship, a fresh line of chiefs, who were subject to a life limit. Each clan having the same right to one chief, a perpetual, yet constantly changing body of sachems, was kept up, which must necessarily change the body entirely in one generation. Yet, like the classes in our senatorial organization, the change was effected so slowly and gradually, that the body of chiefs constituted a political perpetuity. In contemplating this system, there is more than one point to admire. History gives us no example of a confederacy in which the principle of political and domestic union, were so intimately bound together. By the establishment of the Totemic Bond, the clans were separated on the principle of near kindred, between which all marriage was inhibited. Every marriage between these separated clans, therefore, bound them closer together, and the consequence soon must have been, their entire amalgamation, had it not been provided, that each clan, through the female line, should preserve inviolate forever, its own Totemic independency. In other words, the female was never so incorporated into a new relation by the matrimonial tie, as to lose her family name, and her mother's ancestral rights. If, for example, a deer totem female, married a wolf or hawk male, she was still counted in the clan of the deer, and never gave up her political rights, to the wolf or hawk clans, which had provided for her a husband. Her position may, perhaps, be better understood, by observing that the married woman, still retained her maiden name--the sir name of her family. By this means she preserved the identity of her clan, and with it, its heraldic and political rights. Not only so, the property of a female, never vested in, or belonged to the husband. This trait is still in full vogue, among each of the tribes. Its operation has been witnessed the present year. Matrons had also the right to attend and sit in council, and there were occasions, in which they were permitted to speak. For this purpose, a speaker was assigned to them, and this person became a standing officer in the council.--It might pertain to the nations to bring in propositions of peace. Such propositions might prejudice the character of a warrior, but they were appropriate to the female, and the wise men knew how to avail themselves of this stroke of policy. We speak of the general and burdensome subjection of the female, among our Red Men--a condition, indeed, inseparable from the hunter state, but here is a trait of power and consideration, which has not yet been reached by refined nations.