The Redskin clan is composed of all the families reputed to be related to each other; it is a little republic having the right to the service of all the women for the cultivation of the soil, and of all the men for the chase, war, and _vendettas_. It is to the woman that the wigwam or family dwelling belongs, as well as all the objects possessed by the family, and the whole is transmitted by heritage, not to the son, but to the eldest daughter or to the nearest maternal relative,[904] sometimes to the brother of the deceased woman. Nevertheless, this heritage must be understood in the sense of a simple usufruct. It was the maternal clan in reality who was the proprietor, and none of the members of the community could seriously alienate the social property. The husband alone, in most of the tribes, had no right over the goods or over the children; they all remained in the maternal clan;[905] it was maternal filiation which regulated the name, the rank, and the hereditary rights in the clan.[906] A sort of communism reigned there. All the provisions, whether they were the produce of the soil, of the chase, or of fishing, were placed in public storehouses, under the control of an aged matron; and if it ever happened that a family had exhausted its provisions, another family immediately came to its aid.[907] But maternal filiation was, or is, in force even where the clans did not live in common houses, as we find it still among the Mohicans, the Delawares, the Narrangasetts, the Pequots, the Wyandots, the Missouris, the Minnitaris, the Crows, the Creeks, the Chickasaws, the Cherokees, etc. With the Iroquois and the Hurons, the father, says Charlevoix, was almost a stranger to his children. “Among the Hurons,” continues the same observer, “dignity and succession are inherited through the women. It is the son of the sister who succeeds, and in default of him the next relative in the female line.”[908] “With these peoples,” says Lafitau, “marriages are arranged in such a way that the husband and wife do not leave their own family to establish a family and a cabin independently. Each one remains at home, and the children born of these marriages belong to the families that have produced them, and are counted as members of the family and cabin of the mother, and not at all as belonging to those of the father. The possessions of the husband do not go to his wife’s cabin, to which he is himself a stranger; and in his wife’s cabin the daughters are heirs in preference to the males, who have nothing there but mere subsistence.”[909] “Besides this,” continues Lafitau, “the wife’s cabin has rights over the product of the husband’s, hunting; all of this must be contributed during the first year, and a half only afterwards.”[910]