They were brave and warlike, with perhaps more amiable qualities than the more ferocious, robust Iroquois. The nation appears to have been a confederacy of tribes, each of which was divided into clans or _gentes_ on the Iroquois principle, which I shall shortly explain. Two chiefs, one for peace and one for war, assisted by a council of tribal chiefs, {117} constituted the general government. Each tribe had a system of local or self-government--to use a phrase applicable to modern federal conditions--consisting of chiefs and council. The federal organisation was not, however, so carefully framed and adjusted as that of their kin, the Iroquois. At council meetings all the principal men attended and votes were taken with the aid of reeds or sticks, the majority prevailing in all cases. The whole organisation was essentially a democracy, as the chiefs, although an oligarchy in appearance, were controlled by the voices and results of the councils. In this as in other American savage nations, the rule governing the transmission of hereditary honours and possessions was through the female line. Beyond the Huron villages, south of Nottawasaga Bay--so named probably from the Nottaways, a branch of the same family, driven by war to the south--we come to the Tionotates or Tobacco tribe, who were kin in language and customs to their neighbours and afterwards joined their confederacy. The Neutral Nation, or Attiwandaronks of Iroquois stock, had their homes on the north shore of Lake Erie, and reached even as far as the Niagara. They were extremely cruel, and kept for a long while their position of neutrality between the Hurons and Five Nations. To the south of Lake Erie rose the smoke of the fires of the Eries, generally translated "Cats," but, properly speaking, the "Raccoons." Like the Andastes, near the Susquehanna, mentioned in a previous chapter, they were famous warriors, and for years held their own against the Iroquois, but {118} eventually both these nations yielded to the fury of the relentless confederacy. We have now come to the western door of the "long house" (_Ho-de-no-sote_) of the Iroquois, who called themselves "the people of the long house" (_Ho-de-no-sau-nee_), because they dwelt in a line of villages of "long houses," reaching from the Genesee to the Mohawk, where the eastern door looked toward the Hudson and Lake Champlain. The name by which they have been best known is considered by Charlevoix and other writers to be originally French; derived from "Hiro" (I have spoken)--the conclusion of all their harangues--and Koue, an exclamation of sorrow when it was prolonged, and of joy when pronounced shortly. They comprised five nations, living by the lakes, that still bear their names in the State of New York, in the following order as we go east from Niagara: IROQUOIS NATIONS. ENGLISH NAMES. FRENCH NAMES. Nundawaeona ) Seneca Tsonnontouans Great hill people )