Meridianal Lines

From "Bulletin of the New York State Museum", Issues 32-34:

"'A boundary line would seem at first to be a difficult problem in Indian geography. But a peculiar custom of our predecessors has divested this subject of much of its embarrassment, and enabled us to ascertain with considerable certainty the territorial limits of the nations of the league. The Iroquois rejected all natural boundaries, and substituted meridianal lines. This appears to have resulted from the custom of establishing themselves upon both banks of the streams upon which they resided. . . Inland lakes were never divided by a boundary line; but the line itself was so deflected, that the entire circuit of each lake might be possessed by a single nation. The natural limits which rivers and lakes might furnish having been thus disregarded, and straight lines substituted, the inquiry is freed from some of its difficulties.'" [emphasis added]

Link to the Google book is here: Bulletin of the New York State Museum, February, 1900