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Without entering upon a discussion of these works, this chapter will be confined to four principal questions: I. The house-life of the American aborigines, in the usages of which the Mound-Builders were necessarily involved. II. The probable center from which the Mound-Builders emigrated into these areas.

This tether of the faculties tends to make them accept present knowledge, and present things, as all that can be attained to. This is all there is nothing more is the iterated preaching of house-life. Remain; becontent; go round and round in one barren path, a little money, a little food and sleep, some ancient fables, old age and death.

The general view of the house-life and houses of the Indian tribes thus far presented will tend to strengthen the hypothesis about to be stated concerning the earth-works of the Mound-Builders. Apart from the explanation that the long-houses of the Northern Tribes and the joint-tenement house of the Sedentary Indians are capable of affording, they are wholly inexplicable.

It is the most deadly the most fatal poison of the mind. No such casuistry has ever for a moment held me, but still, if permitted, the constant routine of house-life, the same work, the same thought in the work, the little circumstances regularly recurring, will dull the keenest edge of thought. By my daily pilgrimage, I escaped from it back to the sun.

The presence of large households is fully shown as the rule in their house-life. This tendency to aggregation in groups, for subsistence and for mutual protection, reveals the weakness of the single family in the presence of the hardships of life. Communism in living was very plainly a necessity of their condition.

Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 62. Also Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines. Regarding the part taken by the women in the government, we have very remarkable testimony. Schoolcraft, in his elaborate study of the customs of the Indian tribes, states that the women had “a conservative power in the political deliberations.

It is lying beside the immortals, in-drawing the life of the ocean, the earth, and the sun. I want to be always in company with these, with earth, and sun, and sea, and stars by night. The pettiness of house-life chairs and tables and the pettiness of observances, the petty necessity of useless labour, useless because productive of nothing, chafe me the year through.

In summer the place is a garden with a house in the middle; in winter a house surrounded by shrubberies. The study in one way and the morning-room in another are the respective pivots of the house. And round these two rooms the two sections of the house-life tranquilly revolve.

Two things I need of thee: the first and most, to be put out of the castle privily betimes in the morning when nought is stirring; the second, to have my palfrey awaiting me somewhat anigh the gate, so that I may not have to go afoot: for I am become soft and feeble with all this house-life.

The position of the mother was eminently favourable to her influence in the household, and tended to strengthen the maternal bond.” Houses and House-Life of American Aborigines, pp. 65-66. It is important to note that among the Iroquois polygamy is not permitted, nor does it appear ever to be practised.