the Five Nations prior to the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht. The woods were deemed unsafe for travelers and therefore he was ordered to join the Iroquois on the south shore of the St. Lawrence valley in Sault St. Louis, also known as Kahnawake. Sault St. Louis already shared a great tradition with both the members of his order and the Iroquois by the time Lafitau arrived. He noticed the importance of women in Iroquois society, the universality of marriage as an institution, age grading, the classificatory system of relationship, and the pulse of Indian politics in the town council. Lafitau also contributed to existing scholarship on the Iroquois long-house; he details the rules of residence and social organization. Lafitau's observations provide a greater understanding of Iroquois kinship and exogamy. Comparative methodology Lafitau is considered the first of the modern ethnographers and a precursor of scientific ethnology for his work on the Iroquois. He developed a model of studying peoples that involved describing existing cultures on their own terms—not in comparison to European society. He distinguished generic and specific traits, transforming the "generic savage" into specific tribal groups. He explained that "only from specific identities can genetic relations be inferred." Presuppositions Lafitau's comparative method (method of reciprocal illumination) rests on his "system" which is a compendium of his theoretical presupposition. He believed that man was created equal by God and was given a set of divine moral principles. These principles were gradually violated due to the inherited sinfulness of man—a consequence of the penalty of Original Sin. All men originally shared one religion with one God but over time people migrated to separate margins of the earth where they then lost touch with the values and traditions of this one "true religion" and culture. Therefore, Lafitau believed in the "psychic unity of mankind" and the doctrine of primitive monotheism. Lafitau strove to find traces of this degenerated "true faith", of which Christianity was the highest form, among the Native Americans. Lafitau's version of these theories differed from that of his predecessors and contemporaries. Pierre Daniel Huet, for example, believed that the pagan gods and goddesses dated back to Moses and Zipporah. Lafitau was aware of this and he mentions Huet in his work. Nevertheless, for Lafitau, this theory was flawed and vulnerable to the attacks of the atheists who claimed that religion was the invention of man and the