Indians held themselves to be mythologically connected--the bear, wolf,
deer, porcupine, snake, hawk, large tortoise and small tortoise. Each clan
was more numerous in some towns than in others, as it was natural that
near kindreds should cluster together.

"The five Iroquois nations also had eight clans.... The Iroquois league is
spoken of in their Book of Rites as kanasta-tsi-koma, 'the great
framework' and the large, bent frame-poles of their council-house, the
exact original shape of which is not known, were named kan-asta."

An examination of the signs woven in the famous wampum belts of the Hurons
and Iroquois reveals some curious facts.

One of these treaty belts, described by Horatio Hale, commemorates an
alliance formed between four nations. It exhibits four squares (fig. 54,
_a_) "which indicate, in the Indian hieroglyphic system, either towns or
tribes with their territory."(49) This mode of representing a nation is of
utmost interest, not only because it coincides with the Maya conception of
"the quadrated" earth but because it also reveals that, in North America,
the Indians associated a tribal organization with a quadriform. What is
more, an older belt, which is unfortunately incomplete, exhibits a central
oval (fig. 54, _b_) between a bird and a quadruped and three crosses with
a circle uniting their branches. The cross and circle, being a native
symbol for "an integral state," as definitely proven by the Maya map,
justifies the suggestion that this symbol on the wampum belt may have had
the significance of "nation" and central government. It is remarkable that
the Iroquois central capital, Ho-che-laga, can be analyzed in the Maya
tongue, as meaning five=_ho_, tree=_che_ or _hoch_=vase (symbol of centre)
whilst the terminal _laga_ might possibly be a form of _lacan_=banner, an
object so frequently associated with names of towns in Mexico, where it
yields the sound pan and means on or above something.

[Illustration.]

Figure 54.

It will be interesting and important to learn what "Hochelaga" means in
the Iroquois language. The resemblance between the Maya and Iroquois
symbols for nation and tribal territory and of the names for capital might
even be overlooked and treated as a coincidence merely, if the Iroquois
name for the confederacy, kan-asta-tsik-o-ma did not also begin with the
word kan, the Maya for four and for serpent. The same p