Mr. Parkman says again, in the work above cited, page 9, "But the main stay of the Iroquois polity was the system of _totemship_. It was this which gave the structure its elastic strength; and but for this, a mere confederacy of jealous and warlike tribes must soon have been rent asunder by shocks from without, or discord from within. At some early period the Iroquois must have formed an individual nation; for the whole people, irrespective of their separation into tribes, consisted of eight totemic clans; and the members of each clan, to what nation soever they belonged, were mutually bound to one another by those close ties of fraternity which mark this singular institution. Thus the five nations of the confederacy were bound together by an eight-fold band; and to this hour their slender remnants cling to one another with invincible tenacity."