The council that administered affairs of the league was composed of nearly fifty chiefs or sachems, all of equal rank, and all selected from the maternal families. They assembled at irregular intervals, whenever necessity arose, to arbitrate on intertribal problems, to receive embassies, and to decide on peace or war with outside tribes. Being federal officials, they possessed no legal authority in matters that concerned only a single tribe or clan...The method of selecting a sachem was peculiar. His title was hereditary in some maternal family, so that the choice of a representative was limited. The matron of that family selected a candidate after consultation with other women of her family and clan; her selection was ratified, first by the sachems of the same phratry, then by the sachems of the opposite phratry, and finally by the entire council of the league, which called a great intertribal festival to install him in office. The same matron had power to depose him again if he failed to uphold the dignity of his position. - The Iroquois, a Study in Cultural Evolution Based on this excerpt, Iroquois women were hunter-gatherers held considerable political power practiced polygamy lived in isolation from men
