All the members of an Iroquois gens were personally free, and they were bound to defend each other’s freedom; they were equal in privileges and in personal rights, the sachem and chiefs claiming no superiority; and they were a brotherhood bound together by the ties of kin. Liberty, equality, and fraternity, though never formulated, were cardinal principles of the gens. These facts are material because the gens was the unit of a social and governmental system, the foundation upon which Indian society was organized.... At the epoch of European discovery the American Indian tribes generally were organized in gentes with descent in the female line. The gens was the basis of the phratry, of the tribe, and of the confederacy of tribes.[107] [107] Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 85. From the foregoing it would seem that the gens—the earliest organization of society of which we have any accurate knowledge—was founded on the “mother-right” or on the supremacy of women. We are assured that the gentile organization is not confined to the Latin, Grecian, and Sanskrit-speaking tribes, but that it has been found “in other branches of the Aryan family of nations, in the Semitic, Uralian, and Turanian families, among the tribes of Africa and Australia, and of the American aborigines.”[108] [108] _Ibid._, p. 64. A tribe was composed of several gentes, the chiefs of which formed the council. This council was invested with the power to declare war and to regulate terms of peace, to receive embassies and make alliances; it was in fact authorized to perform all the governmental functions of the tribe. The duties performed by the council of chiefs may be regarded as the first attempt at representative government. In process of time, as the affairs of the tribe became more complicated, a need arose for a recognized head, one who when the council was not in session could lead in the adjustment of matters pertaining to the general interest of the group. In response to this demand, one of the sachems was invested with a slight degree of authority over the other chiefs. Hence arose the military chieftain of the Latter Status of barbarism. That the powers delegated to the incumbent of this office differed widely from those of a modern monarch, is shown in the fact that as he had been elected by the members of the group he could by them be deposed. We have seen that the powers exercised by sachem and chief were alike transmitted through women. The mother is the natural guardian of the family; so soon therefore as the actions of the leaders of the group were not in accord with those principles of equality and justice which had characterized society since its organization, they were deposed, or, as in the case of the Senecas described by Ashur Wright, they had their “horns knocked off” through the influence of women.