totem is different from their own. A wolf or turtle male cannot marry a wolf or turtle female. There is an interdict of consanguinity. By this custom the purity of blood is preserved, while the tie of relationship between the clans themselves is strengthened or enlarged. But by far the most singular principle connected with totems, the sign manual of alliance, is the limitation of descent exclusively to the line of the female. Owing to this prohibition, a chieftain’s son cannot succeed him in office, but in case of his death, the right of descent being in the chief’s mother, he would be succeeded not by one of his male children, but by his brother;[49] or failing in this, by the son of his sister, or by some direct, however remote, descendant of the maternal line. Thus he might be succeeded by his own grandson, by a daughter, but not by a son. It is in this way that the line of chieftainships is continually deflected or refreshed, and family dynasties broken up. [49] Thus Hendrick, who fell at the battle of Lake George, in 1755, was succeeded, in the Mohawk canton, by his brother Abraham, and not by his son. While the law of descent is fully recognized, the free will of the female to choose a husband, from any of the other seven clans, excluding only her own, is made to govern and determine the distribution of political power, and to fix the political character of the tribe. Another peculiarity may be here stated. The son of a chief’s daughter is necessarily destined to inherit the honors of the chieftainship; yet the validity of the claim must, on his reaching the proper age, be submitted to and recognized by a council of the whole canton. If approved, a day is appointed for the recognition, and he is formally installed into office. Incapacity is always, however, without exception, recognized as a valid objection to the approval of the council. Had this law of descent prevailed among the Jews, whose customs have been so often appealed to, in connection with our red race, neither David nor Solomon would ever have sat on the throne. It would be easy, did the purposes of this paper require it, to show by other references the futility of the proofs, derived from the supposed coincidence of customs, which have been brought forward with so much learning, and so little of the true spirit of research, to prove the descent of the American aborigines from that ancient and peculiar people. But if theorists have failed on this ground, what shall we say of that course of reasoning which lays much stress on the most slender evidences of nativity, in the instance of the great Mohawk sachem, to prove the superior chances of recurring talent in the line of hereditary descent, and the legitimacy of his actual claims to the chieftainship, on the score of paternal right?[50] Vide Appendix C., notes at Oneida Castle.