These remarkable social and domestic conditions were common to the American Indians under the maternal system. The direct influence of women, as directors through the men, is a circumstance of much interest. Among the Senecas, an Iroquoian tribe with the complete maternal family, the authority was very certainly in the hands of the women. Morgan quotes an account of their family system, given by the Rev. Ashur Wright for many years a resident among the Senecas, and familiar with their language and customs. “As to their family system, it is probable that one clan predominated (in the houses), the women taking in husbands, however, from other clans, and sometimes for novelty, some of their sons bringing in their young wives, until they felt brave enough to leave their mothers. Usually the female portion ruled the house, and were doubtless clannish enough about it. The stores were in common, but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too shiftless to do his share of the providing. No matter how many children or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at any time be ordered to pack up his blanket and budge, and after such orders it would not be healthful for him to attempt to disobey; the house would be too hot for him, and unless saved by the intercession of some aunt or grandmother, he must retreat to his own clan, or, as was often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other. The women were the great power among the clans as everywhere else. They did not hesitate, when occasion required, to ‘knock off the horns,’ as it was technically called, from the head of a chief and send him back to the ranks of the warrior. The original nomination of the chief also always rested with them.” Mr. Morgan affirms his acceptance of the Indian women’s authority, and says, after quoting this passage: “The mother-right and gynæcocracy among the Iroquois here plainly indicated is not over-drawn. The mothers and their children, as we have seen, were of the same _gens_, and to them the household belonged. The position of the mother was eminently favourable to her influence in the household, and tended to strengthen the maternal bond.”[51] [51] _Houses and House-Life of American Aborigines_, pp. 65-66.