picturesque name of the Long House, for their confederation
resembled, as it were, the long wooden houses that held
the families together.

All this shows that the superiority of the Iroquois over
their enemies lay in organization. In this they were
superior even to their kinsmen the Hurons. All Indian
tribes kept women in a condition which we should think
degrading. The Indian women were drudges; they carried
the burdens, and did the rude manual toil of the tribe.
Among the Iroquois, however, women were not wholly
despised; sometimes, if of forceful character, they had
great influence in the councils of the tribe. Among the
Hurons, on the other hand, women were treated with contempt
or brutal indifference. The Huron woman, worn out with
arduous toil, rapidly lost the brightness of her youth.
At an age when the women of a higher culture are still
at the height of their charm and attractiveness the woman
of the Hurons had degenerated into a shrivelled hag,
horrible to the eye and often despicable in character.
The inborn gentleness of womanhood had been driven from
her breast by ill-treatment. Not even the cruelest of
the warriors surpassed the unhallowed fiendishness of
the withered squaw in preparing the torments of the stake
and in shrieking her toothless exultation beside the
torture fire.

Where women are on such a footing as this it is always
ill with the community at large. The Hurons were among
the most despicable of the Indians in their manners. They