[Ebon]

Originally Posted by SoNotHer

One passage from Zinn's great work available online at

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html

"In the villages of the Iroquois, land was owned in common and worked in common. Hunting was done together, and the catch was divided among the members of the village. Houses were considered common property and were shared by several families. The concept of private ownership of land and homes was foreign to the Iroquois. A French Jesuit priest who encountered them in the 1650s wrote: 'No poorhouses are needed among them, because they are neither mendicants nor paupers.. . . Their kindness, humanity and courtesy not only makes them liberal with what they have, but causes them to possess hardly anything except in common.

Women were important and respected in Iroquois society. Families were matrilineal. That is, the family line went down through the female members, whose husbands joined the family, while sons who married then joined their wives' families. Each extended family lived in a 'long house.' When a woman wanted a divorce, she set her husband's things outside the door."

I know women that sets (throws) her husbands things outside the door now but they don't get to have a divorce. Thanks for the info!