Note 264 — APPENDIX

In a speech made to governor Clinton, in 1788, by Domine Peter, a native orator, on the part of the Senecas and Cayugas, the authority of the female chieftains is acknowledged, by the speaker, and thus apologized. “Our ancestors considered it a great offence to reject the counsels of their women, particularly (that) of the female governesses (or chieftains). They were esteemed the mistresses of the soil (as they solely attended to the labours of agriculture). Who, said they, bring us into being? Who cultivate our lands, kindle our fires (or administer food to the calls of hunger), but our women? &c.” Governor Clinton’s Discourse, December, 1811, App. p. 80.

As the mothers of the slain in battle, the women had the controul of prisoners, either to adopt or destroy them at will, and their interposition to procure peace, and stay hostilities, was universally acknowledged. We have a remarkable example of this in the history of the Delawares, who, at the instigation of the Iroquois, became a nation of mediators, and were thus said to have assumed one of the distinguishing functions of the female sex, and were, consequently, debarred from active war and masculine distinction. See Heckewelder’s History of the Delawares, in the report of the Historical Committee of the American Philosophical Society.—Nuttall.