their language and customs:

As to their family system, when occupying the old log houses,
it is probable that some one clan predominated, the women
taking in husbands, however, from the other clans, and
sometimes for novelty, some of their sons bringing in their
young wives until they felt brave enough to leave their
mothers. Usually the female portion ruled the house, and were
doubtless clannish enough about it. The stores were in common,
but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too shiftless
to do his share of the providing. No matter how many children
or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at any
time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge, and after
such orders it would not be healthful for him to attempt to
disobey; the house would become too hot for him, and, unless
saved by the intercession of some aunt or grandmother, he must
retreat to his own clan, or, as was often done, go and start
a new matrimonial alliance in some other. The women were the
great power among the clans as everywhere else. They did not
hesitate, when occasion required, to "knock off the horns," so
it was technically called, from the head of a chief and send
him back to the ranks of the warriors. The original nomination
of the chiefs, also, always rested with them.[98]

Traces of the maternal system are everywhere found on the American
continent, and in some regions it is still in force. McGee says of the
Seri stock of the southwest coast, now reduced to a single tribe, that
the claims of a suitor are pressed by his female relatives, and, if
the suit is favorably regarded by the mother and uncles of the girl,
the suitor is provisionally installed in the house, without purchase
price and presents. He is then expected to show his worthiness of a
permanent relation by demonstrating his ability as a provider, and by
showing himself an implacable foe to aliens. He must support all the
female relatives of his bride's family by the products of his skill
and industry in hunting and fishing for a year. He is the general
protector of the girl's family, and especially of the girl, whose
bower and pelican-skin couch he shares, "not as husband, but as
continent companion," for a year. If all goes well, he is then
permanently received as "consort-guest," and his children are added
to the clan of his mother-in-law.[99] With few exceptions, desc