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The Iroquois Book of Rites

by Horatio Hale · English · Gutenberg #8567 · 410,202 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Iroquois Book of Rites

Author: Horatio Hale


        
Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8567]
                Most recently updated: December 15, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8567

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Thomas Hutchinson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IROQUOIS BOOK OF RITES ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Thomas Hutchinson and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team






BRINTON'S LIBRARY OF ABORIGINAL AMERICAN LITERATURE.

NUMBER II.




THE IROQUOIS BOOK OF RITES.

EDITED BY HORATIO HALE; M.A.,

AUTHOR OF "THE ETHNOGRAPHY AND PHILOLOGY OF THE U.S. EXPLORING
EXPEDITION," ETC.





PREFACE.

The aboriginal composition now presented to the public has some peculiar
claims on the attention of scholars. As a record, if we accept the
chronology of its custodians,--which there is no reason to question,--it
carries back the authentic history of Northern America to a date
anterior by fifty years to the arrival of Columbus. Further than this,
the plain and credible tradition of the Iroquois, confirmed by much
other evidence, links them with the still earlier Alligewi, or
"Moundbuilders," as conquerors with the conquered. Thus the annals of
this portion of the continent need no longer begin with the landing of
the first colonists, but can go back, like those of Mexico, Yucatan and
Peru, to a storied past of singular interest.

The chief value of the Book of Rites, however, is ethnological, and is
found in the light which it casts on the political and social life, as
well as on the character and capacity of the people to whom it belongs.
We see in them many of the traits which Tacitus discerned in our
ancestors of the German forests, along with some qualities of a higher
cast than any that he has delineated. The love of peace, the sentiment
of human brotherhood, the strong social and domestic affections, the
respect for law, and the reverence for ancestral greatness, which are
apparent in this Indian record and in the historical events which
illustrate it, will strike most readers as new and unexpected
developments.

The circumstances attending the composition of this record and its
recent discovery are fully detailed in the introductory chapters. There
also, and in the Notes and Appendix, such further explanations are given
as the various allusions and occasional obscurities of the Indian work
have seemed to require. It is proper to state that the particulars
comprised in the following pages respecting the traditions, the usages,
and the language of the Iroquois (except such as are expressly stated to
have been derived from books), have been gathered by the writer in the
course of many visits made, during several years past, to their
Reservations in Canada and New York. As a matter of justice, and also as
an evidence of the authenticity of these particulars, the names of the
informants to whom he has been principally indebted are given in the
proper places, with suitable acknowledgment of the assistance received
from each. He ventures to hope that in the information thus obtained, as
well as in the Book of Rite's itself, the students of history and of the
science of man will find some new material of permanent interest and
value.





CONTENTS.

MAP

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I. THE HURON-IROQUOIS NATIONS

CHAPTER II. THE LEAGUE AND ITS FOUNDERS

CHAPTER III. THE BOOK OF RITES

CHAPTER IV. THE CONDOLING COUNCIL.--CLANS AND CLASSES

CHAPTER V. THE CONDOLENCE AND THE INSTALLATION

CHAPTER VI. THE LAWS OF THE LEAGUE

CHAPTER VII. HISTORICAL TRADITIONS

CHAPTER VIII. THE IROQUOIS CHARACTER

CHAPTER IX. THE IROQUOIS POLICY

CHAPTER X. THE IROQUOIS LANGUAGE


THE BOOK OF RITES

THE CANIENGA BOOK

THE ONONDAGA BOOK

NOTES ON THE CANIENGA BOOK

NOTES ON THE ONONDAGA BOOK


APPENDIX

NOTE A.--Names of the Huron-Iroquois Nations

NOTE B.--Meaning of _Ohio, Ontario, Onontio, Rawennito_

NOTE C.--The Era of the Confederacy

NOTE D.--The Hiawatha Myths

NOTE E.--The Iroquois Towns

NOTE F.--The Pre-Aryan Race in Europe and America


GLOSSARY

INDEX



[Illustration: THE HURON-IROQUOIS NATIONS AND THE SURROUNDING TRIBES.
A.D. 1535 TO 1780.]





INTRODUCTION.




CHAPTER I.

THE HURON-IROQUOIS NATIONS.


At the outset of the sixteenth century, when the five tribes or
"nations" of the Iroquois confederacy first became known to European
explorers, they were found occupying the valleys and uplands of northern
New York, in that picturesque and fruitful region which stretches
westward from the head-waters of the Hudson to the Genesee. The Mohawks,
or Caniengas--as they should properly be called--possessed the Mohawk
River, and covered Lake George and Lake Champlain with their flotillas
of large canoes, managed with the boldness and skill which, hereditary
in their descendants, make them still the best boatmen of the North
American rivers. West of the Caniengas the Oneidas held the small river
and lake which bear their name, the first in that series of beautiful
lakes, united by interlacing streams, which seemed to prefigure in the
features of nature the political constitution of the tribes who
possessed them. West of the Oneidas, the imperious Onondagas, the
central and, in some respects, the ruling nation of the League,
possessed the two lakes of Onondaga and Skeneateles, together with the
common outlet of this inland lake system, the Oswego River, to its issue
into Lake Ontario. Still proceeding westward, the lines of trail and
river led to the long and winding stretch of Lake Cayuga, about which
were clustered the towns of the people who gave their name to the lake;
and beyond them, over the wide expanse of hills and dales surrounding
Lakes Seneca and Canandaigua, were scattered the populous villages of
the Senecas, more correctly styled Sonontowanas or Mountaineers. Such
were the names and abodes of the allied nations, members of the
far-famed Kanonsionni, or League of United Households, who were destined
to become for a time the most notable and powerful community among the
native tribes of North America. [Footnote: See Appendix, note A, for the
origin and meaning of the names commonly given to the Iroquois nations.]

The region which has been described was not, however, the original seat
of those nations. They belonged to that linguistic family which is known
to ethnologists as the Huron-Iroquois stock. This stock comprised the
Hurons or Wyandots, the Attiwandaronks or Neutral Nation, the Iroquois,
the Eries, the Andastes or Conestogas, the Tuscaroras, and some smaller
bands. The tribes of this family occupied a long, irregular area of
inland territory, stretching from Canada to North Carolina. The northern
nations were all clustered about the great lakes; the southern bands
held the fertile valleys bordering the head-waters of the rivers which
flowed from the Allegheny mountains. The languages of all these tribes
showed a close affinity. There can be no doubt that their ancestors
formed one body, and, indeed, dwelt at one time (as has been well said
of the ancestors of the Indo-European populations), under one roof.
There was a Huron-Iroquois "family-pair," from which all these tribes
were descended. In what part of the world this ancestral household
resided is a question which admits of no reply, except from the merest
conjecture. But the evidence of language, so far as it has yet been
examined, seems to show that the Huron clans were the older members of
the group; and the clear and positive traditions of all the surviving
tribes, Hurons, Iroquois and Tuscaroras, point to the lower St. Lawrence
as the earliest known abode of their stock. [Footnote: See Cusick,
_History of the Six Nations_, p. 16; Colden, _Hist, of the Five
Nations_, p. 23; Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_, p. 5; J.V.H. Clark,
_Onondaga_, vol. I, p. 34; Peter D. Clarke, _Hist. of the Wyandots_. p.
I.]

Here the first explorer, Cartier, found Indians of this stock at
Hochelaga and Stadaconé, now the sites of Montreal and Quebec. Centuries
before his time, according to the native tradition, the ancestors of the
Huron-Iroquois family had dwelt in this locality, or still further east
and nearer to the river's mouth. As their numbers increased, dissensions
arose. The hive swarmed, and band after band moved off to the west and
south.

As they spread, they encountered people of other stocks, with whom they
had frequent wars. Their most constant and most dreaded enemies were the
tribes of the Algonkin family, a fierce and restless people, of northern
origin, who everywhere surrounded them. At one period, however, if the
concurrent traditions of both Iroquois and Algonkins can be believed,
these contending races for a time stayed their strife, and united their
forces in an alliance against a common and formidable foe. This foe was
the nation, or perhaps the confederacy, of the Alligewi or Talligewi,
the semi-civilized "Mound-builders" of the Ohio Valley, who have left
their name to the Allegheny river and mountains, and whose vast
earthworks are still, after half-a-century of study, the perplexity of
archaeologists. A desperate warfare ensued, which lasted about a hundred
years, and ended in the complete overthrow and destruction, or
expulsion, of the Alligewi. The survivors of the conquered people fled
southward, and are supposed to have mingled with the tribes which
occupied the region extending from the Gulf of Mexico northward to the
Tennessee river and the southern spurs of the Alleghenies. Among these
tribes, the Choctaws retained, to recent times, the custom of raising
huge mounds of earth for religious purposes and for the sites of their
habitations, a custom which they perhaps learned from the Alligewi; and
the Cherokees are supposed by some to have preserved in their name
(Tsalaki) and in their language indications of an origin derived in part
from the same people. Their language, which shows, in its grammar and
many of its words, clear evidence of affinity with the Iroquois, has
drawn the greater portion of its vocabulary from some foreign source.
This source is conjectured to have been the speech of the Alligewi. As
the Cherokee tongue is evidently a mixed language, it is reasonable to
suppose that the Cherokees are a mixed people, and probably, like the
English, an amalgamation of conquering and conquered races. [Footnote:
This question has been discussed by the writer in a paper on "Indian
Migrations as evidenced by Language," read before the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, at their Montreal Meeting,
in August, 1882, and published in the American Antiquarian for January
and April, 1883.]

The time which has elapsed since the overthrow of the Alligewi is
variously estimated. The most probable conjecture places it at a period
about a thousand years before the present day. It was apparently soon
after their expulsion that the tribes of the Huron-Iroquois and the
Algonkin stocks scattered themselves over the wide region south of the
Great Lakes, thus left open to their occupancy. Our concern at present
is only with the first-named family. The native tradition of their
migrations has been briefly related by a Tuscarora Indian, David Cusick,
who had acquired a sufficient education to become a Baptist preacher,
and has left us, in his "Sketches of Ancient History of the Six
Nations," [Footnote: Published at Lewiston, N. Y., in 1825, and
reprinted at Lockport, in 1848.] a record of singular value. His
confused and imperfect style, the English of a half-educated foreigner,
his simple faith in the wildest legends, and his absurd chronology, have
caused the real worth of his book, as a chronicle of native traditions,
to be overlooked. Wherever the test of linguistic evidence, the best of
all proofs in ethnological questions, can be applied to his statements
relative to the origin and connection of the tribes, they are invariably
confirmed. From his account, from the evidence of language, and from
various corroborating indications, the course of the migrations may, it
is believed, be traced with tolerable accuracy. Their first station or
starting point, on the south side of the Lakes, was at the mouth of the
Oswego river. Advancing to the southeast the emigrants struck the Hudson
river, and, according to Cusick's story, followed its course southward
to the ocean. Here a separation took place. A portion remained, and kept
on their way toward the south; but the "main company," repelled by the
uninviting soil and the turbulent waste of waves, and remembering the
attractive region of valleys, lakes, and streams through which they had
passed, retraced their steps northward till they reached the Mohawk
river. Along this stream and the upper waters of the Hudson they made
their first abode; and here they remained until, as their historian
quaintly and truly records, "their language was altered." The Huron
speech became the Iroquois tongue, in the form in which it is spoken by
the Caniengas, or Mohawks. In Iroquois tradition, and in the
constitution of their league, the Canienga nation ranks as the "eldest
brother" of the family. A comparison of the dialects proves the
tradition to be well founded. The Canienga language approaches nearest
to the Huron, and is undoubtedly the source from which all the other
Iroquois dialects are derived. Cusick states positively that the other
"families," as he styles them, of the Iroquois household, leaving the
Mohawks in their original abode, proceeded step by step to the westward.
The Oneidas halted at their creek, the Onondagas at their mountain, the
Cayugas at their lake, and the Senecas or Sonontowans, the Great Hill
people, at a lofty eminence which rises south of the Canandaigua lake.
In due time, as he is careful to record, the same result happened as had
occurred with the Caniengas. The language of each canton "was altered;"
yet not so much, he might have added, but that all the tribes could
still hold intercourse, and comprehend one another's speech.

A wider isolation and, consequently, a somewhat greater change of
language, befell the "sixth family." Pursuing their course to the west
they touched Lake Erie, and thence, turning to the southeast, came to
the Allegheny river. Cusick, however, does not know it by this name. He
calls it the Ohio,--in his uncouth orthography and with a locative
particle added, the Ouau-we-yo-ka,--which, he says, means "a principal
stream, now Mississippi." This statement, unintelligible as at the first
glance it seems, is strictly accurate. The word Ohio undoubtedly
signified, in the ancient Iroquois speech, as it still means in the
modern Tuscarora, not "beautiful river", but "great river." [Footnote:
See Appendix, note B.] It was so called as being the main stream which
receives the affluents of the Ohio valley. In the view of the Iroquois,
this "main stream" commences with what we call the Allegheny river,
continues in what we term the Ohio, and then flows on in what we style
the Mississippi,--of which, in their view, the upper Mississippi is
merely an affluent. In Iroquois hydrography, the Ohio--the great river
of the ancient Alligewi domain--is the central stream to which all the
rivers of the mighty West converge.

This stream the emigrants now attempted to cross. They found, according
to the native annalist, a rude bridge in a huge grape-vine which trailed
its length across the stream. Over this a part of the company passed,
and then, unfortunately, the vine broke. The residue, unable to cross,
remained on the hither side, and became afterwards the enemies of those
who had passed over. Cusick anticipates that his story of the grape-vine
may seem to some incredible; but he asks, with amusing simplicity, "why
more so than that the Israelites should cross the Red Sea on dry land?"
That the precise incident, thus frankly admitted to be of a miraculous
character, really took place, we are not required to believe. But that
emigrants of the Huron-Iroquois stock penetrated southward along the
Allegheny range, and that some of them remained near the river of that
name, is undoubted fact. Those who thus remained were known by various
names, mostly derived from one root--Andastes, Andastogues, Conestogas,
and the like--and bore a somewhat memorable part in Iroquois and
Pennsylvanian history. Those who continued their course beyond the river
found no place sufficiently inviting to arrest their march until they
arrived at the fertile vales which spread, intersected by many lucid
streams, between the Roanoke and the Neuse rivers. Here they fixed their
abode, and became the ancestors of the powerful Tuscarora nation. In the
early part of the eighteenth century, just before its disastrous war
with the colonies, this nation, according to the Carolina surveyor,
Lawson, numbered fifteen towns, and could set in the field a force of
twelve hundred warriors.

The Eries, who dwelt west of the Senecas, along the southern shore of
the lake which now retains their name, were according to Cusick, an
offshoot of the Seneca tribe; and there is no reason for doubting the
correctness of his statement. After their overthrow by the Iroquois, in
1656, many of the Eries were incorporated with the ancestral nation, and
contributed, with other accessions from the Hurons and the
Attiwandaronks, to swell its numbers far beyond those of the other
nations of the confederacy.

To conclude this review of the Huron-Iroquois group, something further
should be said about the fortunes of the parent tribe, or rather
congeries of tribes,--for the Huron household, like the Iroquois, had
become divided into several septs. Like the Iroquois, also, they have
not lacked an annalist of their own race. A Wyandot Indian, Peter
Doyentate Clarke, who emigrated with the main body of his people to the
Indian Territory, and afterwards returned for a time to the remnant of
his tribe dwelling near Amherstburg, in Canada, published in 1870 a
small volume entitled "Origin and Traditional History of the Wyandots."
[Footnote: Printed by Hunter, Rose & Co., of Toronto.] The English
education of the writer, like that of the Tuscarora historian, was
defective; and it is evident that his people, in their many wanderings,
had lost much of their legendary lore. But the fact that they resided in
ancient times near the present site of Montreal, in close vicinity to
the Iroquois (whom he styles, after their largest tribe, the Senecas),
is recorded as a well-remembered portion of their history. The flight of
the Wyandots to the northwest is declared to have been caused by a war
which broke out between them and the Iroquois. This statement is opposed
to the common opinion, which ascribes the expulsion of the Hurons from
their eastern abode to the hostility of the Algonkins. It is, however,
probably correct; for the Hurons retreated into the midst of the
Algonkin tribes, with whom they were found by Champlain to be on terms
of amity and even of alliance, while they were engaged in a deadly war
with the Iroquois. The place to which they withdrew was a nook in the
Georgian Bay, where their strongly palisaded towns and well-cultivated
fields excited the admiration of the great French explorer. Their object
evidently was to place as wide a space as possible between themselves
and their inveterate enemies. Unfortunately, as is well known, this
precaution, and even the aid of their Algonkin and French allies, proved
inadequate to save them. The story of their disastrous overthrow, traced
by the masterly hand of Parkman, is one of the most dismal passages of
aboriginal history.

The only people of this stock remaining to be noticed are the
Attiwandaronks, or Neutral Nation. They dwelt south of the Hurons, on
the northern borders of Lakes Erie and Ontario. They had, indeed, a few
towns beyond those lakes, situated east of the Niagara river, between
the Iroquois and the Eries. They received their name of Neutrals from
the fact that in the war between the Iroquois and the Hurons they
remained at peace with both parties. This policy, however, did not save
them from the fate which overtook their Huron friends. In the year 1650
the Iroquois set upon them, destroyed their towns, and dispersed the
inhabitants, carrying off great numbers of them, as was their custom, to
be incorporated with their own population. Of their language we only
know that it differed but slightly from the Huron. [Footnote: "Our
Hurons call the Neutral Nation Attiwandaronk, meaning thereby 'People of
a speech a little different.'"--_Relation_ of 1641, p. 72. Bruyas, in
his "_Iroquois Root-words_" gives _gawenda_ (or _gawenna_), speech, and
_gaRONKwestare_, confusion of voices.] Whether they were an offshoot
from the Hurons or from the Iroquois is uncertain. It is not unlikely
that their separation from the parent stock took place earlier than that
of the Iroquois, and that they were thus enabled for a time to avoid
becoming embroiled in the quarrel between the two great divisions of
their race.




CHAPTER II.

THE LEAGUE AND ITS FOUNDERS.


How long the five kindred but independent tribes who were afterwards to
compose the Iroquois confederacy remained isolated and apart from one
another, is uncertain. That this condition endured for several centuries
is a fact which cannot be questioned. Tradition here is confirmed by the
evidence of language. We have good dictionaries of two of their
dialects, the Canienga (or Mohawk) and the Onondaga, compiled two
centuries ago by the Jesuit missionaries; and by comparing them with
vocabularies of the same dialects, as spoken at the present day, we can
ascertain the rate of change which prevails in their languages. Judging
by this test, the difference which existed between these two dialects in
1680 (when the Jesuit dictionaries were written) could hardly have
arisen in less than four hundred years; and that which exists between
them and the Tuscarora would demand a still longer time. Their
traditions all affirm--what we should be prepared to believe--that this
period was one of perpetual troubles. The tribes were constantly at war,
either among themselves, or with the neighboring nations of their own
and other stocks, Hurons, Andastes, Algonkins, Tuteloes, and even with
the distant Cherokees.

There are reasons for believing that attempts were made during this
period to combine the tribes, or some of them, in a federal alliance.
But if such connections were formed, they proved only temporary leagues,
which were dissolved when the dangers that had called them into being
had passed away. A leader of peculiar qualities, aided by favoring
circumstances, was able at last to bring about a more permanent union.
There is no exact chronology by which the date of this important event
can be ascertained; but the weight of evidence fixes it at about the
middle of the fifteenth century. [Footnote: The evidence on this point
is given in the Appendix, note C. It should be mentioned that some
portion of the following narrative formed part of a paper entitled "A
Lawgiver of the Stone Age," which was read at the Cincinnati meeting of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in August,
1882, and was published in the Proceedings of the meeting. The
particulars comprised in it were drawn chiefly from notes gathered
during many visits to the Reserve of the Six Nations, on the Grand
River, in Ontario, supplemented by information obtained in two visits to
the Onondaga Reservation, in the State of New York, near Syracuse. My
informants were the most experienced councillors, and especially the
"wampum-keepers," the official annalists of their people. Their names,
and some account of them, will be given in a subsequent chapter. It
should be mentioned that while the histories received at the two
localities were generally in close accord, thus furnishing a strong
proof of the correctness with which they have been handed down, there
were circumstances remembered at each place which had not been preserved
at the other. The Onondagas, as was natural, retained a fuller
recollection of the events which took place before the flight of
Hiawatha to the Caniengas; while the annalists of the latter tribe were
better versed in the subsequent occurrences attending the formation of
the League. These facts should be borne in mind by any inquirer who may
undertake to repeat or continue these investigations. When the
narratives varied, as they sometimes did in minor particulars, I have
followed that which seemed most in accordance with the general tenor of
the history and with the evidence furnished by the Book of Rites.]

At this time two great dangers, the one from without, the other from
within, pressed upon these tribes. The Mohegans, or Mohicans, a powerful
Algonkin people, whose settlements stretched along the Hudson river,
south of the Mohawk, and extended thence eastward into New England,
waged a desperate war against them. In this war the most easterly of the
Iroquois, the Caniengas and Oneidas, bore the brunt and were the
greatest sufferers. On the other hand, the two western nations, the
Senecas and Cayugas, had a peril of their own to encounter. The central
nation, the Onondagas, were then under the control of a dreaded chief,
whose name is variously given, Atotarho (or, with a prefixed particle,
Thatotarho), Watatotahro, Tadodaho, according to the dialect of the
speaker and the orthography of the writer. He was a man of great force
of character and of formidable qualities--haughty, ambitious, crafty and
bold--a determined and successful warrior, and at home, so far as the
constitution of an Indian tribe would allow, a stern and remorseless
tyrant. He tolerated no equal. The chiefs who ventured to oppose him
were taken off one after another by secret means, or were compelled to
flee for safety to other tribes. His subtlety and artifices had acquired
for him the reputation of a wizard. He knew, they say, what was going on
at a distance as well as if he were present; and he could destroy his
enemies by some magical art, while he himself was far away. In spite of
the fear which he inspired, his domination would probably not have been
endured by an Indian community, but for his success in war. He had made
himself and his people a terror to the Cayugas and the Senecas.
According to one account, he had subdued both of those tribes; but the
record-keepers of the present day do not confirm this statement, which
indeed is not consistent with the subsequent history of the
confederation.

The name Atotarho signifies "entangled." The usual process by which
mythology, after a few generations, makes fables out of names, has not
been wanting here. In the legends which the Indian story-fellers recount
in winter, about their cabin fires, Atotarho figures as a being of
preterhuman nature, whose head, in lieu of hair, is adorned with living
snakes. A rude pictorial representation shows him seated and giving
audience, in horrible state, with the upper part of his person enveloped
by these writhing and entangled reptiles. [Footnote: This picture and
some other equally grotesque illustrations, produced in a primitive
style of wood engraving, are prefixed to David Cusick's History of the
Six Nations. The artist to whom we owe them was probably the historian
himself. My accomplished friend, Mrs. E. A. Smith, whose studies have
thrown much light upon the mythology and language of the Iroquois
nations, and especially of the Tuscaroras, was fortunate enough to
obtain either the originals or early copies of these extraordinary
efforts of native art.] But the grave Councillors of the Canadian
Reservation, who recite his history as they have heard it from their
fathers at every installation of a high chief, do not repeat these
inventions of marvel-loving gossips, and only smile with good-humored
derision when they are referred to.

There was at this time among the Onondagas a chief of high rank, whose
name, variously written--Hiawatha, Hayenwatha, Ayonhwahtha,
Taoungwatha--is rendered, "he who seeks the wampum belt." He had made
himself greatly esteemed by his wisdom and his benevolence. He was now
past middle age. Though many of his friends and relatives had perished
by the machinations of Atotarho, he himself had been spared. The
qualities which gained him general respect had, perhaps, not been
without influence even on that redoubtable chief. Hiawatha had long
beheld with grief the evils which afflicted not only his own nation, but
all the other tribes about them, through the continual wars in which
they were engaged, and the misgovernment and miseries at home which
these wars produced. With much meditation he had elaborated in his mind
the scheme of a vast confederation which would ensure universal peace.
In the mere plan of a confederation there was nothing new. There are
probably few, if any, Indian tribes which have not, at one time or
another, been members of a league or confederacy. It may almost be said
to be their normal condition. But the plan which Hiawatha had evolved
differed from all others in two particulars. The system which he devised
was to be not a loose and transitory league, but a permanent government.
While each nation was to retain its own council and its management of
local affairs, the general control was to be lodged in a federal senate,
composed of representatives elected by each nation, holding office
during good behavior, and acknowledged as ruling chiefs throughout the
whole confederacy. Still further, and more remarkably, the confederation
was not to be a limited one. It was to be indefinitely expansible. The
avowed design of its proposer was to abolish war altogether. He wished
the federation to extend until all the tribes of men should be included
in it, and peace should everywhere reign. Such is the positive testimony
of the Iroquois themselves; and their statement, as will be seen, is
supported by historical evidence.

Hiawatha's first endeavor was to enlist his own nation in the cause. He
summoned a meeting of the chiefs and people of the Onondaga towns. The
summons, proceeding from a chief of his rank and reputation, attracted a
large concourse. "They came together," said the narrator, "along the
creeks, from all parts, to the general council-fire." [Footnote: The
narrator here referred to was the Onondaga chief, Philip Jones, known in
the council as Hanesehen (in Canienga, Enneserarenh), who, in October,
1875, with two other chiefs of high rank, and the interpreter, Daniel La
Fort, spent an evening in explaining to me the wampum records preserved
at "Onondaga Castle," and repeating the history of the formation of the
confederacy. The later portions of the narrative were obtained
principally from the chiefs of the Canadian Iroquois, as will be
hereafter explained.] But what effect the grand projects of the chief,
enforced by the eloquence for which he was noted, might have had upon
his auditors, could not be known. For there appeared among them a
well-known figure, grim, silent and forbidding, whose terrible aspect
overawed the assemblage. The unspoken displeasure of Atotarho was
sufficient to stifle all debate, and the meeting dispersed. This result,
which seems a singular conclusion of an Indian council--the most
independent and free-spoken of all gatherings--is sufficiently explained
by the fact that Atotarho had organized, among the more reckless
warriors of his tribe, a band of unscrupulous partisans, who did his
bidding without question, and took off by secret murder all persons
against whom he bore a grudge. The knowledge that his followers were
scattered through the assembly, prepared to mark for destruction those
who should offend him, might make the boldest orator chary of speech.
Hiawatha alone was undaunted. He summoned a second meeting, which was
attended by a smaller number, and broke up as before, in confusion, on
Atotarho's appearance. The unwearied reformer sent forth his runners a
third time; but the people were disheartened. When the day of the
council arrived, no one attended. Then, continued the narrator, Hiawatha
seated himself on the ground in sorrow. He enveloped his head in his
mantle of skins, and remained for a long time bowed down in grief and
thought. At length he arose and left the town, taking his course toward
the southeast. He had formed a bold design. As the councils of his own
nation were closed to him, he would have recourse to those of other
tribes. At a short distance from the town (so minutely are the
circumstances recounted) he passed his great antagonist, seated near a
well-known spring, stern and silent as usual. No word passed between the
determined representatives of war and peace; but it was doubtless not
without a sensation of triumphant pleasure that the ferocious war-chief
saw his only rival and opponent in council going into what seemed to be
voluntary exile. Hiawatha plunged into the forest; he climbed mountains;
he crossed a lake; he floated down the Mohawk river in a canoe. Many
incidents of his journey are told, and in this part of the narrative
alone some occurrences of a marvelous cast are related, even by the
official historians. Indeed, the flight of Hiawatha from Onondaga to the
country of the Caniengas is to the Five Nations what the flight of
Mohammed from Mecca to Medina is to the votaries of Islam. It is the
turning point of their history. In embellishing the narrative at this
point, their imagination has been allowed a free course. Leaving aside
these marvels, however, we need only refer here to a single incident,
which may well enough have been of actual occurrence. A lake which
Hiawatha crossed had shores abounding in small white shells. These he
gathered and strung upon strings, which he disposed upon his breast, as
a token to all whom he should meet that he came as a messenger of peace.
And this, according to one authority, was the origin of wampum, of which
Hiawatha was the inventor. That honor, however, is one which must be
denied to him. The evidence of sepulchral relics shows that wampum was
known to the mysterious Mound-builders, as well as in all succeeding
ages. Moreover, if the significance of white wampum-strings as a token
of peace had not been well known in his day, Hiawatha would not have
relied upon them as a means of proclaiming his pacific purpose.

Early one morning he arrived at a Canienga town, the residence of the
noted chief Dekanawidah, whose name, in point of celebrity, ranks in
Iroquois tradition with those of Hiawatha and Atotarho. It is probable
that he was known by reputation to Hiawatha, and not unlikely that they
were related. According to one account Dekanawidah was an Onondaga,
adopted among the Caniengas. Another narrative makes him a Canienga by
birth. The probability seems to be that he was the son of an Onondaga
father, who had been adopted by the Caniengas, and of a Canienga mother.
That he was not of pure Canienga blood is shown by the fact, which is
remembered, that his father had had successively three wives, one
belonging to each of the three clans, Bear, Wolf, and Tortoise, which
composed the Canienga nation. If the father had been of that nation
(Canienga), he would have belonged to one of the Canienga clans, and
could not then (according to the Indian law) have married into it. He
had seven sons, including Dekanawidah, who, with their families, dwelt
together in one of the "long houses" common in that day among the
Iroquois. These ties of kindred, together with this fraternal strength,
and his reputation as a sagacious councillor, gave Dekanawidah great
influence among his people. But, in the Indian sense, he was not the
leading chief. This position belonged to Tekarihoken (better known in
books as Tecarihoga), whose primacy as the first chief of the eldest
among the Iroquois nations was then, and is still, universally admitted.
Each nation has always had a head-chief, to whom belonged the hereditary
right and duty of lighting the council fire and taking the first place
in public meetings. But among the Indians, as in other communities,
hereditary rank and personal influence do not always, or indeed,
ordinarily, go together. If Hiawatha could gain over Dekanawidah to his
views, he would have done much toward the accomplishment of his
purposes.

In the early dawn he seated himself on a fallen trunk, near the spring
from which the inhabitants of the long house drew their water. Presently
the wife of one of the brothers came out with a vessel of elm-bark, and
approached the spring. Hiawatha sat silent and motionless. Something in
his aspect awed the woman, who feared to address him. She returned to
the house, and said to Dekanawidah, "A man, or a figure like a man, is
seated by the spring, having his breast covered with strings of white
shells." "It is a guest," said the chief to one of his brothers; "go and
bring him in. We will make him welcome." Thus Hiawatha and
Dekanawidah--first met. They found in each other kindred spirits. The
sagacity of the Canienga chief grasped at once the advantages of the
proposed plan, and the two worked together in perfecting it, and in
commending it to the people. After much discussion in council, the
adhesion of the Canienga nation was secured. Dekanawidah then dispatched
two of his brothers as ambassadors to the nearest tribe, the Oneidas, to
lay the project before them. The Oneida nation is deemed to be a
comparatively recent offshoot from the Caniengas. The difference of
language is slight, showing that their separation was much later than
that of the Onondagas. In the figurative speech of the Iroquois, the
Oneida is the son, and the Onondaga is the brother, of the Canienga.
Dekanawidah had good reason to expect that it would not prove difficult
to win the consent of the Oneidas to the proposed scheme. But delay and
deliberation mark all public acts of the Indians. The ambassadors found
the leading chief, Odatsehte, at his town on the Oneida creek. He
received their message in a friendly way, but--required time for his
people to consider it in council. "Come back in another day," he said to
the messengers. In the political speech of the Indians, a day is
understood to mean a year. The envoys carried back the reply to
Dekanawidah and Hiawatha, who knew that they could do nothing but wait
the prescribed time. After the lapse of a year, they repaired to the
place of meeting. The treaty which initiated the great league was then
and there ratified by the representatives of the Canienga and Oneida
nations. The name of Odatsehte means "the quiver-bearer;" and as
Atotarho, "the entangled," is fabled to have had his head wreathed with
snaky locks, and as Hiawatha, "the wampum-seeker," is represented to
have wrought shells into wampum, so the Oneida chief is reputed to have
appeared at this treaty bearing at his shoulder a quiver full of arrows.

The Onondagas lay next to the Oneidas. To them, or rather to their
terrible chief, the next application was made. The first meeting of
Atotarho and Dekanawidah is a notable event in Iroquois history. At a
later day, a native artist sought to represent it in an historical
picture, which has been already referred to. Atotarho is seated in
solitary and surly dignity, smoking a long pipe, his head and body
encircled with contorted and angry serpents. Standing before him are two
figures which cannot be mistaken. The foremost, a plumed and cinctured
warrior, depicted as addressing the Onondaga chief, holds in his right
hand, as a staff, his flint-headed spear, the ensign, it may be
supposed, which marks him as the representative of the Caniengas, or
"People of the Flint." Behind him another plumed figure bears in his
hand a bow with arrows, and at his shoulder a quiver. Divested of its
mythological embellishments, the picture rudely represents the interview
which actually took place. The immediate result was unpromising. The
Onondaga chief coldly refused to entertain the project, which he had
already rejected when proposed by Hiawatha. The ambassadors were not
discouraged. Beyond the Onondagas were scattered the villages of the
Cayugas, a people described by the Jesuit missionaries, at a later day,
as the most mild and tractable of the Iroquois. They were considered an
offshoot of the Onondagas, to whom they bore the same filial relation
which the Oneidas bore to the Caniengas. The journey of the advocates of
peace through the forest to the Cayuga capital, and their reception, are
minutely detailed in the traditionary narrative. The Cayugas, who had
suffered from the prowess and cruelty of the Onondaga chief, needed
little persuasion. They readily consented to come into the league, and
their chief, Akahenyonk ("The Wary Spy"), joined the Canienga and Oneida
representatives in a new embassy to the Onondagas. Acting probably upon
the advice of Hiawatha, who knew better than any other the character of
the community and the chief with whom they had to deal, they made
proposals highly flattering to the self-esteem which was the most
notable trait of both ruler and people. The Onondagas should be the
leading nation of the confederacy. Their chief town should be the
federal capital, where the great councils of the league should be held,
and where its records should be preserved. The nation should be
represented in the council by fourteen senators, while no other nation
should have more than ten. And as the Onondagas should be the leading
tribe, so Atotarho should be the leading chief. He alone should have the
right of summoning the federal council, and no act of the council to
which he objected should be valid. In other words, an absolute veto was
given to him. To enhance his personal dignity, two high chiefs were
appointed as his special aids and counselors, his "Secretaries of
State," so to speak. Other insignia of preeminence were to be possessed
by him; and, in view of all these distinctions, it is not surprising
that his successor, who two centuries later retained the same
prerogatives, should have been occasionally styled by the English
colonists "the Emperor of the Five Nations." It might seem, indeed, at
first thought, that the founders of the confederacy had voluntarily
placed themselves and their tribes in a position of almost abject
subserviency to Atotarho and his followers. But they knew too well the
qualities of their people to fear for them any political subjection. It
was certain that when once the league was established, and its
representatives had met in council, character and intelligence would
assume their natural sway, and mere artificial rank and dignity would be
little regarded. Atotarho and his people, however, yielded either to
these specious offers, or to the pressure which the combined urgency of
the three allied nations now brought to bear upon them. They finally
accepted the league; and the great chief, who had originally opposed it,
now naturally became eager to see it as widely extended as possible. He
advised its representatives to go on at once to the westward, and enlist
the populous Seneca towns, pointing out how this might best be done.
This advice was followed, and the adhesion of the Senecas was secured by
giving to their two leading chiefs, Kanya-dariyo ("Beautiful Lake") and
Shadekaronyes ("The Equal Skies"), the offices of military commanders of
the confederacy, with the title of doorkeepers of the "Long-house," that
being the figure by which the league was known.

The six national leaders who have been mentioned--Dekanawidah for the
Caniengas, Odatsehte for the Oneidas, Atotarho for the Onondagas,
Akahenyonk for the Cayugas, Kanyadariyo and Shadekaronyes for the two
great divisions of the Senecas--met in convention near the Onondaga
Lake, with Hiawatha for their adviser, and a vast concourse of their
followers, to settle the terms and rules of their confederacy, and to
nominate its first council. Of this council, nine members (or ten, if
Dekanawidah be included) were assigned to the Caniengas, a like number
to the Oneidas, fourteen to the lordly Onondagas, ten to the Cayugas,
and eight to the Senecas. Except in the way of compliment, the number
assigned to each nation was really of little consequence; inasmuch as,
by the rule of the league, unanimity was exacted in all their decisions.
This unanimity, however, did not require the suffrage of every member of
the council. The representatives of each nation first deliberated apart
upon the question proposed. In this separate council the majority
decided; and the leading chief then expressed in the great council the
voice of his nation. Thus the veto of Atotarho ceased at once to be
peculiar to him, and became a right exercised by each of the allied
nations. This requirement of unanimity, embarrassing as it might seem,
did not prove to be so in practice. Whenever a question arose on which
opinions were divided, its decision was either postponed, or some
compromise was reached which left all parties contented.

The first members of the council were appointed by the convention--under
what precise rule is unknown; but their successors came in by a method
in which the hereditary and the elective systems were singularly
combined, and in which female suffrage had an important place. When a
chief died or (as sometimes happened) was deposed for incapacity or
misconduct, some member of the same family succeeded him. Rank followed
the female line; and this successor might be any descendant of the late
chief's mother or grandmother--his brother, his cousin or his
nephew--but never his son. Among many persons who might thus be
eligible, the selection was made in the first instance by a family
council. In this council the "chief matron" of the family, a noble dame
whose position and right were well defined, had the deciding voice. This
remarkable fact is affirmed by the Jesuit mission-ary Lafitau, and the
usage remains in full vigor among the Canadian Iroquois to this day.
[Footnote: "La dignité de chef est perpetuelle et héréditaire dans sa
Cabane, passant toujours aux enfans de ses tantes, de ses soeurs, on de
ses nièces du côté maternel. Dès que l'arbre est tombé, il fault, disent
ils, le relever. La matrone, qui a la principale autorité, après en
avoir conferé avec ceux de sa Cabane, en confère de nouveau avec ceux de
sa Tribu [clan], à qui elle fait agréer oelui qu'elle a choisi pour
succeder, ce qui lui est assez libre. Elle n'a pas toujours égard au
droit d'ainesse, et d'ordinaire, elle prend celui qui paroit le plus
propre à soûtenir ce rang par ses bonnes qualités."--_Lafitau: Maurs des
Savages Ameriquains_, p. 471.] If there are two or more members of the
family who seem to have equal claims, the nominating matron sometimes
declines to decide between them, and names them both or all, leaving the
ultimate choice to the nation or the federal council. The council of the
nation next considers the nomination, and, if dissatisfied, refers it
back to the family for a new designation. If content, the national
council reports the name of the candidate to the federal senate, in
which resides the power of ratifying or rejecting the choice of the
nation; but the power of rejection is rarely exercised, though that of
expulsion for good cause is not unfrequently exerted. The new chief
inherits the name of his predecessor. In this respect, as in some
others, the resemblance of the Great Council to the English House of
Peers is striking. As Norfolk succeeds to Norfolk, so Tekarihoken
succeeds Tekarihoken. The great names of Hiawatha and Atotarho are still
borne by plain farmer-councillors on the Canadian Reservation.

When the League was established, Hiawatha had been adopted by the
Canienga nation as one of their chiefs. The honor in which he was held
by them is shown by his position on the roll of councillors, as it has
been handed down from the earliest times. As the Canienga nation is the
"elder brother," the names of its chiefs are first recited. At the head
of the list is the leading Canienga chief, Tekarihoken, who represents
the noblest lineage of the Iroquois stock. Next to him, and second on
the roll, is the name of Hiawatha. That of his great colleague,
Dekanawidah, nowhere appears. He was a member of the first council; but
he forbade his people to appoint a successor to him. "Let the others
have successors," he said proudly, "for others can advise you like them.
But I am the founder of your league, and no one else can do what I have
done." [Footnote: In Mr. Morgan's admirable work, "_The League of the
Iroquois_," the list of Councillors (whom he styles _sachems_),
comprises the name of Dekanawidah--in his orthography, Daganoweda.
During my last visit to my lamented friend (in September, 1880), when we
examined together my copy of the then newly discovered Book of Rites, in
which he was greatly interested, this point was considered. The original
notes which he made for his work were examined. It appeared that in the
list as it was first written by him, from the dictation of a
well-informed Seneca chief, the name of Dekanawidah was not comprised. A
later, but erroneous suggestion, from another source, led him to believe
that his first informant was mistaken, or that he had misunderstood him,
and to substitute the name of Dekanawidah for the somewhat similar name
of Shatekariwate (in Seneca Sadekeiwadeh), which stands third on the
roll, immediately following that of Hiawatha. The term _sachem_, it may
be added, is an Algonkin word, and one which Iroquois speakers have a
difficulty in pronouncing. Their own name for a member of their Senate
is _Royaner_, derived from the root _yaner_, noble, and precisely
equivalent in meaning to the English "nobleman" or "lord," as applied to
a member of the House of Peers. It is the word by which the missionaries
have rendered the title "Lord" in the New Testament.]

The boast was not unwarranted. Though planned by another, the structure
had been reared mainly by his labors. But the Five Nations, while
yielding abundant honor to the memory of Dekanawidah, have never
regarded him with the same affectionate reverence which has always clung
to the name of Hiawatha. His tender and lofty wisdom, his wide-reaching
benevolence, and his fervent appeals to their better sentiments,
enforced by the eloquence of which he was master, touched chords in the
popular heart which have continued to respond until this day. Fragments
of the speeches in which he addressed the council and the people of the
league are still remembered and repeated. The fact that the league only
carried out a part of the grand design which he had in view is
constantly affirmed. Yet the failure was not due to lack of effort. In
pursuance of his original purpose, when the league was firmly
established, envoys were sent to other tribes to urge them to join it,
or at least to become allies. One of these embassies penetrated to the
distant Cherokees, the hereditary enemies of the Iroquois nations. For
some reason with which we are not acquainted, perhaps the natural
suspicion or vindictive pride of that powerful community, this mission
was a failure. Another, dispatched to the western Algonkins, had better
success. A strict alliance was formed with the far-spread Ojibway
tribes, and was maintained inviolate for at least two hundred years,
until at length the influence of the French, with the sympathy of the
Ojibways for the conquered Hurons, undid to some extent, though not
entirely, this portion of Hiawatha's work.

His conceptions were beyond his time, and beyond ours; but their effect,
within a limited sphere, was very great. For more than three centuries
the bond which he devised held together the Iroquois nations in perfect
amity. It proved, moreover, as he intended, elastic.--The territory of
the Iroquois, constantly extending as their united strength made itself
felt, became the "Great Asylum" of the Indian tribes. Of the conquered
Eries and Hurons, many hundreds were received and adopted among their
conquerors. The Tuscaroras, expelled by the English from North Carolina,
took refuge with the Iroquois, and became the sixth nation of the
League. From still further south, the Tuteloes and Saponies, of Dakota
stock, after many wars with the Iroquois, fled to them from their other
enemies, and found a cordial welcome. A chief still sits in the council
as a representative of the Tuteloes, though the tribe itself has been
swept away by disease, or absorbed in the larger nations. Many fragments
of tribes of Algonkin lineage--Delawares, Nanticokes, Mohegans,
Mississagas--sought the same hospitable protection, which never failed
them. Their descendants still reside on the Canadian Reservation, which
may well be styled an aboriginal "refuge of nations," affording a
striking evidence in our own day of the persistent force of a great
idea, when embodied in practical shape by the energy of a master mind.

The name by which their constitution or organic law is known among them
is _kayánerenh_, to which the epitaph _kowa_, "great," is frequently
added. This word, _kayánerenh_, is sometimes rendered "law," or
"league," but its proper meaning seems to be "peace." It is used in this
sense by the missionaries, in their translations of the scriptures and
the prayer-book. In such expressions as the "Prince of Peace," "the
author of peace," "give peace in our time," we find _kayánerenh_
employed with this meaning. Its root is _yaner_, signifying "noble," or
"excellent," which yields, among many derivatives, _kayánere_,
"goodness," and _kayánerenh_, "peace," or "peacefulness." The national
hymn of the confederacy, sung whenever their "Condoling Council" meets,
commences with a verse referring to their league, which is literally
rendered, "We come to greet and thank the PEACE" (_kayánerenh_). When
the list of their ancient chiefs, the fifty original councillors, is
chanted in the closing litany of the meeting, there is heard from time
to time, as the leaders of each clan are named, an outburst of praise,
in the words--

  "This was the roll of you--
   You that combined in the work,
   You that completed the work,
   The GREAT PEACE." (_Kayánerenh-kowa_.)

The regard of Englishmen for their Magna Charta and Bill of Rights, and
that of Americans for their national Constitution, seem weak in
comparison with the intense gratitude and reverence of the Five Nations
for the "Great Peace," which Hiawatha and his colleagues established for
them. Of the subsequent life of Hiawatha, and of his death, we have no
sure information. The records of the Iroquois are historical, and not
biographical. As Hiawatha had been made a chief among the Caniengas, he
doubtless continued to reside with that nation. A tradition, which is in
itself highly probable, represents him as devoting himself to the
congenial work of clearing away the obstructions in the streams which
intersect the country then inhabited by the confederated nations, and
which formed the chief means of communication between them. That he
thus, in some measure, anticipated the plans of De Witt Clinton and his
associates, on a smaller scale, but perhaps with a larger statesmanship,
we may be willing enough to believe. A wild legend recorded by some
writers, but not told of him by the Canadian Iroquois, and apparently
belonging to their ancient mythology, gives him an apotheosis, and makes
him ascend to heaven in a white canoe. It may be proper to dwell for a
moment on the singular complication of mistakes which has converted this
Indian reformer and statesman into a mythological personage.

When by the events of the Revolutionary war the original confederacy was
broken up, the larger portion of the people followed Brant to Canada.
The refugees comprised nearly the whole of the Caniengas, and the
greater part of the Onondagas and Cayugas, with many members of the
other nations. In Canada their first proceeding was to reestablish, as
far as possible, their ancient league, with all its laws and ceremonies.
The Onondagas had brought with them most of their wampum records, and
the Caniengas jealously preserved the memories of the federation, in
whose formation they had borne a leading part. The history of the league
continued to be the topic of their orators whenever a new chief was
installed into office. Thus the remembrance of the facts has been
preserved among them with much clearness and precision, and with little
admixture of mythological elements. With the fragments of the tribes
which remained on the southern side of the Great Lakes the case was very
different. A feeble pretense was made, for a time, of keeping up the
semblance of the old confederacy; but except among the Senecas, who, of
all the Five Nations, had had least to do with the formation of the
league, the ancient families which had furnished the members of their
senate, and were the conservators of their history, had mostly fled to
Canada or the West. The result was that among the interminable stories
with which the common people beguile their winter nights, the traditions
of Atotarho and Hiawatha became intermingled with the legends of their
mythology. An accidental similarity, in the Onondaga dialect, between
the name of Hiawatha and that of one of their ancient divinities, led to
a confusion between the two, which has misled some investigators. This
deity bears, in the sonorous Canienga tongue, the name of Taronhiawagon,
meaning "the Holder of the Heavens." The Jesuit missionaries style him
"the great god of the Iroquois." Among the Onondagas of the present day,
the name is abridged to Taonhiawagi, or Tahiawagi. The confusion between
this name and that of Hiawatha (which, in another form, is pronounced
Tahionwatha) seems to have begun more than a century ago; for Pyrteus,
the Moravian missionary, heard among the Iroquois (according to
Heckewelder) that the person who first proposed the league was an
ancient Mohawk, named Thannawege. Mr. J. V. H. Clarke, in his
interesting History of Onondaga, makes the name to have been originally
Ta-oun-ya-wat-ha, and describes the bearer as "the deity who presides
over fisheries and hunting-grounds." He came down from heaven in a white
canoe, and after sundry adventures, which remind one of the labors of
Hercules, assumed the name of Hiawatha (signifying, we are told, "a very
wise man"), and dwelt for a time as an ordinary mortal among men,
occupied in works of benevolence. Finally, after founding the
confederacy and bestowing many prudent counsels upon the people, he
returned to the skies by the same conveyance in which he had descended.
This legend, or, rather, congeries of intermingled legends, was
communicated by Clark to Schoolcraft, when the latter was compiling his
"Notes on the Iroquois." Mr. Schoolcraft, pleased with the poetical cast
of the story, and the euphonious name, made confusion worse confounded
by transferring the hero to a distant region and identifying him with
Manabozho, a fantastic divinity of the Ojibways. Schoolcraft's volume,
which he chose to entitle "The Hiawatha Legends," has not in it a single
fact or fiction relating either to Hiawatha himself or to the Iroquois
deity Taronhiawagon. Wild Ojibway stories concerning Manabozho and his
comrades form the staple of its contents. But it is to this collection
that we owe the charming poem of Longfellow; and thus, by an
extraordinary fortune, a grave Iroquois lawgiver of the fifteenth
century has become, in modern literature, an Ojibway demigod, son of the
West Wind, and companion of the tricksy Paupukkeewis, the boastful
Iagoo, and the strong Kwasind. If a Chinese traveler, during the middle
ages, inquiring into the history and religion of the western nations,
had confounded King Alfred with King Arthur, and both with Odin, he
would not have made a more preposterous confusion of names and
characters than that which has hitherto disguised the genuine
personality of the great Onondaga reformer. [Footnote: This subject is
further discussed in the Appendix, Note D.]

About the main events of his history, and about his character and
purposes, there can be no reasonable doubt. We have the wampum belts
which he handled, and whose simple hieroglyphics preserve the memory of
the public acts in which he took part. We have, also, in the Iroquois
"Book of Rites," which in the present volume is given in its original
form, a still more clear and convincing testimony to the character both
of the legislator and of the people for whom his institutions were
designed. This book, sometimes called the "Book of the Condoling
Council," might properly enough be styled an Iroquois Veda. It comprises
the speeches, songs, and other ceremonies, which, from the earliest
period of the confederacy, have composed the proceedings of their
council when a deceased chief is lamented and his successor is installed
in office. The fundamental laws of the league, a list of their ancient
towns, and the names of the chiefs who constituted their first council,
chanted in a kind of litany, are also comprised in the collection. The
contents, after being preserved in memory, like the Vedas, for many
generations, were written down by desire of the chiefs, when their
language was first reduced to writing; and the book is therefore more
than a century old. Its language, archaic when written, is now partly
obsolete, and is fully understood by only a few of the oldest chiefs. It
is a genuine Indian composition, and must be accepted as disclosing the
true character of its authors. The result is remarkable enough. Instead
of a race of rude and ferocious warriors, we find in this book a kindly
and affectionate people, full of sympathy for their friends in distress,
considerate to their women, tender to their children, anxious for peace,
and imbued with a profound reverence for their constitution and its
authors. We become conscious of the fact that the aspect in which these
Indians have presented themselves to the outside world has been in a
large measure deceptive and factitious. The ferocity, craft and cruelty,
which have been deemed their leading traits, have been merely the
natural accompaniments of wars of self-preservation, and no more
indicated their genuine character than the war-paint, plume and tomahawk
of the warrior displayed the customary guise in which he appeared among
his own people. The cruelties of war, when war is a struggle for
national existence, are common to all races. The persistent desire for
peace, pursued for centuries in federal unions, and in alliances and
treaties with other nations, has been manifested by few as steadily as
by the countrymen of Hiawatha. The sentiment of universal brotherhood
which directed their policy has never been so fully developed in any
branch of the Aryan race, unless it may be found incorporated in the
religious quietism of Buddha and his followers.




CHAPTER III.

THE BOOK OF RITES.


For a proper appreciation of this peculiar composition, some further
particulars respecting its origin and character will be needed. During
my earlier visits to the Reserve of the Six Nations, near Brantford, I
had heard of an Indian book which was used at their "Condoling
Councils," the most important of their many public gatherings. But it
was not until the month of September, 1879, that I had an opportunity of
seeing the work. At that time two copies of the book were brought to me
by the official holders, two of the principal chiefs of the confederacy.
One of these was Chief John "Smoke" Johnson, who for many years had held
the high office of Speaker of the Great Council, though, of late,
yielding to age and infirmity, he has withdrawn from the public
performance of its duties. His second name is a rude rendering of his
truly poetical Indian appellation, Sakayen-gwaraton, or "Disappearing
Mist." It signifies properly, I was told, the haze which rises from the
ground in an autumn morning and vanishes as the day advances. His
English name, and, in part, his blood, Chief Johnson derives from no
less distinguished an ancestor than Sir William Johnson, who played so
notable a part in colonial history during the last century, and who
exercised, perhaps, a greater influence on the destiny of the Iroquois
than any other individual since the formation of their confederacy. To
him, indeed, may be ascribed the distinction, such as it is, of
destroying the work which Hiawatha and Dekanawidah had founded. But for
the influence over the Indians which he had acquired, and was able to
bequeath to others, it is probable that the Six Nations would have
remained neutral during the Revolutionary War, and the disruption of
their League would not have taken place. Yet there can be no doubt that
he was sincerely attached to them, and desired their good. Unfortunately
for them, they held, as was natural, only the second place in his
affections. He was, by adoption, an Iroquois chief, but his first
allegiance was due to his native country, to whose interests, both in
the war with France and in the separation which he foresaw between
England and her colonies, he did not hesitate to sacrifice the welfare
of his red brethren. Against his subtle arts and overmastering energy
the wisest of their statesmen, worthy successors of the great founders
of their constitution, strove in vain, on each occasion, to maintain
that neutrality which was evidently the true policy of their people.
[Footnote: For the confirmation of these statements see the excellent
biographies of Sir William Johnson and Joseph Brant, by Wm. L. Stone,
_passim_.]

Sakayengwaraton is not an elected chief, nor does he bear one of the
hereditary titles of the Great Council, in which he holds so
distinguished a station. Indeed, his office is one unknown to the
ancient constitution of the Kanonsionni. It is the creation of the
British Government, to which he owes, with the willing consent of his
own people, his rank and position in the Council. The Provincial
administrators saw the need of a native official who should be, like the
Speaker of the English House of Commons, the mouthpiece of the Council,
and the intermediary between it and the representative of the Crown. The
grandson of Sir William Johnson was known as a brave warrior, a capable
leader, and an eloquent speaker. In the war of 1812, at the early age of
twenty, he had succeeded an elder brother in the command of the Indian
contingent, and had led his dusky followers with so much skill and
intrepidity as to elicit high praise from the English commander. His
eloquence was noted, even among a race of orators. I can well believe
what I have heard of its effects, as even in his old age, when an
occasion has for a moment aroused his spirit, I have not known whether
most to admire the nobleness and force of his sentiments and reasoning,
or the grace and flowing ease with which he delivered the stately
periods of his sonorous language. He has been a worthy successor of the
distinguished statesmen, Garagontieh, Garangula, Decanasora, Canasatego,
Logan, and others, who in former years guided the destinies of his
people. He is considered to have a better knowledge of the traditions
and ancient usages of the Six Nations than any other member of the
tribes, and is the only man now living who can tell the meaning of every
word of the "Book of Rites."

The other chief to whom I have referred is the Onondaga Councillor who
is known to the whites as John Buck, but who bears in council the name
of Skanawati ("Beyond the River"), one of the fifty titular names which
have descended from the time of Hiawatha. He is the official keeper of
the "wampum records" of the confederacy, an important trust, which, to
his knowledge, has been in his family for at least four generations. His
rank, his character, and his eloquence make him now, virtually, the
Iroquois premier--an office which among the Six Nations, as among the
Athenians of old and the English of modern days, is both unknown to the
constitution and essential to its working. His knowledge of the legends
and customs of his people is only inferior to that of the more aged
Speaker of the Council.

The account which Chief J. S. Johnson gave me of the book may be briefly
told. The English missionaries reduced the Canienga language to writing
in the early part of the last century. The Jesuit fathers, indeed, had
learned and written the language--which they styled the Iroquois--fifty
years before; but it does not appear that they had instructed any of the
Indians in the art of writing it, as their successors in the Eastern
Province have since done. The English missionaries took pains to do
this. The liturgy of their church was printed in the Mohawk tongue, at
New York, as early as the year 1714. [Footnote: This date is given in
the preface to the Mohawk Prayer Book of 1787. This first version of the
liturgy was printed under the direction of the Rev. Wm. Andrews, the
missionary of the "New England Society."] By the middle of the century
there were many members of the tribe who could write in the well-devised
orthography of the missionaries--an orthography which anticipated in
most points the well known "Pickering alphabet," now generally' employed
in writing the Indian languages of North America. The chiefs of the
Great Council, at once conservative and quick to learn, saw the
advantages which would accrue from preserving, by this novel method, the
forms of their most important public duty--that of creating new
chiefs--and the traditions connected with their own body. They caused
the ceremonies, speeches and songs, which together made up the
proceedings of the Council when it met for the two purposes, always
combined, of condolence and induction, to be written down in the words
in which they had been preserved in memory for many generations. A
Canienga chief, named David, a friend of Brant, is said to have
accomplished the work. In Stone's Life of Sir William Johnson, mention
is made of a Mohawk chief, "David of Schoharie," who in May, 1757, led a
troop of Indians from his town to join the forces under Sir William, in
his expedition to Crown Point, to repel the French invaders. [Footnote:
_Life of Sir William Johnson_, Vol. II. p. 29] Brant appears to have
been in this expedition. [Footnote: Ibid., p. 174] It is highly probable
that in Chief David of Schoharie we have the compiler, or rather the
scribe, of this "Iroquois Veda."

The copy of this book which Chief J. S. Johnson possessed was made by
himself under the following circumstances: During the prevalence of the
Asiatic cholera, in 1832, the tribes on the Reserve suffered severely.
Chief Johnson, then a young man and not yet a leader in the Great
Council, was active in attending on the sick. He was called to visit an
aged chief, who was not expected to live. The old chief informed him
that he had this book in his possession, and advised him, as he was one
of the few who could write the language, to make a copy of it, lest by
any accident the original should be lost. Johnson followed this advice,
and copied the book on loose sheets of paper, from which he afterwards
transcribed it into a small unbound book, resembling a schoolboy's
copy-book. He states that the original book contained, besides the
ceremonies of the Condoling Council, an addition by a later hand,
comprising some account of the more recent history of the Six Nations,
and particularly of their removal from New York to Canada. This portion
of it he unfortunately omitted to copy, and shortly afterwards the book
itself was destroyed, when the house of the old chief was accidentally
burned.

The other copy which I transcribed was held by Chief John Buck, in his
official capacity of record-keeper. It is written in a somewhat
different orthography. The syllables are separated, as in the usual
style of Indian hymnbooks, and some of the words, particularly the
proper names, show by their forms that the person who copied the book
was an Onondaga. The copy was evidently not made from that of Chief
Johnson, as it supplies some omissions in that copy. On the other hand,
it omits some matters, and, in particular, nearly all the adjurations
and descriptive epithets which form the closing litany accompanying the
list of hereditary councillors. The copy appears, from a memorandum
written in it, to have been made by one "John Green," who, it seems, was
formerly a pupil of the Mohawk Institute at Brantford. It bears the date
of November, 1874. I could not learn where he found his original.

The translation has been made from the dictation of Chief J. S. Johnson,
who explained the meaning of the archaic words in the modern Canienga
speech. This was interpreted in English by his son, Chief George H. M.
Johnson, and afterwards more fully elucidated by my esteemed friend, the
Rev. Isaac Bearfoot, who kindly came from his parish, at Point Edward
(near Sarnia), to the Reserve, to assist me in this work. Mr. Bearfoot
is an Onondaga by birth, but a Canienga by adoption, and has a thorough
knowledge of the Canienga language. He prepared the revised edition of
the hymnbook in that language, which is now used on the Reserve. He is a
good English scholar, and, having been educated in Toronto for the
ministry, has filled for some years, with much acceptance, the office of
pastor to a white congregation of the Church of England. I am greatly
indebted to him for his judicious assistance, and, finally, for a
complete revision of the entire version of the Canienga portion of the
book.

To my friend Chief George Johnson I am under still greater obligations.
Mr. Johnson, as has been stated, is the son of Chief J. S. Johnson, and
is himself a high chief of the Canienga nation. He bears in the Great
Council the name of Teyonhehkwen (otherwise spelt Deyonheghgonh),
meaning "Double Life," one of the titular names which were borne by the
companions of Hiawatha and Atotarho in the first council. He succeeded
in this title, according to the rules of the confederacy, his maternal
uncle, on the nomination of his mother, as the chief matron of the
family. Mr. Johnson is an educated gentleman. In early life he was a
pupil of the English missionaries. He now holds the position of
Government Interpreter for the Six Nations, and is, in fact, the chief
executive officer of the Canadian government on the Reserve. His duties
have several times brought him into collision with the white ruffians
who formerly infested the Reserve, and from whom he has on two occasions
suffered severe injuries, endangering his life. His courage and
firmness, however, have been finally successful in subduing this
mischief, and the Reserve is now as secure and as free from disorder as
any part of Canada. To Chief, George Johnson's assistance and
encouragement I owe most of the information contained in these pages,
and I am glad to have an opportunity of paying him this tribute of
respect and gratitude.

The second or supplementary part of the Book, which is in the Onondaga
dialect, was found on the, small Reservation in the State of New York,
near Syracuse, where a feeble remnant of the great Onondaga nation still
cling to the home of their forefathers. In October, 1875, during my
first visit to Onondaga Castle, as this Reservation is called, I
obtained from the intelligent interpreter, Daniel La Fort--a son of the
distinguished chief Abram La Fort (Dehatkatons), who is commemorated in
Clark's "Onondaga"--a list of the original councillors in the Onondaga
dialect, and also a copy, in the same dialect, of the "Condoling Song,"
which I had heard sung on the Canadian Reserve, and which I afterwards
found in the Canienga Book of Rites. He read them to me from a small
manuscript book, in which, as I then supposed, he had noted them for his
own convenience. When I afterwards discovered the Canienga book, it
occurred to me that I might have been mistaken on this point, and that
the manuscript from which he read was possibly a copy of the Book of
Rites in the Onondaga dialect. To clear up this point, I again visited
Onondaga Castle, in September, 1880. I then found, to my great
gratification, that his book was not a copy, but a valuable addition, or
rather an essential complement, to the Canienga book. The last-named
book comprises the speeches which are addressed by the representatives
of the three elder nations to the younger members of the League,
whenever a chief who belonged to the latter is lamented. The Onondaga
book, on the other hand, gives us the exhortations which are addressed
by the younger nations to the elder when a chief of the latter is
mourned. The circumstance to which it owes its preservation on the
Onondaga Reserve is easily explained. Of late years, since the
chieftainships among the New York Senecas and Tuscaroras have been made
purely elective offices, the only body of Indians in that State among
whom the original system of mingled descent and appointment has been
retained is the remnant of the intensely conservative Onondagas. Among
these, in spite of missionary efforts continued for two centuries,
paganism still lingers, and chiefs are still "raised up" as nearly as
possible after the ancient fashion. When a chief dies, the members of
his family or clan select another, who is presented to the national
council for induction. The ceremonies of condolence, with which the
proceedings commence, are modeled after the primitive form. As the
Onondagas were one of the elder nations, the addresses of condolence
must proceed from a younger brother. Fortunately for this purpose, a few
Oneidas reside on the Reserve, among whom is a single chief, by name
Abram Hill. To him is committed the duty of representing the "younger
brothers" on this occasion, and with it the charge of the wampum
strings, which are produced occasionally as the ceremony proceeds, each
string representing one section or topic of the condoling address.

La Fort said that he had copied his book from a manuscript in his
father's handwriting. This manuscript, unfortunately, was lost, and he
could not say whether his rather had first written it down from memory,
or had merely transcribed it from an earlier composition. However this
may have been, the substance of the composition undoubtedly dates from a
period preceding the disruption of the confederacy. The language,
indeed, so far as can be judged from the very irregular orthography, is
modern. If, as there is reason to suppose, the composition is ancient,
it has evidently undergone a "revision" at the hands of the later
copyists. In former times, as we know from the Jesuit vocabularies, the
sound of _r_ existed in the Onondaga dialect. Since their day this sound
has disappeared from it entirely. In La Fort's manuscript the letter
frequently occurred, but always, as his pronunciation showed, either as
a diacritical sign following the vowel _a_, to give to that vowel the
sound of _a_ in "far," or else as representing itself this vowel sound.
Thus the syllable which should properly be written _sa_ was written by
La Fort either _sar_ or _sr_. But, though the language is modern, the
speeches themselves, as I am assured by Chief John Buck, are precisely
those which are still in use among his people in Canada, and which are
believed to have been preserved in memory from the days of their
forefathers. [Footnote: The disappearance of a vocal element from a
language is a phenomenon with which etymologists are familiar. The loss
of the Greek digamma is a well-known instance. The harsh guttural,
resembling the German ch. which formerly existed in the English
language, has vanished from it, leaving its traces in the uncouth
orthography of such words as _plough_, _high_, _though_, and the like.
Within the past three centuries the sound of _I_ has been lost from many
words, such as _walk_, _talk_, _balm_ and _calm_. The sound of _r_ is
disappearing from a large portion of the language. In ordinary speech,
_arm_ rhymes with _calm_, _morning_ with _fanning_, _higher_ with
_Sophia_. Modern French, as is well known, has attained its present
euphony through the disappearance of consonantal elements from many
words in which they formerly existed.]

The translation of La Fort's book was procured from him and another
educated member of his tribe; but there was not time to obtain all the
elucidations needed to ensure precise verbal accuracy throughout.




CHAPTER IV.

THE CONDOLING COUNCIL.--CLANS AND CLASSES.


The name usually given to the Book of Rites, or rather to its contents,
is, in the Canienga dialect, _Okayondonghsera Yondennase_ (or in the
French missionary orthography, _Okaiontonhstra Iontennase_), which may
be rendered "Ancient Rites of the Condoling Council." [Footnote:
_Okaionlonhsera_ is a substantive derived from _akaion_, old, or
ancient. The termination _sera_ gives it an abstract sense. "The
antiquities," or rather "the ancientnesses," is the nearest literal
rendering which our language allows, _Iontennase_ is a verbal form,
derived from _kitenre_ (in Bruyas, _gentenron_), to pity, or sympathize
with. It may be rendered "they who sympathize," or "the condolers."
Both, words, however, have acquired a special meaning in their
application to these ceremonies.] Among the many councils, civil and
religious, tribal and federal, in which the public spirit and social
temper of the Iroquois found their most congenial and most popular mode
of display, the Yondennase, the Condoling (or Mourning) Council, held
the highest rank. It was, in a certain way, typical of the whole, and
comprised the elements of all the other councils. In its earlier form
this council was not peculiar to the Iroquois. We know, from the Jesuit
reports, that it was the custom of the Hurons to hold a public
lamentation for the death of a chief, and at the same time to appoint
another who should take his place and assume his name. But that which
among the Hurons was merely a tribal custom became, in the Iroquois form
of government, an important institution, essential to the maintenance of
their state. By the ordinances of their League, it was required that the
number of their federal senate should be maintained undiminished. On the
death of one of its members, it was the duty of the nation to which he
belonged to notify the other nations of the event, and of the time and
place at which he would be lamented and his successor installed. The
notice was given in the usual manner, by official messengers, who bore
for credentials certain strings of wampum, appropriate to the occasion.
The place of meeting was commonly the chief town of the nation which had
suffered the loss. In this nation a family council, under the
presidency, and subject, indeed (as has been shown), to the controlling
decision, of the chief matron of the deceased senator's kindred--usually
his mother, if she survived him--was in the meantime convened to select
his successor. The selection must be approved both by his clan and by
his nation; but as their sentiments were generally known beforehand,
this approval was rarely withheld. Indeed, the mischief resulting from
an unsuitable choice was always likely to be slight; for both the
national council and the federal senate had the right of deposing any
member who was found unqualified for the office.

At the appointed day the chiefs of the other nations approached the
place of meeting. A multitude of their people, men and women, usually
accompanied them, prepared to take part both in the exhibitions of grief
and in the festivities which always followed the installation of the new
councillor. The approaching chiefs halted when they reached the border
of the "opening," or cleared space surrounding the town. Here took place
the "preliminary ceremony," styled in the Book of Rites,
"_Deyughnyonkwarakda_," a word which means simply "at the edge of the
woods." At this point a fire was kindled, a pipe was lighted and passed
around with much formality, and an address of welcome was made by the
principal chief of the inviting nation. The topics of this address
comprised a singular mixture of congratulation and condolence, and seem
to have been prescribed forms, which had come down from immemorial
antiquity, as appropriate to the occasion.

The guests were then formally conducted--"led by the hand," as the Book
recites--to the Council House of the town. They seem, anciently at
least, to have advanced in the order of their clans. The towns belonging
to the Wolf clan were first enumerated--probably as the chiefs belonging
to them took their places--then the towns of the Tortoise clan (or
double clan, as it is styled), and finally those of the Bear clan. In
all, twenty-three towns are named. Five of them are expressly stated to
have been "added lately." The residue are supposed to be the names of
the towns in which the people of the Five Nations resided at the time
when the confederacy was formed, though this point is uncertain. That
few of these can now be identified, is what would naturally be expected.
It is well known that the Indians had the custom of removing their towns
from time to time, at intervals varying from ten to twenty years, as the
fuel in their neighborhood became exhausted, and as the diminished crops
under their primitive mode of agriculture showed the need of fresher
soil. Only those villages would be permanent whose localities offered
some special advantages, as fortresses, fishing places, or harbors.
[Footnote: See Appendix, note E.]

This list of towns has another peculiarity which arrests the attention.
It apparently comprises all the towns of the League, but these are
divided among only three clans, those of the Wolf, the Tortoise and the
Bear. The other clans of the confederacy are not once named in the book.
Yet there are indications which show that when the list of chiefs which
concludes the book was written, at a date long after this list of towns
was first recited, other clans existed in three of the nations. This is
an important point, which merits further consideration. Those who have
read the admirable account of the "League of the Iroquois," by Morgan,
and his philosophic work on "Ancient Society," are aware that he has
brought out and elucidated with much clearness and force the nature and
results of the remarkable clan system which prevails among the North
American Indians. It is not universal, as it does not seem to be known
among the widely scattered bands of the Crees and the Athapascans, or
among the Indians of Oregon. [Footnote: See _Ancient Society_, pp. 167,
175, 177.] It was found, however, among the great majority of tribes in
the region north of Mexico and east of the Rocky Mountains, and was
sufficiently alike in all to indicate a common origin. Mr. Morgan finds
this origin in a kinship, real or supposed, among the members of each
clan. He considers the clan, or gens, and not the single family, to be
the natural unit of primitive society. It is, in his view, a stage
through which the human race passes in its progress from the savage
state to civilization. It is difficult, however, to reconcile this
theory with the fact that among some races, as for example, the
Polynesian and Feejeean, which are in precisely the same stage of social
advancement as the North American Indians, this institution is unknown;
and even among the Indians, as has been said, it is not everywhere
found. There are many indications which seem to show that the system is
merely an artificial arrangement, instituted for social convenience. It
is natural, in the sense that the desire for association is natural to
man. The sentiment is one which manifests itself alike in all stages of
society. The guilds of the middle ages, the masonic and other secret
brotherhoods, religious organizations, trade unions, clubs, and even
political parties, are all manifestations of this associative instinct.
The Indian clan was simply a brotherhood, an aggregate of persons united
by a common tie, sometimes of origin, sometimes merely of locality.
These brotherhoods were not permanent, but were constantly undergoing
changes, forming, dividing, coalescing, vanishing. The names of many of
them show their recent origin. The Chicasas have a "Spanish clan."
[Footnote: _Ancient Society_, p. 163.] The Shawnees had a "Horse clan."
[Footnote: Ibid, p. 168.] The Iroquois, of Eastern Canada, made up of
fragments of all the Five Nations, had an "Onondaga clan," and an
"Oneida clan." [Footnote: Rotisennakete, and Rotinenhiotronon. See J. A.
Cuoq, _Lexique de la Langut Iroquoise_, p. 154. The proper meaning of
these names will be hereafter shown.] It is a curious fact that, as Mr.
Morgan states, "the Iroquois claim to have originated a division of the
people into tribes [clans or gentes] as a means of creating new
relationships, to bind the people more firmly together. It is further
asserted by them that they forced or introduced this social organization
among the Cherokees, the Chippeways (Massasaugas) and several other
Indian nations, with whom, in ancient times, they were in constant
intercourse." "The fact," he adds, "that this division of the people of
the same nation into tribes does not prevail generally among our Indian
races, favors the assertions of the Iroquois." [Footnote: _League of the
Iroquois_, p. 91.] Further inquiry and reflection led this distinguished
investigator to take a totally different view, and to go to what may be
deemed the opposite extreme of regarding this clan system as an
essential stage in the growth of human society.

There can be no question that an idea of kinship pervaded the clan
system, and was its ruling element. It may, in many instances, have been
purely imaginary and, so to speak, figurative, like the "brotherhood" of
our secret associations; but it was none the less efficacious and
binding. As the members of a clan regarded themselves as brothers and
sisters, marriages among them were not allowed. This led, of course, to
constant intermarriages between members of the different clans of which
a nation was composed, thus binding the whole nation together. What the
founders of the Iroquois League did was to extend this system of social
alliances through the entire confederacy. The Wolf clansman of the
Caniengas was deemed a brother of the Wolf clansman of the Senecas,
though originally there may have been no special connection between
them. It was a tie apparently artificial in its origin, as much so as
the tie which binds a freemason of Berlin to a freemason of New Orleans.
But it came to have all the strength of a tie of kindred. Mr. Morgan has
well pointed out the wisdom shown by the Iroquois founders, in availing
themselves of this powerful element of strength in the formation of
their federal constitution. [Footnote: _League of the Iroquois_, p. 82,
_et seq_.] Their government, though politically a league of nations, was
socially a combination of clans. In this way Hiawatha and Dekanawidah
may be deemed to have given to the system of clan-ship an extension and
a force which it had not previously possessed; and it is by no means
unlikely that this example may, as the Iroquois assert, have acted upon
neighboring nations, and led to a gradual increase in the number and
influence of these brotherhoods.

But here a discrepancy presents itself in the Iroquois system, which has
perplexed all who have written on the subject. Two of the Six Nations,
the Caniengas and Oneidas, had only three clans, the Wolf, the Tortoise
and the Bear; while the others had, or at least have, each eight or
nine, and these variously styled in the different nations. The three
which have been named are, indeed, found in all; but besides these
three, the Onondagas have five, Deer, Eel, Beaver, Ball and Snipe. The
Cayugas and Senecas have also eight clans, which are similar to those of
the Onondagas, except that among the Cayugas the Ball clan is replaced
by the Hawk, and among the Senecas both Ball and Eel disappear, and are
replaced by Hawk and Heron. The Tuscaroras have likewise eight clans,
but among these are neither the Hawk, the Heron or the Ball. In lieu of
them the Wolf clan is divided into two, the Gray Wolf and the Yellow
Wolf, and the Tortoise furnishes two, the Great Tortoise and the Little
Tortoise; [Footnote: It is deserving of notice that this division of the
Tortoise clan seems to exist in a nascent form among the Onondagas. The
name of this clan is Hahnowa, which is the general word for tortoise;
but the clan is divided into two septs or subdivisions, the
Hanyatengona, or Great Tortoise, and the Nikahnowaksa, or Little
Tortoise, which together are held to constitute but one clan. How or why
the distinction is kept up I did not learn. In the Book of Rites the
Tortoise clan is also spoken of in the dual number--"the two clans of
the Tortoise." It is probable, therefore, that this partial subdivision
extended throughout the original Five Nations, and became complete among
the Tuscaroras.] the Bear, the Beaver, the Eel and the Snipe remain, as
among the Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas.

We are naturally led to ask how it happens that only three clans are
found among the Caniengas and Oneidas, while the other nations have
eight. Mr. Morgan was inclined to think that the other five once existed
among the two former nations, and had become extinct. [Footnote: _League
of the Iroquois_, p. 81. Ancient Society, p. 92.] The native annalists
of those nations, however, affirm that no more than three clans ever
existed among them. This assertion is now confirmed, indirectly but
strongly, by the testimony of the Book of Rites, which seems to show
that only three clans were recognized in the whole confederacy when the
League was formed. All the towns of the united nations were distributed
among the three primary clans of the Wolf, the Tortoise and the Bear. If
the other clans existed, it was probably merely as septs or divisions of
these three. [Footnote: "The Turtle family, or the Anowara, was the most
noble of the whole League; next came the Ochquari, or clan of the Bear,
and the Oquacho, or that of the Wolf. These three were so prominent that
Zeisberger hardly recognizes the others."--_De Sckweinitz's Life of
Zeisberger_, p.79. Zeisberger had been adopted into the nation of the
Onondagas and the clan of the Tortoise. His knowledge of the laws and
usages of the Kanonsionni was acquired chiefly in that nation.
Charlevoix makes the Bear the leading clan of the Iroquois. It would
seem that the relative rank of the clans varied in the different
nations. The chiefs of the Wolf clan come first in the list of Oneida
councillors.] It is more likely, however, that these additional clans
were of later creation or introduction. Their origin, as well as their
restriction to the three western nations, may be easily explained. The
successive conquests achieved by the Iroquois in the early part of the
seventeenth century had the result of incorporating with their people
great numbers of Hurons, Eries, Attiwandaronks, Andastes, and other
captives belonging to tribes of the same stock, speaking similar
dialects, and having usages closely resembling those of their captors.
Of these captives, some were directly adopted into the Iroquois families
and clans; but a larger number remained for a time in separate towns,
retaining their own usages. They were regarded, however, and they
regarded themselves, as Iroquois. Constant intercourse and frequent
intermarriages soon abolished all distinctions of national origin. But
the distinction of clan-ship would remain. The Hurons (or, at least, the
Tionontates, or Tobacco Nation) had clans of the Deer and the Hawk, and
they had a Snake clan bearing a name (_yagonirunon_) not unlike the name
of the Onondaga Eel clan (_ogontena_), and evidently derived from the
same root. The other conquered nations had doubtless some peculiar
clans; for these brotherhoods, as has been shown, were constantly in
process of formation and change among the Indian tribes. Almost all the
captives were incorporated with the three western nations of the League,
to whom the conquered tribes were mostly nearer than to the Caniengas
and Oneidas. The origin of the additional clans among the Onondagas,
Cayugas and Senecas is thus readily understood.

One fact, important in its connection with the structure of the federal
council, remains to be noted, and if possible, elucidated. The
councillors of each nation were divided into classes, whose part in the
deliberations of the councils bore a certain resemblance to that held by
the committees of our legislatures. The operation of this system cannot
be better described than in the words of Morgan: "The founders of the
confederacy, seeking to obviate, as far as possible, altercation in
council, and to facilitate their progress to unanimity, divided the
sachems of each nation into classes, usually of two or three each, as
will be seen by referring to the table of sachemships. No sachem was
permitted to express an opinion in council, until he had agreed with the
other sachem or sachems of his class upon the opinion to be expressed,
and had received an appointment to act as speaker for the class. Thus
the eight Seneca sachems, being in four classes, could have but four
opinions, the ten Cayuga sachems but four. In this manner each class was
brought to unanimity within itself. A cross-consultation was then held
between the four sachems who represented the four classes; and when they
had agreed, they appointed one of their number to express their
resulting opinion, which was the answer of their nation. The several
nations having, by this ingenious method, become of 'one mind'
separately, it only remained to compare their several opinions to arrive
at the final sentiment of all the sachems of the League. This was
effected by a conference between the individual representatives of the
several nations; and when they had arrived at unanimity, the answer of
the League was determined." [Footnote: _League of the Iroquois_, p,
112.]

A careful consideration of the facts, in the light cast upon them by the
evidence of the "Book of Rites" and the testimony of the Canadian
Iroquois, leaves no doubt that these classes were originally identical
with the clans. Among the Caniengas and Oneidas this identity still
exists. Each of these nations received nine representatives in the
federal council. These were--and still are--divided into three each
composed of three members, and each class representing a clan. In the
Canienga tribe the members of the first class are all of the Tortoise
clan, those of the second class are of the Wolf clan, and those of the
third class of the Bear clan. Among the Oneidas, the councillors of the
first class belong to the Wolf clan, those of the second class to the
Tortoise clan, and those of the third class to the Bear clan. Such was
the information which Mr. Morgan received from his Seneca friends, and
such I found to be the fact among the Iroquois now in Canada. When we
come to the other nations we find a wholly different state of things. No
correspondence now exists between the classes and the clans. The Cayugas
have now, as has been shown, eight clans; but of these only six,
according to the list given by Morgan, and only five in that furnished
to me by the Canadian chiefs, are represented in the council. These are
distributed in three classes, which do not correspond to the clans. In
Morgan's list the first class has five members, the first of whom
belongs to the Deer clan, the second to that of the Heron, the third and
fourth to that of the Bear, and the fifth to that of the Tortoise. In my
list this class also comprises five chiefs, of whom the first two
(identical in name with the first two of Morgan) belong to the Deer
clan, while the third (who bears the same name as Mr. Morgan's third) is
of the Bear clan. In the "Book of Rites" the first Cayuga class
comprises only two chiefs, but their clans (which were supposed to be
known to the hearers) are not indicated. The fourteen Onondaga
councillors are divided into five classes, according to Morgan, and also
in the modern Canadian list. The "Book of Rites" seems to give only
four, but none of these--according to the evidence of the Canadian
chiefs--correspond with the modern clans; and the same councillor, in
lists received from different sources, is found to belong to different
classes and different clans. Thus the distinguished title of Skanawati
is borne, in Mr. Morgan's list, by a chief of the fifth class and of the
third clan. In the list obtained by me at Onondaga Castle this chief is
of the fourth class and of the Ball clan. The great Seneca chief
Kanyadariyo is, in Mr. Morgan's list, a member of the Tortoise clan,
while among the Canadian Senecas he belongs to the Wolf clan. In short,
it is evident that the introduction of the new clans among the western
nations has thrown this part of their constitutional system into
confusion. The probability is that when the confederacy was established
only three clans, Bear, Wolf and Tortoise, existed among the Iroquois,
as only three clans, Bear, Wolf and Turkey, existed in recent times
among their Algonkin neighbors, the Lenni Lenape, or Delawares. Thus the
classes of their Council grew spontaneously out of their clan system, as
the senators of each clan would naturally consult together. Afterwards
new clans arose; but it seems probable that when the list of councillors
comprised in the "Book of Rites" was written--that is, about the middle
of the last century--the correspondence of classes and clans was still
maintained. The number of both was increased in the western tribes, but
each class was still composed of chiefs of the same clan. The written
book fixed the classes to a certain extent, but the clans to which their
members belonged continued to vary, under the influence of political and
social changes. If, at the death of a councillor, no member of his clan
was found qualified to succeed him, a successor would be elected from
another clan which was deemed to be in some way connected with him. I
was assured by the Onondaga chiefs of the New York Reservation that this
was their rule at present; and it is quite sufficient to account for the
departure, in the western nations, from the ancient system. It is
evident that after the nations and clans were rent to fragments by the
dissensions and emigration caused by the American Revolution, these
changes would, for a time, be necessarily frequent. And thus it happens
that chiefs are found in the duplicate confederacies which after this
disruption were established in Canada and New York, who bear the same
titular designation, but differ both in the clans and in the classes to
which they belong.




CHAPTER V.

THE CONDOLENCE AND THE INSTALLATION.


With the arrival at the Council House the "opening ceremony" is
concluded. In the house the members of the Council were seated in the
usual array, on opposite sides of the house. On one side were the three
elder nations, the Caniengas, Onondagas, and Senecas, and on the other
the younger, who were deemed, and styled in Council, the offspring of
the former. These younger members, originally two in number, the Oneidas
and Cayugas, had afterwards an important accession in the Tuscarora
nation; and in later years several smaller tribes, or, as they were
styled, additional braces of the Extended House, were
received;--Tuteloes, Nanticokes, Delawares and others. In the Onondaga
portion of the book the younger tribes speak as "we three brothers." The
earliest of the later accessions seems to have taken place about the
year 1753, when the Tuteloes and Nanticokes were admitted. [Footnote:
_N. Y. Hist. Col._, Vol. 6, p. 811. Stone's _Life of Sir William
Johnson_, p. 414.] These circumstances afford additional evidence that
the Book was originally written prior to that date and subsequent to the
year 1714, when the Tuscaroras were received into the League.

If the deceased chief belonged to one of the three older nations, the
duty of conducting the condoling ceremony which followed was performed
by the younger nations, who mourned for him as for a father or an uncle.
If he were a chief of one of the younger nations, the others lamented
him as a son or a nephew. The mourning nations selected as their
representative a high chief, usually a distinguished orator, familiar
with the usages and laws of the League, to conduct these ceremonies. The
lamentations followed a prescribed routine, each successive topic of
condolence being indicated by a string of wampum, which, by the
arrangement of its beads, recalled the words to the memory of the
officiating chief. In the "Book of Rites" we have these addresses of
condolence in a twofold form. The Canienga book gives us the form used
by the elder nations; and the Onondaga supplement adds the form employed
by the younger brothers. The former is more ancient, and apparently more
dignified and formal. The speaker addresses the mourners as his children
(_konyennetaghkwen_, "my offspring,") and recites each commonplace of
condolence in a curt and perfunctory style. He wipes away their tears
that they may see clearly; he opens their ears that they may hear
readily. He removes from their throats the obstruction with which their
grief is choking them, so that they may ease their burdened minds by
speaking freely to their friends. And finally, as the loss of their
lamented chief may have occurred in war--and at all events many of their
friends have thus perished--he cleans the mats on which they are sitting
from the figurative bloodstains, so that they may for a time cease to be
reminded of their losses, and may regain their former cheerfulness.

The condolence of the younger brothers, expressed in the Onondaga book,
is more expansive and more sympathetic. Though apparently disfigured and
mutilated by repeated transcriptions, it bears marks of having been
originally the composition of a superior mind. All such topics of
consolation as would occur to a speaker ignorant or regardless of a
future life are skillfully presented, and the whole address is imbued
with a sentiment of cordial tenderness and affection. Those who have
been accustomed to regard the Indians as a cold-hearted people will find
it difficult to reconcile that view of their character with the contrary
evidence afforded by this genuine expression of their feelings, and,
indeed, by the whole tenor of the Book.

This address concludes with the emphatic words, "I have finished; now
point me the man;" or, as the words were paraphrased by the interpreter,
"Now show me the warrior who is to be the new chief." The candidate for
senatorial honors, who is to take the place and name of the deceased
councillor, is then brought forward by his nation. His admission by the
assembled Council, at this stage of the proceedings, is a matter of
course; for his nation had taken care to ascertain, before the meeting,
that the object of their choice would be acceptable to the councillors
of the other nations. The ceremony of induction consisted in the formal
bestowal of the new name by which he was henceforth to be known. A chief
placed himself on each side of the candidate, and, grasping his arms,
marched him to and fro in the Council house, between the lines of the
assembled senators. As they walked they proclaimed his new name and
office, and recited, in a measured chant, the duties to which he was now
called, the audience responding at every pause with the usual chorus of
assent.

When this ceremony was finished, and the new councillor had taken his
proper seat among the nobles of his nation, the wampum belts, which
comprised the historical records of the federation, were produced, and
the officiating chief proceeded to explain them, one by one, to the
assemblage. This was called "reading the archives." In this way a
knowledge of the events signified by the wampum was fastened, by
repeated iteration, in the minds of the listeners. Those who doubt
whether events which occurred four centuries ago can be remembered as
clearly and minutely as they are now recited, will probably have their
doubts removed when they consider the necessary operation of this
custom. The orator's narrative is repeated in the presence of many
auditors who have often heard it before, and who would be prompt to
remark and to correct any departure from the well-known history.

This narrative is not recorded in the Book of Rites. At the time when
that was written, the annals of the confederacy were doubtless supposed
to be sufficiently preserved by the wampum records. The speeches and
ceremonies which followed, and which were of equal, if not greater
importance, had no such evidences to recall them. From this statement,
however, the "hymn" should be excepted; to each line of it, except the
last, a wampum string was devoted. With this exception, all was left to
the memory of the orator. The Homeric poems, the hymns of the Vedas, the
Kalewala, the Polynesian genealogies, and many other examples, show the
exactness with which a composition that interests a whole nation may be
handed down; but it is not surprising that when the chiefs became aware
of the superior advantages of a written record, they should have had
recourse to it. We need not doubt that Chief David of Schoharie, or
whoever else was the scribe appointed to this duty, has faithfully
preserved the substance, and, for the most part, the very words, of the
speeches and chants which he had often heard under such impressive
circumstances.

The hymn, or _karenna_, deserves a special notice. In every important
council of the Iroquois a song or chant is considered a proper and
almost essential part of the proceedings. Such official songs are
mentioned in many reports of treaty councils held with them by the
French and English authorities. In this greatest of all councils the
song must, of course, have a distinguished place. It follows immediately
upon the address of greeting and condolence, and is, in fact, regarded
as the completion of it, and the introduction to the equally important
ceremony which is to follow, viz., the repetition of the ancient laws of
the confederacy. This particular hymn is of great antiquity. Some of the
chiefs expressed to me the opinion that it was composed by Dekana-widah
or Hiawatha. Its tenor, however, as well as that of the whole book,
shows that it belongs to a later period. The ceremonies of the council
were doubtless prescribed by the founders of the League; but the
speeches of the Book, and this hymn, all refer to the League as the work
of a past age. The speakers appeal to the wisdom of their forefathers
(literally, their grandsires), and lament the degeneracy of the later
times. They expressly declare that those who established the "great
peace" were in their graves, and had taken their work with them and
placed it as a pillow under them. This is the language of men who
remembered the founders, and to whom the burial of the last of them was
a comparatively recent event. If the league was formed, as seems
probable, about the year 1450, the speeches and hymn, in their present
form, may reasonably be referred to the early part of the next century.
There is reason to believe that the formation of the confederacy was
followed by wars with the Hurons and Algonkin tribes, in which, as
usual, many changes of fortune took place. If the Hurons, as has been
shown, were expelled from their abode on the northern shore of the St.
Lawrence, the Mohegans, on the other hand, inflicted some serious blows
upon the eastern nations of the confederacy. [Footnote: See the Jesuit
_Relation_ for 1660, p. 6.] The Delawares were not conquered and reduced
to subjection without a long and sanguinary struggle. In a Condoling
Council we might expect that the tone of feeling would be lugubrious;
but the sense of loss and of danger is too marked in all the speeches of
the Canienga Book to be merely a formal utterance. It does not appear in
those of the Onondaga Book, which is seemingly of later composition.

The "karenna," or chant of the Condoling Council, may be styled the
National Hymn of the Iroquois. A comparison between it and other
national hymns, whose chief characteristics are self-glorification and
defiance, might afford room for some instructive inferences. This hymn,
it should be remarked, brief as it is, is regarded by the Indians as a
collection of songs. Each line, in fact, is, in their view, a song by
itself, and is brought to mind by its own special wampum string. In
singing, each line is twice repeated, and is introduced and followed by
many long-drawn repetitions of the exclamation _aihaigh_ (or rather
_haihaih_) which is rendered "hail!" and from which the hymn derives its
designation. In the first line the speaker salutes the "Peace," or the
league, whose blessings they enjoy. In the next he greets the kindred of
the deceased chief, who are the special objects of the public sympathy.
Then he salutes the _oyenkondonh_, a term which has been rendered
"warriors." This rendering, however, may have a misleading effect. The
word has nothing to do with war, unless in the sense that every grown
man in an Indian community is supposed to be a soldier. Except in this
hymn, the word in question is now disused. An elderly chief assured me
that he had sung it for years without knowing its precise meaning. Some
of his fellow-councillors were better informed. The word is apparently
derived from _ankwe_, man, which in the Onondaga dialect becomes
_yenkwe_. It comprises all the men (the "manhood" or mankind) of the
nation--as, in the following verse, the word _wakonnyh_, which is also
obsolete, signifies the "womanhood," or all the women of the people with
whom the singer condoles. In the next line he invokes the laws which
their forefathers established; and he concludes by calling upon his
hearers to listen to the wisdom of their forefathers, which he is about
to recite. As a whole, the hymn may be described as an expression of
reverence for the laws and for the dead, and of sympathy with the
living. Such is the "national anthem,"--the Marseillaise,--of the
ferocious Iroquois.

The regard for women which is apparent in this hymn, and in other
passages of the Book, is deserving of notice. The common notion that
women among the Indians were treated as inferiors, and made "beasts of
burden," is unfounded so far as the Iroquois are concerned, and among
all other tribes of which I have any knowledge. With them, as with
civilized nations, the work of the community and the cares of the family
are fairly divided. Among the Iroquois the hunting and fishing, the
house-building and canoe-making, fell to the men. The women cooked, made
the dresses, scratched the ground with their light hoes, planted and
gathered the crops, and took care of the children. The household goods
belonged to the woman. On her death, her relatives, and not her husband,
claimed them. The children were also hers; they belonged to her clan,
and in case of a separation they went with her. She was really the head
of the household; and in this capacity her right, when she chanced to be
the oldest matron of a noble family, to select the successor of a
deceased chief of that family, was recognized by the highest law of the
confederacy. That this rank and position were greatly prized is shown by
a remarkable passage in the Jesuit Relations. A Canienga matron,
becoming a Christian, left her country, with two of her children, to
enjoy greater freedom in her devotions among the French. The act, writes
the missionary, so offended her family that, in a public meeting of the
town, "they degraded her from the rank of the nobility, and took from
her the title of Oyander, that is, honorable (_considerable_)--a title
which they esteem highly, and which she had inherited from her
ancestors, and deserved by her good judgment, her prudence, and her
excellent conduct; and at the same time they installed another in her
place." [Footnote: _Relation_ of 1671, p. 6. The word _oyander_ in
modern pronunciation becomes _oyaner_. It is derived from the root
_yaner_, noble, and is the feminine form of the word _royaner_, lord, or
nobleman,--the title applied to the members of the federal council.]

The complete equality of the sexes in social estimation and influence is
apparent in all the narratives of the early missionaries, who were the
best possible judges on this point. Casual observers have been misled by
the absence of those artificial expressions of courtesy which have
descended to us from the time of chivalry, and which, however gracious
and pleasing to witness, are, after all, merely signs of condescension
and protection from the strong to the weak. The Iroquois does not give
up his seat to a woman, or yield her precedence on leaving a room; but
he secures her in the possession of her property, he recognizes her
right to the children she has borne, and he submits to her decision the
choice of his future rulers.




CHAPTER VI.

THE LAWS OF THE LEAGUE.


It is the custom of the officiating orator, while the chant is going on,
to walk to and fro in the council-house. When the hymn is finished, he
breaks out into a passionate invocation to their forefathers, and a
lament over the degeneracy of the times. This, as the French
missionaries inform us, was a favorite topic of Indian speakers.
[Footnote: See the _Relation_ of 1659, p. 57: "C'est la plainte
ordinaire des Capitaines [of the Hurons] que tout se va perdant, a faute
de garder les formes et coustoumes de leurs ancestres."] Among the
Iroquois, who could look back to an era of genuine statesmen and heroes,
the authors of their constitution, this complaint must have had a
peculiar force and sincerity. After this appeal to the founders of their
state, there naturally followed an address to the Council and the
people, reciting "all the rules they decided on, which they thought
would strengthen the house." By "the house" was meant, of course, the
house of many hearths, to which they likened their confederacy. The
"rules" or laws which follow require some explanation, that their full
value may be understood.

The first law prescribes that when a chief dies his office shall not
perish with him. This is expressed, in their metaphorical style, by an
injunction that the "horns," or insignia of office, shall not be buried
with the deceased chief, but shall be taken off at his death, to be
transferred to his successor. This rule is laid down in the most urgent
and impressive terms. "We should perhaps all perish if his office is
buried with him in his grave." This systematic transmission of official
rank was, in fact, the vital principle of their government. It was in
this system that their federal union differed from the frequent and
transitory confederacies common among the Indian tribes. In general,
among nearly all the tribes, the rank of a chief was personal. It was
gained by the character and achievements of the individual, and it died
with him. Hence their government and policy, so far as they can be said
to have had any, were always uncertain and fluctuating. No person
understood the Indian usages better than Zeisberger. His biographer has
well described the difference which existed in this respect between the
Iroquois and their neighbors. "The Algonkins," he writes, "knew nothing
of regular government. They had no system of polity; there was no unity
of action among them. The affairs even of a single tribe were managed in
the loosest manner." After briefly, but accurately, delineating the
Iroquois system of councils, he adds: "Thus they became both a political
and a military power among the aborigines; the influence of their league
was felt everywhere, and their conquests extended in every direction."
[Footnote: De Schweinitz: _Life of Zeisberger_, p. 39.] The principle
that "the chief dies but the office survives,"--the regular transmission
of rank, title and authority, by a method partly hereditary and partly
elective,--was the principle on which the life and strength of the
Iroquois constitution depended.

Next followed a provision of hardly less importance. The wars among the
Indian tribes arise almost always from individual murders. The killing
of a tribesman by the members of another community concerns his whole
people. If satisfaction is not promptly made, war follows, as a matter
of course. [Footnote: _Relation, of_ 1636, p. 119. "C'est de la que
naissent les guerres, et c'est un sujet plus que suffisant de prendre
les armes contre quelque Village quand il refuse de satisfaire par les
presents ordonnez, pour celuy qui vous aurait tue quelq'un des
vostres."--_Brebeuf, on the Hurons_.] The founders of the Iroquois
commonwealth decreed that wars for this cause should not be allowed to
rise between any of their cantons. On this point a special charge was
given to the members of the Great Council. They were enjoined (in the
figurative language employed throughout the Book) not to allow the
murder to be discussed in a national assembly, where the exasperation of
the young men might lead to mischief, but to reserve it for their own
consideration; and they were required as soon as possible to bury all
animosities that might arise from it. The figure employed is impressive.
They were to uproot a huge pine-tree--the well-known emblem of their
League--disclosing a deep cavity, below which an underground stream
would be swiftly flowing. Into this current they were to cast the cause
of trouble, and then, replacing the tree, hide the mischief forever from
their people.

How strictly in spirit these injunctions were followed, and with what
good effect, their whole history shows. A notable instance of the
readiness and ingenuity of their statesmen in finding the means of
public reconciliation in such cases is given in the Jesuit narrative. On
the 24th of July, 1657, a great council was held at Onondaga to consider
three matters, all of special import. First in order was the necessity
of appeasing a threatened quarrel between two of the leading nations,
the Senecas and the Caniengas, caused by a misadventure in which a
Seneca "captain" had been killed by some warriors of the eastern nation.
Next in importance was the reception of a large party of Frenchmen,
headed by Father Francis le Mercier, the Superior of the Jesuit
missionaries in Canada, who had come to form a settlement among the
Iroquois. And, finally, they had to prepare the plan and the means for
an expedition against some hostile tribes. Before the meeting of the
Council the Frenchmen had paid a formal visit to the Seneca delegates,
whom they found "filling the air with songs of mourning" for their
slaughtered chief, and had manifested their sympathy by a present, "to
alleviate the grief" of the mourners. This incident seems to have
suggested to the assembled councillors a method of effecting--or at
least of announcing--the desired accommodation, and of paying at the
same time a happy compliment to their reverend visitors. By common
consent the affair was referred to the arbitrament of the Father
Superior, by whom the difference was promptly settled. [Footnote: On
the: Grand conseil le 24 du mois de Juillet, ou toutes les Nations
remisent entre les mains d'Achiendase qui est nostre Père Superieur le
diffrend Centre les Sonnontoüeronnons et les Agnieronnons, qui fait bien
et terminé.--_Relation of_ 1657, p. 16.] It was not necessary for the
politic senators to inform their gratified visitors that the performance
in which they thus took part was merely a formality which ratified, or
rather proclaimed, a foregone conclusion. The reconciliation which was
prescribed by their constitution had undoubtedly been arranged by
previous conferences, after their custom in such matters, before the
meeting of the Council. [Footnote: For a curious instance of the manner
in which questions to be apparently decided by a Council were previously
settled between the parties, see the _Life of Zeisberger_, p. 190:
"Gietterowane was the speaker on one side, Zeisberger on the other.
These two consulted together privately,--Zeisberger unfolding the import
of the strings [of wampum which he had brought as ambassador] and
Gietterowane committing to memory what he said."] So effective was this
provision of their constitution that for more than three centuries this
main cause of Indian wars was rendered innocuous, and the "Great Peace"
remained undisturbed. This proud averment of their annalists, confirmed
as it is for more than half the period by the evidence of their white
neighbors, cannot reasonably be questioned. What nation or confederacy
of civilized Europe can show an exemption from domestic strife for so
long a term?

The third rule or ordinance which the founders enacted "to strengthen
the house" is of a remarkable character. It relates to the mortuary
usages of the people; and when these are understood, the great
importance of this law becomes apparent. Among the Indians of the
Huron-Iroquois family the ordinary mourning for the dead became
exaggerated into customs of the most extravagant character, exhausting
the time and strength of the warriors, and devouring their substance.
The French missionaries have left us an account of these singular usages
among the Hurons, some of which excited their respect, and others their
astonishment. "Our savages," they wrote, "are in no way savage as
regards the duties which nature herself requires us to render to the
dead. You would say that their efforts, their toils and their commerce
had no other end than to amass the means of honoring the departed. They
have nothing too precious for this object. To this they devote their
robes of skins, their hatchets and wampum, in such profusion that you
would fancy they made nothing of them; and yet these are the riches of
their country. Often in midwinter you will see them going almost naked,
while they have at home, laid up in store, good and handsome robes,
which they keep in reverence for the dead. This is their point of honor.
In this, above all, they seek to show themselves magnificent."
[Footnote: Brebeuf, _Relation of_ 1636, p. 128.]

During the three days that preceded the burial of the dead, or the
removal of his remains to the scaffold, the wails, groans and
lamentations of the relatives and neighbors resounded in the cabin where
he lay. All the stored riches were brought forth and lavished in gifts
"to comfort the mourners." The mourning did not end with the burial; in
fact, it may be said to have then only begun. The "great mourning," as
the missionaries term it, lasted for six days longer, during which the
mourners lay, face downward, upon their mats, and enveloped in their
robes, speechless, or replying only by an ejaculation to those who
addressed them. During this period they had no fire in the house, even
in winter; they ate their food cold, and left the cabin only at night,
and as secretly as possible. The "lesser mourning" lasted for a year,
during which they refrained from oiling their hair, attended public
festivals rarely, and only (in the case of women) when their mothers
ordered, and were forbidden to marry again.

This, however, was not all. Once in twelve years was held a great
ceremony of re-interment,--a solemn "feast of the dead," as it was
called. Until the day of this feast arrived, funeral rites in honor of
the departed were repeated from time to time, and feasts were held, at
which, as the expression was, their names were revived, while presents
were distributed, as at the time of their death. The great Feast of the
Dead, however, was the most important of all their ceremonies. The
bodies of all who had died in the nation during the preceding twelve
years were then exhumed, or removed from the scaffolds on which they had
been laid, and the festering corpses or cleansed bones were all interred
together in a vast pit lined with robes of beaver skins, the most
precious of all their furs. Wampum, copper implements, earthenware, the
most valued of their possessions, were cast into the pit, which was then
solemnly closed with earth. While the ceremony was going on, rich
presents of all descriptions, the accumulations of the past twelve
years, were distributed by the relatives of the deceased among the
people. In this distribution, strange to say, valuable fur robes were
frequently cut and torn to pieces, so as to be rendered worthless. A
lavish display and reckless destruction of wealth were deemed honors due
to the shades of the departed. [Footnote: See the _Relation_ for 1636,
p. 131. A most vivid and graphic description of these extraordinary
ceremonies is given in Parkman's admirable work, _The Jesuits in North
America_, Chapter 7.]

The Attiwandaronks, or Neutrals, who were the nearest neighbors of the
Iroquois, were still more extravagant in their demonstrations of
affection for their lost friends. They, too, had their feasts of the
dead, at regular intervals. In the meantime the bodies were kept in
their houses as long as possible--"until the stench became intolerable."
Then, when this proximity could no longer be borne, the remains were
left for a period to decay on a scaffold in the open air. After a time
the remaining flesh was removed from the bones, which were arranged on
the sides of their cabins, in full view of the inmates, until the great
day of general interment. With these mournful objects before their eyes,
renewing constantly the sense of their loss, the women of the household
were excited to frequent outbursts of grief, expressed in wailing
chants. [Footnote: "Cet object qu'ils ont devant les yeux, leur
renouvellant continuellement le resentiment de leurs pertes, leur fait
ordinairement letter des cris, et faire des lamentations tout à fait
lugubres, le tout en chanson. Mais cela ne se fait que par les
femmes."--_Relation_ of 1641, p. 73.]

That the Iroquois in ancient times had funeral customs similar to those
of their sister nations, and not less revolting, cannot be doubted. How
these shocking and pernicious usages were abolished at one swoop is
shown by the brief passage in the Book of Rites now under discussion.
The injunctions are laconic, but full of meaning. When a death occurs,
the people are told, "this shall be done." A delegation of persons,
officially appointed for the purpose, shall repair to the dwelling of
the deceased, bearing in a pouch some strands of mourning wampum. The
leader, holding these strands, and standing by the hearth, shall
address, in the name of the whole people, a few words of comfort to the
mourners. And then "they shall be comforted," and shall go on with their
usual duties. To this simple ceremony--supplemented, in the case of a
high chief, by the rites of the "Condoling Council,"--the preposterous
funeral usages, which pervaded the lives and wasted the wealth of the
other nations of this stock, were reduced, by the wisdom of the Iroquois
legislators.

In considering these remarkable laws, it becomes evident that the work
which Hiawatha and Dekanawidah accomplished was really a Great
Reformation, not merely political, but also social and religious. They
desired not only to establish peace among the nations, but also to
abolish or modify such usages and beliefs as in their opinion were
injurious to their people. It is deserving of notice that a divinity
unknown, at least in name, to the Hurons, received special reverence
among the Iroquois. The chief characters of the Huron pantheon were a
female deity, Ataensic, a sort of Hecate, whom they sometimes identified
with the moon, and her grandson, Juskeha, who was sometimes regarded as
the sun, and as a benevolent spirit, but most commonly in their stories
appears as a fantastic and capricious goblin, with no moral attributes
whatever. In the Iroquois mythology these deities are replaced by a
personage of a much higher character. Taronhiawagon, the Holder of the
Heavens, was with them the Master of Life. He declared his will to them
in dreams, and in like manner disclosed future events, particularly such
as were important to the public welfare. He was, in fact, the national
god of the Iroquois. It was he who guided their fathers in their early
wanderings, when they were seeking for a place of abode. He visited them
from time to time, in person, to protect them from their enemies and to
instruct them in useful arts.

It is possible that the Iroquois Taronhiawagon may have been originally
the same as the Huron Juskeha. Some eminent authorities on Indian
mythology are inclined to this opinion. On the other hand, the earlier
Jesuit missionaries give no hint of such identity, and the Tuscarora
historian, Cusick, seems to distinguish between these divine personages.
But whether we accept this view or seek for any other origin, there
seems reason to suppose that the more exalted conception of this deity,
who is certainly, in character and attributes, one of the noblest
creations of the North American mythologies, dates from the era of the
confederacy, when he became more especially the chief divinity and
protector of the Kanonsionni. [Footnote: See for Taronhiawagon the
Jesuit _Relations_ for 1670, pp. 47, 66, and for 1671, p. 17: also
Cusick, pp. 20, 22, 24, 34. For Juskeha, see the _Relation_ for 1635, p.
34; 1636, pp. 101-103; 1640, p. 92. Lafitau in one place makes
Tharonhiawagon a deified man, and in another the grandson of
Ataensic.--_Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains_, Vol. 1. p. 146 and p.
244.]




CHAPTER VII.

HISTORICAL TRADITIONS.


After the declaration of the laws of the League, there follows a passage
of great historical importance. The speaker recites the names of the
chiefs who represented the Five Nations in the conference by which the
work of devising their laws and establishing their government was
accomplished. The native name of the confederacy is here for the first
time mentioned. In the guttural and rather irregular orthography of the
Book it is spelt _Kanonghsyonny_. The Roman Catholic missionaries,
neglecting the aspirate, which in the Iroquois pronunciation appears and
disappears as capriciously as in the spoken dialects of the south of
England, write the word Kanonsionni. It is usually rendered by
interpreters the "Long House," but this is not precisely its meaning.
The ordinary word for "long house" is _kanonses_ or _kanonsis_,--the
termination _es_ or _is_ being the adjective suffix which signifies
_long_. _Kanonsionni_ is a compound word, formed of _kanonsa_, _house_,
and _ionni_, extended, or drawn out. The confederacy was compared to a
dwelling which was extended by additions made to the end, in the manner
in which their bark-built houses were lengthened,--sometimes to an
extent exceeding two hundred feet. When the number of families
inhabiting these long dwellings was increased by marriage or adoption,
and a new hearth was required, the end-wall,--if this term may be
applied to the slight frame of poles and bark which closed the
house,--was removed, an addition of the required size was made to the
edifice, and the closing wall was restored. Such was the figure by which
the founders of the confederacy represented their political structure, a
figure which was in itself a description and an invitation. It declared
that the united nations were not distinct tribes, associated by a
temporary league, but one great family, clustered for convenience about
separate hearths in a common dwelling; and it proclaimed their readiness
to receive new members into the general household. [Footnote: The people
of the confederacy were known as _Rotinonsionni_, "They of the Extended
House." In the Seneca dialect this was altered and abridged to
Hotinonsonni, the n having the French nasal sound. This word is written
by Mr. Morgan, "Hodenosaunee."]

The names of the six great chiefs who, as representatives of their
several nations, formed the confederacy, are in this narrative linked
together in a manner which declares their political kinship. The first
rulers or heads of the combined households were the Canienga Dekanawidah
with his "joint-ruler" and political son, the Oneida Otatsehte (or
Odadsheghte), whose union with Dekanawidah was the commencement of the
League. Next follows Otatsehte's uncle (and Dekanawidah's brother), the
Onondaga Wathadodarho (Atotarho), who is accompanied by his son, the
Cayuga Akahenyonh. The uncle of the Cayuga representative, the Seneca
chief Kanadariyu, and his cousin, Shadekaronyes, represent the two
sections into which the great Seneca nation was divided. The name of
Hiawatha does not appear in this enumeration. According to the uniform
tradition of the Five Nations, he was not merely present in the
convention, but was the leading spirit in its deliberations. But he did
not officially represent any nation. By birth a high chief of the
Onondagas, he had been but newly adopted among the Caniengas. Each of
these nations had entrusted its interests to its own most influential
chief. But the respect with which Hiawatha was regarded is indicated, as
has been already remarked, by his place in the list of fifty
councillors, with whose names the Book concludes. Though so recently
received among the haughty Caniengas, whose proud and jealous temper is
often noticed by the missionaries and other early observers, his name is
placed second in the list of their representatives, immediately
following that of Tekarihoken, the chief who stood highest in titular
rank among the nobles of the Kanonsionni, and whose lineage was perhaps
derived from the leader of their primitive migrations.

The tradition runs that when the political frame of their confederacy
had been arranged by the members of this convention, and the number of
senators who should represent each nation in the federal council had
been determined, the six delegates, with Hiawatha and some other
advisers, went through all the nations, selecting--doubtless with the
aid of a national council in each case--the chiefs who were to
constitute the first council. In designating these,--or rather,
probably, in the ceremonies of their installation,--it is said that some
peculiar prerogative was conceded to the Onondagas,--that is, to
Atotarho and his attendant chiefs. It was probably given as a mark of
respect, rather than as conferring any real authority; but from this
circumstance the Onondagas were afterwards known in the council by the
title of "the nominators." The word is, in the Canienga dialect,
_Rotisennakehte_,--in Onondaga, _Hotisennakehte_. It means literally,
"the name-carriers,"--as if, said one of my informants, they bore a
parcel of names in a bag slung upon the back.

Each of the other nations had also its peculiar name in the Council,
distinct from the mere local designation by which it was commonly
called. Thus the Caniengas had for their "Council name" the term
_Tehadirihoken_. This is the plural form of the name of their leading
chief, Tekarihoken. Opinions differ much among the Indians as to the
meaning of this name. Cusick, the Tuscarora historian, defines it "a
speech divided," and apparently refers it to the division of the
Iroquois language into dialects. Chief George Johnson, the interpreter,
rendered it "two statements together," or "two pieces of news together."
Another native informant thought it meant "one word in two divisions,"
while a third defined it as meaning "between two words." The root-word
of the name is the Canienga _orihwa_, or _karihwa_, (properly
_karihoa_), which is defined "thing, affair, speech, news." [Footnote:
See Bruyas, _sub voce Gorihoa_. Mr. Morgan (_League of the Iroquois_, p.
97), who derived his information from the Senecas, says that the name
"was a term of respect, and signifies 'neutral,' or, as it may be
rendered, the shield." He adds, "its origin is lost in obscurity."] It
also apparently means office; thus we have the derivatives _garihont_,
"to give some charge of duty to some one," and _atrihont_, "to be an
officer, or captain." The name is in the peculiar dual or rather
duplicative form which is indicated by the prefix _te_ and the affix
_ken_ or _ke_. It may possibly, therefore, mean "holding two offices,"
and would thus be specially applicable to the great Canienga noble, who,
unlike most of his order, was both a civil ruler and a war-chief. But
whether he gave his name to his people, or received it from them, is
uncertain. In other instances the Council name of a nation appears to
have been applied in the singular number to the leading chief of the
nation. Thus the head-chief of the Onondagas was often known by the
title of _Sakosennakehte_, "the Name-carrier." [Footnote: "Il y avait en
cette bande un Capitaine qui porte'le nom le plus considerable de toute
sa Nation, Sagochiendagehte."--_Relation_ of 1654, p. 8. Elsewhere, as
in the _Relation_ for 1657, p. 17, this name is spelt Agochiendaguete.]

The name of the Oneida nation in the Council was _Nihatirontakowa_--or,
in the Onondaga dialect, _Nihatientakona_--usually rendered the
"Great-Tree People,"--literally, "those of the great log." It is derived
from _karonta_, a fallen tree or piece of timber, with the suffix _kowa_
or _kona_, great, added, and the verb-forming pronoun prefixed. In the
singular number it becomes _Niharontakowa_, which would be understood to
mean "He is an Oneida." The name, it is said, was given to the nation
because when Dekanawidah and Hiawatha first went to meet its chief, they
crossed the Oneida creek on a bridge composed of an immense tree which
had fallen or been laid across it, and noted that the Council fire at
which the treaty was concluded was kindled against another huge log.
These, however, may be merely explanations invented in later times.

The Cayugas bore in Council the name of _Sotinonnawentona_, meaning "the
Great-Pipe People." In the singular it is _Sononnawentona_. The root of
the word is _kanonnawen_, which in composition becomes _kanonnawenta_,
meaning pipe, or calumet. It is said that the chief who in the first
Council represented the Cayugas smoked a pipe of unusual size, which
attracted the notice of the "name-givers."

Finally the Seneca mountaineers, the _Sonnontowanas_, bore the title, in
the Canienga speech, of _Ronaninhohonti_, "the Door-keepers," or
literally, "they who are at the doorway." In the singular this becomes
_Roninhohonti_. In the Onondaga dialect it is _Honinhohonta_. It is a
verbal form, derived from _Kanhoha_, door, and _ont_, to be. This name
is undoubtedly coeval with the formation of the League, and was bestowed
as a title of honor. The Senecas, at the western end of the "extended
mansion," guarded the entrance against the wild tribes in that quarter,
whose hostility was most to be dreaded.

The enumeration of the chiefs who formed the confederacy is closed by
the significant words, "and then, in later times, additions were made to
the great edifice." This is sufficient evidence that the Canienga "Book
of Rites" was composed in its present form after the Tuscaroras, and
possibly after the Nanticokes and Tuteloes, were received into the
League. The Tuscaroras were admitted in 1714; the two other nations were
received about the year 1753. [Footnote: The former date is well known;
for the latter, see _N. Y. Hist. Col._, Vol. 6, p. 311; Stone's _Life of
Sir William Johnson_, p. 434.]

An outburst of lamentation follows. The speaker has recited the names of
the heroes and statesmen to whom the united nations were indebted for
the Great Peace which had so long prevailed among them. He has recalled
the wise laws which they established; and he is about to chant the
closing litany, commemorating the fifty chiefs who composed the first
federal council, and whose names have remained as the official titles of
their successors. In recalling these memories of departed greatness his
mind is filled with grief and humiliation at the contrast presented by
the degeneracy of his own days. It is a common complaint of all
countries and all times; but the sentiment was always, according to the
missionaries, especially strong among the Indians, who are a
conservative race. The orator appeals to the shades of their ancestors,
in words which, in the baldest of literal versions, are full of
eloquence and pathos. The "great law" has become old, and has lost its
force. Its authors have passed away, and have carried it with them into
their graves. They have placed it as a pillow under their heads. Their
degenerate successors have inherited their names, but not their mighty
intellects; and in the flourishing region which they left, naught but a
desert remains. A trace, and not a slight one, of the mournful sublimity
which we admire in the Hebrew prophets, with a similar cadence of
"parallelism" in the style, will be noticed in this forest lament.

The same characteristics mark the chanted litany which closes the
address. There is not merely parallelism and cadence, but occasionally
rhyme, in the stanzas which are interspersed among the names, as is seen
in the oft-repeated chorus which follows the names composing each clan
or "class":--

    Etho natejonhne,
  Sewaterihwakhaonghkwe,
  Sewarihwisaanonghkwe,
    Kayaterenhkowa. [Footnote: For the translation, see _ante_, p. 33.]

This litany is sung in the usual style of their mourning or religious
chants, with many long-drawn repetitions of the customary ejaculation
_haihhaih_,--an exclamation which, like the Greek "ai! ai!" belongs to
the wailing style appropriate to such a monody. The expressions of the
chant, like those of a Greek chorus, are abrupt, elliptical, and
occasionally obscure. It is probable that this chant, like the condoling
Hymn in the former part of the Book, is of earlier style than the other
portions of the work, their rhythmical form having preserved the
original words with greater accuracy. Such explanations of the doubtful
passages as could be obtained from the chiefs and the interpreters will
be found in the notes.

The chant and the Book end abruptly with the mournful exclamation, "Now
we are dejected in mind." The lament which precedes the litany, and
which is interrupted by it, may be said to close with these words. As
the council is held, nominally at least, for the purpose of condolence,
and as it necessarily revives the memory of the departed worthies of
their republic, it is natural that the ceremonies throughout should be
of a melancholy cast. They were doubtless so from the beginning, and
before there was any occasion to deplore the decay of their commonwealth
or the degeneracy of the age. In fact, when we consider that the
founders of the League, with remarkable skill and judgment, managed to
compress into a single day the protracted and wasteful obsequies
customary among other tribes of the same race, we shall not be surprised
to find that they sought to make the ceremonies of the day as solemn and
impressive as possible.

But there are other characteristics of the "Book of Rites," prominent in
the Canienga section, and still more marked in the Onondaga portion,
which may well excite our astonishment. They have been already noticed,
but seem to deserve fuller consideration. It will be observed that, from
beginning to end, the Book breathes nothing but sentiments of kindness
and sympathy for the living, and of reverence for the departed,--not
merely for the chief whom they have come to mourn, but also for the
great men who have preceded him, and especially for the founders of
their commonwealth. Combined with these sentiments, and harmonizing with
them, is an earnest desire for peace, along with a profound respect for
the laws under which they lived. The work in which these feelings are
expressed is a genuine composition of the Indians themselves, framed
long before they were affected by any influences from abroad, and
repeated among them for centuries, with the entire assent of the
hearers. It affords unquestionable evidence of the true character both
of those who composed and of those who received it.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE IROQUOIS CHARACTER.


The popular opinion of the Indian, and more especially of the Iroquois,
who, as Mr. Parkman well observes, is an "Indian of the Indians,"
represents him as a sanguinary, treacherous and vindictive being,
somewhat cold in his affections, haughty and reserved toward his
friends, merciless to his enemies, fond of strife, and averse to
industry and the pursuits of peace. Some magnanimous traits are
occasionally allowed to him; and poetry and romance have sometimes
thrown a glamour about his character, which popular opinion, not without
reason, energetically repudiates and resents. The truth is that the
circumstances under which the red and white races have encountered in
North America have been such as necessarily to give rise to a wholly
false impression in regard to the character of the aborigines. The
European colonists, superior in civilization and in the arts of war,
landed on the coast with the deliberate intention of taking possession
of the country and displacing the natives. The Indians were at once
thrown on the defensive. From the very beginning they fought, not merely
for their land, but for their lives; for it was from their land that
they drew the means of living. All wars between the whites and the
Indians, whatever the color or pretence on either side, have been on
both sides wars of extermination. They have been carried on as such wars
always have been and always will be carried on. On the side of the
stronger there have been constant encroachments, effected now by menace
and now by cajolery, but always prefaced by the display and the
insolence of superior power. On the side of the weaker there have been
alternations of sullen acquiescence and of fierce and fruitless
resistance. It is not surprising that under such circumstances the
character of each party has been presented to the other in the most
forbidding light.

The Indians must be judged, like every other people, not by the traits
which they display in the fury of a desperate warfare, but by their
ordinary demeanor in time of peace, and especially by the character of
their social and domestic life. On this point the testimony of
missionaries and of other competent observers who have lived among them
is uniform. At home the Indians are the most kindly and generous of men.
Constant good humor, unfailing courtesy, ready sympathy with distress,
and a truly lavish liberality, mark their intercourse with one another.
The Jesuit missionaries among the Hurons knew them before intercourse
with the whites and the use of ardent spirits had embittered and debased
them. The testimony which they have left on record is very remarkable.
The missionary Brebeuf, protesting against the ignorant prejudice which
would place the Indians on a level with the brutes, gives the result of
his observation in emphatic terms. "In my opinion," he writes, "it is no
small matter to say of them that they live united in towns, sometimes of
fifty, sixty, or a hundred dwellings, that is, of three or four hundred
households; that they cultivate the fields, from which they derive their
food for the whole year; and that they maintain peace and friendship
with one another." He doubts "if there is another nation under heaven
more commendable in this respect" than the Huron "nation of the Bear,"
among whom he resided. "They have," he declares, "a gentleness and an
affability almost incredible for barbarians." They keep up "this perfect
goodwill," as he terms it, "by frequent visits, by the aid which they
give one another in sickness, and by their festivals and social
gatherings, whenever they are not occupied by their fields and
fisheries, or in hunting or trade." "They are," he continues, "less in
their own cabins than in those of their friends. If any one falls sick,
and wants something which may benefit him, everybody is eager to furnish
it. Whenever one of them has something specially good to eat, he invites
his friends and makes a feast. Indeed, they hardly ever eat alone."
[Footnote: _Relation_ for 1636, p. 117.]

The Iroquois, who had seemed little better than demons to the
missionaries while they knew them only as enemies to the French or their
Huron allies, astonished them, on a nearer acquaintance, by the
development of similar traits of natural goodness. "You will find in
them," declares one of these fair-minded and cultivated observers,
"virtues which might well put to blush the majority of Christians. There
is no need of hospitals among them, because there are no beggars among
them, and indeed, none who are poor, so long as any of them are rich.
Their kindness, humanity and courtesy not merely make them liberal in
giving, but almost lead them to live as though everything they possess
were held in common. No one can want food while there is corn anywhere
in the town." It is true that the missionaries often accuse the Iroquois
of cruelty and perfidy; but the narrative shows that these qualities
were only displayed in their wars, and apparently only against enemies
whose cruelty and perfidy they had experienced.

We can now see that the plan of universal federation and general peace
which Hiawatha devised had nothing in itself so surprising as to excite
our incredulity. It was, indeed, entirely in accordance with the genius
of his people. Its essence was the extension to all nations of the
methods of social and civil life which prevailed in his own nation. If
the people of a town of four hundred families could live in constant
"peace and friendship," why should not all the tribes of men dwell
together in the same manner? The idea is one which might readily have
occurred to any man of benevolent feelings and thoughtful temperament.
The project in itself is not so remarkable as the energy and skill with
which it was carried into effect. It is deserving of notice, however,
that according to the Indian tradition, Hiawatha was impelled to action
mainly by experience of the mischiefs which were caused in his own
nation through a departure from their ordinary system of social life.
The missionaries, in describing the general harmony which prevailed
among the Hurons, admit that it was sometimes disturbed. There were "bad
spirits" among them, as everywhere else, who could not always be
controlled. [Footnote: _Relation of 1636_, p. 118: "Ostez quelques
mauvais esprits, qui se rencontrent quasi partout," etc.] Atotarho,
among the Onondagas, was one of these bad spirits; and in his case,
unfortunately, an evil disposition was reinforced by a keen intellect
and a powerful will. His history for a time offered a rare instance of
something approaching to despotism, or the Greek "tyranny," exercised in
an Indian tribe. A fact so strange, and conduct so extraordinary, seemed
in after-times to require explanation. A legend is preserved among the
Onondagas, which was apparently devised to account for a prodigy so far
out of the common order of events. I give it in the words in which it is
recorded in my journal. [Footnote: This story was related to me in
March, 1882, by my intelligent friend, Chief John Buck, who was inclined
to give it credence,--sharing in this, as in other things, the
sentiments of the best among his people.]

"Another legend, of which I have not before heard, professed to give the
origin both of the abnormal ferocity and of the preterhuman powers of
Atotarho. He was already noted as a chief and a warrior, when he had the
misfortune to kill a peculiar bird, resembling a sea-gull, which is
reputed to possess poisonous qualities of singular virulence. By his
contact with the dead bird his mind was affected. He became morose and
cruel, and at the same time obtained the power of destroying men and
other creatures at a distance. Three sons of Hiawatha were among his
victims. He attended the Councils which were held, and made confusion in
them, and brought all the people into disturbance and terror. His bodily
appearance was changed at the same time, and his aspect became so
terrible that the story spread, and was believed, that his head was
encircled by living snakes."

The only importance of this story is in the evidence it affords that
conduct so anti-social as that of Atotarho was deemed to be the result
of a disordered mind. In his case, as in that of the Scottish tyrant and
murderer, "the insane root that took the reason prisoner," was doubtless
an unbridled ambition. It is interesting to remark that even his fierce
temper and determined will were forced to yield at last to the pressure
of public opinion, which compelled him to range himself on the side of
peace and union. In the whimsical imagery of the narrative, which some
of the story-tellers, after their usual fashion, have converted from a
metaphor to a fact, Hiawatha "combed the snakes out of the head" of his
great antagonist, and presented him to the Council changed and restored
to his right mind.




CHAPTER IX.

THE IROQUOIS POLICY.


Few popular notions, it may be affirmed, are so far from the truth as
that which makes the Iroquois a band of treacherous and ferocious
ravagers, whose career was marked everywhere by cruelty and devastation.
The clear and positive evidence of historical facts leads to a widely
different conclusion. It is not going too far to assert that among all
uncivilized races the Iroquois have shown themselves to be the most
faithful of allies, the most placable of enemies, and the most clement
of conquerors. It will be proper, in justice to them, as well as in the
interest of political and social science, to present briefly the
principles and methods which guided them in their intercourse with other
communities. Their system, as finally developed, comprised four distinct
forms of connection with other nations, all tending directly to the
establishment of universal peace.

1. As has been already said, the primary object of the founders of their
League was the creation of a confederacy which should comprise all the
nations and tribes of men that were known to them. Experience, however,
quickly showed that this project, admirable in idea, was impossible of
execution. Distance, differences of language, and difficulties of
communication, presented obstacles which could not be overcome. But the
plan was kept in view as one of the cardinal principles of their policy.
They were always eager to receive new members into their League. The
Tuscaroras, the Nanticokes, the Tuteloes, and a band of the Delawares,
were thus successively admitted, and all of them still retain
representative in the Council of the Canadian branch of the confederacy.

2. When this complete political union could not be achieved, the
Iroquois sought to accomplish the same end, as far as possible, by a
treaty of alliance. Two notable examples will show how earnestly this
purpose was pursued, and how firmly it was maintained. When the Dutch
established their trading settlements on the Hudson River, one of their
first proceedings was to send an embassy to the Five Nations, with
proposals for a treaty. The overture was promptly accepted. A strict
alliance was formed, and was ratified in the usual manner by an exchange
of wampum belts. When the English took the place of the Dutch, the
treaty was renewed with them, and was confirmed in the same manner. The
wampum-belts then received by the Confederates are still preserved on
their Canadian Reservation, and are still brought forth and expounded by
the older chiefs to the younger generation, in their great Councils.
History records with what unbroken faith, through many changes, and
despite many provocations from their allies and many enticements from
the French rulers and missionaries, this alliance was maintained to the
last.

If it be suggested that this fidelity was strengthened by motives of
policy, the same cannot be affirmed of the alliance with the Ojibways,
which dates from a still earlier period. The annalists of the
Kanonsionni affirm that their first treaty with this widespread people
of the northwest was made soon after the formation of their League, and
that it was strictly maintained on both sides for more than two hundred
years. The Ojibways then occupied both shores of Lake Superior, and the
northern part of the peninsula of Michigan. The point at which they came
chiefly in contact with the adventurous Iroquois voyagers was at the
great fishing station of St. Mary's Falls, on the strait which unites
Lake Superior with Lake Huron; and here, it is believed, the first
alliance was consummated. After more than two centuries had elapsed, the
broken bands of the defeated Hurons, fleeing from their ravaged homes on
the Georgian Bay, took refuge among the Ojibways, with whom they, too,
had always maintained a friendly understanding. Their presence and the
story of their sufferings naturally awakened the sympathy of their
hosts. The rapid spread of the Iroquois empire created alarm. A great
agitation ensued among the far-dispersed bands of the Ojibway name.
Occasional meetings between hunting-parties of the younger warriors of
the two peoples,--the Iroquois arrogant in the consciousness of their
recent conquests, the Ojibways sullen and suspicious,--led to bitter
words, and sometimes to actual strife. On two occasions several Ojibway
warriors were slain, under what provocation is uncertain. But the
reparation demanded by the Ojibway chiefs was promptly conceded by the
Iroquois Council. The amplest apology was made, and for every slain
warrior a pack of furs was delivered. The ancient treaty was at the same
time renewed, with every formality. Nothing could more clearly show the
anxiety of the Iroquois rulers to maintain their national faith than
this apology and reparation, so readily made by them, at the time when
their people were at the height of their power and in the full flush of
conquest. [Footnote: The Ojibway historian, Copway, in his "_Traditional
History of the Ojibway Nation_" (p. 84), gives the particulars of this
event, as preserved by the Ojibways themselves. Even the strong national
prejudice of the narrator, which has evidently colored his statement,
leaves the evidence of the magnanimity and prudence of the Iroquois
elders clearly apparent.] These efforts, however, to preserve the
ancient amity proved unavailing. Through whose fault it was that the
final outbreak occurred is a question which the annalists of the two
parties differ. But the events just recounted, and, indeed, all the
circumstances, speak strongly in favor of the Iroquois. They had shown
their anxiety to maintain the peace, and they had nothing to gain by
war. The bleak northern home of the Ojibways offered no temptation to
the most greedy conqueror. To the Ojibways, on the other hand, the broad
expanse of western Canada, now lying deserted, and stretching before
them its wealth of forests full of deer, its lakes and rivers swarming
with fish, its lovely glades and fertile plains, where the corn harvests
of the Hurons and Neutrals had lately glistened, were an allurement
which they could not resist. They assumed at once the wrongs and the
territories of their exiled Huron friends, and plunged into the
long-meditated strife with their ancient allies. The contest was
desperate and destructive. Many sanguinary battles took place, and great
numbers of warriors fell on both sides. On the whole the balance
inclined against the Iroquois. In this war they were a southern people,
contending against a hardier race from the far north. They fought at a
distance from their homes, while the Ojibways, migrating in bands,
pitched their habitations in the disputed region.

Finally, both sides became weary of the strife. Old sentiments of
fellowship revived. Peace was declared, and a new treaty was made. The
territory for which they had fought was divided between them. The
southwestern portion, which had been the home of the Attiwandaronks,
remained as the hunting-ground of the Iroquois. North and east of this
section the Ojibways possessed the land. The new treaty, confirmed by
the exchange of wampum-belts and by a peculiar interlocking of the right
arms, which has ever since been the special sign of amity between the
Iroquois and the Ojibways, was understood to make them not merely allies
but brothers. As the symbol on one of the belts which is still preserved
indicates, they were to be as relatives who are so nearly akin that they
eat from the same dish. This treaty, made two centuries ago, has ever
since been religiously maintained. Its effects are felt to this day.
Less than forty years ago a band of the Ojibways, the Missisagas, forced
to relinquish their reserved lands on the River Credit, sought a refuge
with the Iroquois of the Grand River Reservation. They appealed to this
treaty, and to the evidence of the wampum-belts. Their appeal was
effectual. A large tract of valuable land was granted to them by the Six
Nations. Here, maintaining their distinct tribal organization, they
still reside, a living evidence of the constancy and liberality with
which the Iroquois uphold their treaty obligations.

3. When a neighboring people would neither join the confederacy nor
enter into a treaty of alliance with it, the almost inevitable result
would be, sooner or later, a deadly war. Among the nomadic or unsettled
Indian tribes, especially the Algonkins and Sioux, the young men are
expected to display their bravery by taking scalps; and a race of
farmers, hunters, and fishermen, like the Iroquois, would be tempting
victims. Before the confederacy was formed, some of its members,
particularly the Caniengas and Oneidas, had suffered greatly from wars
with the wilder tribes about them. The new strength derived from the
League enabled them to turn the tables upon their adversaries. But they
made a magnanimous use of their superiority. An enemy who submitted was
at once spared. When the great Delaware nation, the Lenapes, known as
the head of the Algonkin stock, yielded to the arms of the Kanonsionni,
they were allowed to retain their territory and nearly all their
property. They were simply required to acknowledge themselves the
subjects of the Iroquois, to pay a moderate tribute in wampum and furs,
and to refrain thenceforth from taking any part in war. In the
expressive Indian phrase, they were "made women." This phrase did not
even imply, according to Iroquois ideas, any serious humiliation; for
among them, as the French missionaries tell us, women had much
authority. [Footnote: "Les femmes ayant beaucoup d'autorité parmi ces
peuples, leur vertu y fait d'autant plus de fruit qu'autre
part."--_Relation of_ 1657, p. 48.] Their special office in war was that
of peace-makers. It was deemed to be their right and duty, when in their
opinion the strife had lasted long enough, to interfere and bring about
a reconciliation. The knowledge of this fact led the Lenapes, in
aftertimes, to put forward a whimsical claim to dignity, which was
accepted by their worthy but credulous historian, Heckewelder. They
asserted that while their nation was at the height of power, their
ancestors were persuaded by the insidious wiles of the Iroquois to lay
aside their arms, for the purpose of assuming the lofty position of
universal mediators and arbiters among the Indian nations. [Footnote:
Heckewelder's _History of the Indian Nations_, p. 56.] That this
preposterous story should have found credence is surprising enough. A
single fact suffices to disprove it, and to show the terms on which the
Delawares stood with the great northern confederacy. Golden has
preserved for us the official record of the Council which was held in
Philadelphia, in July, 1742, between the provincial authorities and the
deputies of the Six Nations, headed by their noted orator and statesman,
the great Onondaga chief, Canasatego. The Delawares, whose claim to
certain lands was to be decided, attended the conference. The Onondaga
leader, after reciting the evidence which had been laid before him to
show that these lands had been sold to the colonists by the Delawares,
and severely rebuking the latter for their breach of faith in
repudiating the bargain, continued: "But how came you to take upon you
to sell land at all? We conquered you. We made women of you. You know
you are women, and can no more sell land than women. Nor is it fit that
you should have the power of selling lands, since you would abuse it.
This very land that you now claim has been consumed by you. You have had
it in meat and drink and clothes, and now you want it again, like
children, as you are. But what makes you sell land in the dark? Did you
ever tell us that you had sold this land? Did we ever receive any part
of the price, even the value of a pipe-stem from you? You have told us a
blind story--that you sent a messenger to inform us of the sale; but he
never came among us, nor have we ever heard anything about it. And for
all these reasons we charge you to remove instantly. We don't give you
the liberty to think about it. We assign you two places to go, either to
Wyoming or Shamokin. You may go to either of those places, and then we
shall have you more under our eyes, and shall see how you behave. Don't
deliberate, but remove away; and take this belt of wampum." [Footnote:
Golden: _History of the Five Nations_, Vol. II, p. 36 (2d Edition).]

This imperious allocution, such as a Cinna or a Cornelius might have
delivered to a crowd of trembling and sullen Greeks, shows plainly
enough the relation in which the two communities stood to one another.
It proves also that the rule under which the conquered Delawares were
held was anything but oppressive. They seem to have been allowed almost
entire freedom, except only in making war and in disposing of their
lands without the consent of the Six Nations. In fact, the Iroquois, in
dealing with them, anticipated the very regulations which the
enlightened governments of the United States and England now enforce in
that benevolent treatment of the Indian tribes for which they justly
claim high credit. Can they refuse a like credit to their dusky
predecessors and exemplars, or deny them the praise of being, as has
been already said, the most clement of conquerors?

4. Finally, when a tribe within what may be called "striking distance"
of the Confederacy would neither join the League, nor enter into an
alliance with its members, nor come under their protection, there
remained nothing but a chronic state of warfare, which destroyed all
sense of security and comfort. The Iroquois hunter, fisherman, or
trader, returning home after a brief absence, could never be sure that
he would not find his dwelling a heap of embers, smoldering over the
mangled remains of his wife and children. The plainest dictates of
policy taught the Confederates that the only safe method in dealing with
such persistent and unappeasable foes was to crush them utterly. Among
the most dangerous of their enemies were the Hurons and the eastern
Algonkins, sustained and encouraged by the French colonists. It is from
them and their historians chiefly that the complaints of Iroquois
cruelties have descended to us; but the same historians have not omitted
to inform us that the first acquaintance of the Iroquois with triese
colonists was through two most wanton and butcherly assaults which
Champlain and his soldiers, in company with their Indian allies, made
upon their unoffending neighbors. No milder epithets can justly describe
these unprovoked invasions, in which the Iroquois bowmen, defending
their homes, were shot down mercilessly with firearms, by strangers whom
they had never before seen or perhaps even heard of. This stroke of evil
policy, which tarnished an illustrious name, left far-reaching
consequences, affecting the future of half a continent. Its first result
was the destruction of the Hurons, the special allies and instigators of
the colonists in their hostilities. The Attiwandaronks, or Neutrals,
with whom, till this time, the Iroquois had maintained peaceful
relations, shared the same fate; for they were the friends of the Hurons
and the French. The Eries perished in a war provoked, as the French
missionaries in their always trustworthy accounts inform us, by a
perverse freak of cruelty on their own part.

Yet, in all these destructive wars, the Iroquois never for a moment
forgot the principles which lay at the foundation of their League, and
which taught them to "strengthen their house" by converting enemies into
friends. On the instant that resistance ceased, slaughter ceased with
it. The warriors who were willing to unite their fortunes with the
Confederates were at once welcomed among them. Some were adopted into
the families of those who had lost children or brothers. Others had
lands allotted to them, on which they were allowed to live by
themselves, under their own chiefs and their native laws, until in two
or three generations, by friendly intercourse, frequent intermarriages,
and community of interests, they became gradually absorbed into the
society about them. Those who suppose that the Hurons only survive in a
few Wyandots, and that the Eries, Attiwandaronks, and Andastes have
utterly perished, are greatly mistaken. It is absolutely certain that of
the twelve thousand Indians who now, in the United States and Canada,
preserve the Iroquois name, the greater portion derive their descent, in
whole or in part, from those conquered nations. [Footnote: "Ces
victoires lear caasant presque autant de perte qu'a leurs ennemis, elles
ont tellement depeuplé leurs Bourgs, qu'on y compte plus d'Estfangers
que de naturels du pays. Onnontaghe a sept nations differentes qut s'y
sont venues establir, et il s'en trouve jusqu'a onze dans Sonnontoiian."
_Relation of_ 1657, p. 34. "Qui feroit la supputation des francs
Iroquois, auroit de la peine d'en trouver plus de douze cents (i. e.
combattans) en toutes les cinq Nations, parce que le plus grand nombre
n'est compose que d'un ramas de divers peuples qu'ils ont conquestez,
commes des Hurons, des Tionnontateronnons, autrement Nation du Petun;
des Attiwendaronk, qu'on appelloit Neutres, quand ils estoient sur pied;
des Riquehronnons, qui sont ceux de la Nation des Chats; des Ontwaganha,
ou Nation du Feu; des Trakwaehronnons, et autres, qui, tout estrangers
qu'ils sont, font sans doute la plus grande et la meilleure parties des
Iroquois." _Ret. de_ 1660, p. 7. Yet, it was this "conglomeration of
divers peoples" that, under the discipline of Iroquois institutions and
the guidance of Iroquois statesmen and commanders, held high the name of
the Kanonsionni, and made the Confederacy a great power on the continent
for more than a century after this time; who again and again measured
arms and intellects with French generals and diplomatists, and came off
at least with equal fortune; who smote their Abenaki enemies in the far
east, punished the Illinois marauders in the far west, and thrust back
the intruding Cherokees into their southern mountains; who were a wall
of defence to the English colonies, and a strong protection to the many
broken bands of Indians which from every quarter clustered round the
shadow of the "great pine tree" of Onondaga.] No other Indian community,
so far as we know, has ever pursued this policy of incorporation to
anything near the same extent, or carried it out with anything like the
same humanity. Even towards the most determined and the most savage of
their foes, the Kanonsionni, when finally victorious, showed themselves
ever magnanimous and placable.

The common opinion of the cruelty of the Iroquois has arisen mainly from
the custom which they occasionally practiced, like some other Indians,
of burning prisoners at the stake. Out of the multitude of their
captives, the number subjected to this torture was really very
small,--probably not nearly as large in proportion as the number of
criminals and political prisoners who, in some countries of Europe, at
about the same time, were subjected to the equally cruel torments of the
rack and the wheel. These criminals and other prisoners were so tortured
because they were regarded as the enemies of society. The motives which
actuated the Iroquois were precisely the same. As has been before
remarked, the mode in which their enemies carried on their warfare with
them was chiefly by stealthy and sudden inroads. The prowling warrior
lurked in the woods near the Iroquois village through the day, and at
night fell with hatchet and club upon his unsuspecting victims. The
Iroquois lawgivers deemed it essential for the safety of their people
that the men who were guilty of such murderous attacks should have
reason to apprehend, if caught, a direful fate.

If the comparatively few instances of these political tortures which
occurred among the Iroquois are compared with the awful list of similar
and worse inflictions which stain the annals of the most enlightened
nations of Europe and Asia, ancient and modern,--the crucifixions, the
impalements, the dreadful mutilations--lopping of hands and feet,
tearing out of eyes--the tortures of the rack and wheel, the red-hot
pincers, the burning crown, the noisome dungeon, the slow starvation,
the lingering death in the Siberian mines,--it will become evident that
these barbarians were far inferior to their civilized contemporaries in
the temper and arts of inhumanity. Even in the very method of punishment
which they adopted the Indians were outdone in Europe, and that,
strangely enough, by the two great colonizing and conquering nations,
heirs of all modern enlightenment, who came to displace them,--the
English and the Spaniards. The Iroquois never burnt women at the stake.
To put either men or women to death for a difference of creed had not
occurred to them. It may justly be affirmed that in the horrors of
Smithfield and the Campo Santo, the innate barbarism of the Aryan,
breaking through his thin varnish of civilization, was found, far
transcending the utmost barbarism of the Indian. [Footnote: The Aryans
of Europe are undoubtedly superior in humanity, courage and
independence, to those of Asia. It is possible that the finer qualities
which distinguish the western branch of this stock may have been derived
from admixture with an earlier population of Europe, identical in race
and character with the aborigines of America. See Appendix, Note F.]




CHAPTER X.

THE IROQUOIS LANGUAGE.


As the mental faculties of a people are reflected in their speech, we
should naturally expect that the language of a race manifesting such
unusual powers as the Iroquois nations have displayed would be of a
remarkable character. In this expectation we are not disappointed. The
languages of the Huron-Iroquois family belong to what has been termed
the polysynthetic class, and are distinguished, even in that class, by a
more than ordinary endowment of that variety of forms and fullness of
expression for which languages of that type are noted. The
best-qualified judges have been the most struck with this peculiar
excellence. "The variety of compounds," wrote the accomplished
missionary, Brebeuf, concerning the Huron tongue, "is very great; it is
the key to the secret of their language. They have as many genders as
ourselves, as many numbers as the Greeks." Recurring to the same
comparison, he remarks of the Huron verb that it has as many tenses and
numbers as the Greek, with certain discriminations which the latter did
not possess. [Footnote: _Relation_ of 1636, pp 99,100.] A great living
authority has added the weight of his name to these opinions of the
scholarly Jesuit. Professor Max Muller, who took the opportunity
afforded by the presence of a Mohawk undergraduate at Oxford to study
his language, writes of it in emphatic terms: "To my mind the structure
of such a language as the Mohawk is quite sufficient evidence that those
who worked out such a work of art were powerful reasoners and accurate
classifiers." [Footnote: In a letter to the author, dated Feb. 14, 1882.
In a subsequent letter Prof. Muller writes, in regard to the study of
the aboriginal languages of this continent: "It has long been a puzzle
to me why this most tempting and promising field of philological
research has been allowed to lie almost fallow in America,--as if these
languages could not tell us quite as much of the growth of the human
mind as Chinese, or Hebrew, or Sanscrit." I have Prof. Max Miller's
permission to publish these extracts, and gladly do so, in the hope that
they may serve to stimulate that growing interest which the efforts of
scholars like Trumbull, Shea, Cuoq, Brinton, and, more recently, Major
Powell and his able collaborators of the Ethnological Bureau, are at
length beginning to awaken among us, in the investigation of this
important and almost unexplored province of linguistic science.]

It is a fact somewhat surprising, as well as unfortunate, that no
complete grammar of any language of the Huron-Iroquois stock has ever
been published. Many learned and zealous missionaries, Catholic and
Protestant, have labored among the tribes of this stock for more than
two centuries. Portions of the Scriptures, as well as some other works,
have been translated into several of these languages. Some small books,
including biographies and hymn-books, have been composed and printed in
two of them; and the late devoted and indefatigable missionary among the
Senecas, the Rev. Asher Wright, conducted for several years a
periodical, the "Mental Elevator" (_Ne Jaguhnigoageswatha_), in their
language. Several grammars are known to have been composed, but none
have as yet been printed in a complete form. One reason of this
unwillingness to publish was, undoubtedly, the sense which the compilers
felt of the insufficiency of their work; Such is the extraordinary
complexity of the language, such the multiplicity of its forms and the
subtlety of its distinctions, that years of study are required to master
it; and indeed it may be said that the abler the investigator and the
more careful his study, the more likely he is to be dissatisfied with
his success. This dissatisfaction was frankly expressed and practically
exhibited by Mr. Wright himself, certainly one of the best endowed and
most industrious of these inquirers. After residing for several years
among the Senecas, forming an alphabet remarkable for its precise
discrimination of sounds, and even publishing several translations in
their language, he undertook to give some account of its grammatical
forms. A little work printed in 1842, with the modest title of "_A
Spelling-book of the Seneca Language_," comprises the variations of
nouns, adjectives and pronouns, given with much minuteness. Those of the
verbs are promised, but the book closes abruptly without them, for the
reason--as the author afterwards explained to a correspondent--that he
had not as yet been able to obtain such a complete knowledge of them as
he desired. This difficulty is further exemplified by a work purporting
to be a "_Grammar of the Huron Language, by a Missionary of the Village
of Huron Indians, near Quebec, found amongst the papers of the Mission,
and translated from the Latin, by the Rev. John Wilkie_." This
translation is published in the "_Transactions of the Literary and
Historical Society of Quebec_," for 1831, and fills more than a hundred
octavo pages. It is a work evidently of great labor, and is devoted
chiefly to the variations of the verbs; yet its lack of completeness may
be judged from the single fact that the "transitions," or in other
words, the combinations of the double pronouns, nominative and
objective, with the transitive verb, which form such an important
feature of the language, are hardly noticed; and, it may be added,
though the conjugations are mentioned, they are not explained. The work,
indeed, would rather perplex than aid an investigator, and gives no
proper idea of the character and richness of the language. The same may
be said of the grammatical notices comprised in the Latin "Proemium" to
Bruyas' Iroquois dictionary. These notices are apparently modeled to
some extent on this anonymous grammar of the Huron language,--unless,
indeed, the latter may have been copied from Bruyas; the rules which
they give being in several instances couched in the same words.

Some useful grammatical explanations are found in the anonymous Onondaga
dictionary of the seventeenth century, published by Dr. Shea in his
"_Library of American Linguistics_." But by far the most valuable
contribution to our knowledge of the structure of this remarkable group
of languages is found in the works of a distinguished writer of our own
day, the Rev. J. A. Cuoq, of Montreal, eminent both as a missionary and
as a philologist. After twenty years of labor among the Iroquois and
Algonkin tribes in the Province of Quebec, M. Cuoq was led to appear as
an author by his desire to defend his charges against the injurious
effect of a judgment which had been pronounced by a noted authority. M.
Renan had put forth, among the many theories which distinguish his
celebrated work on the Semitic languages, one which seemed to M. Cuoq as
mischievous as it was unfounded. M. Renan held that no races were
capable of civilization except such as have now attained it; and that
these comprised only the Aryan, the Semitic, and the Chinese. This
opinion was enforced by a reference to the languages spoken by the
members of those races. "To imagine a barbarous race speaking a Semitic
or an Indo-European language is," he declares, "an impossible
supposition (_une fiction, conradictoire_), which no person can
entertain who is familiar with the laws of comparative philology, and
with the general theory of the human intellect." To one who remembers
that every nation of the Indo-European race traces its descent from a
barbarous ancestry, and especially that the Germans in the days of
Tacitus were in precisely the same social stage as that of the Iroquois
in the days of Champlain, this opinion of the brilliant French
philologist and historian will seem erratic and unaccountable. M. Cuoq
sought to refute it, not merely by argument, but by the logic of facts.
In two works, published successively in 1864 and 1866, he showed, by
many and various examples, that the Iroquois and Algonkin languages
possessed all the excellences which M. Renan admired in the
Indo-European languages, and surpassed in almost every respect the
Semitic and Chinese tongues. [Footnote: See _Jugement Erroné de M.
Ernest Renan sur les Langues Sauvages:_ (2d edit.) Dawson Brothers,
Montreal: 1870; and _Etudes Philologiques sur quelques Langues Sauvages
de r Amerique. Par N. O., Ancien Missionaire_. Ibid: 1866. Also _Lexique
de la Langue Iroquoise, avec notes et appendices. Par J. A. Cuoq, Prétre
de St. Sulpice_. J. Chapleau & Fils, Montreal: 1882. These are all works
indispensable to the student of Indian languages.] The resemblances of
these Indian languages to the Greek struck him, as it had struck his
illustrious predecessor, the martyred Brebeuf, two hundred years before.
M. Cuoq is also the author of a valuable Iroquois lexicon, with notes
and appendices, in which he discusses some interesting points in the
philology of the language. This lexicon is important, also, for
comparison with that of the Jesuit missionary, Bruyas, as showing how
little the language has varied in the course of two centuries.
[Footnote: _Radices Verborum Iroquaeorum. Auctore R. P. Jacopo Bruyas,
Societatis Jesu_. Published in Shea's "_Library of American
Linguistics_" For the works in this invaluable Library, American
scholars owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Shea's enlightened zeal in the
cause of science and humanity.] The following particulars respecting the
Iroquois tongues are mainly derived from the works of M. Cuoq, of
Bruyas, and of Mr. Wright, supplemented by the researches of the author,
pursued at intervals during several years, among the tribes of Western
Canada and New York. Only a very brief sketch of the subject can here be
given. It is not too much to say that a complete grammar of any Iroquois
language would be at least as extensive as the best Greek or Sanscrit
grammar. For such a work neither the writer, nor perhaps any other
person now living, except M. Cuoq himself, would be competent.

The phonology of the language is at once simple and perplexing.
According to M. Cuoq, twelve letters suffice to represent it: _a, c, f,
h, i, k, n, o, r, s, t, w_. Mr. Wright employs for the Seneca seventeen,
with diacritical marks, which raise the number to twenty-one. The
English missionaries among the Mohawks found sixteen letters sufficient,
_a, d, e, g, h, i, j, k, n, o, r, s, t, u, w, y._ There are no labial
sounds, unless the _f_, which rarely occurs, and appears to be merely an
aspirated _w_, may be considered one. No definite distinction is
maintained between the vowel sounds _o_ and _u_, and one of these
letters may be dispensed with. The distinction between hard and soft (or
surd and sonant) mutes is not preserved. The sounds of _d_ and _t_, and
those of _k_ and _g_, are interchangeable. So also are those of _l_ and
_r_, the former sound being heard more frequently in the Oneida dialect
and the latter in the Canienga. From the Western dialects,--the
Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca,--this _l_ or _r_ sound has, in modern
times, disappeared altogether. The Canienga _konoronkwa_, I esteem him
(in Oneida usually sounded _konolonkwa_), has become _konoenkwa_ in
Onondaga,--and in Cayuga and Seneca is contracted to _kononkwa_.
Aspirates and aspirated gutturals abound, and have been variously
represented by _h, hh, kh_, and _gh_, and sometimes (in the works of the
early French missionaries) by the Greek [Greek: chi] and the _spiritus
asper_. Yet no permanent distinction appears to be maintained among the
sounds thus represented, and M. Cuoq reduces them all to the simple _h_.
The French nasal sound abounds. M. Cuoq and the earlier English
missionaries have expressed it, as in French, simply by the _n_ when
terminating a syllable. When it does not close a syllable, a diaeresis
above the n, or else the Spanish _tilde (n)_ indicates the sound. Mr.
Wright denotes it by a line under the vowel. The later English
missionaries express it by a diphthong: _ken_ becomes _kea; nonwa_
becomes _noewa_; _onghwentsya_ is written _oughweatsya_.

A strict analysis would probably reduce the sounds of the Canienga
language to seven consonants, _h, k, n, r, s, t,_ and _w_, and four
vowels, _a, e, i_, and _o_, of which three, _a, e, and o_, may receive a
nasal sound. This nasalizing makes them, in fact, distinct elements; and
the primary sounds of the language may therefore be reckoned at
fourteen. [Footnote: A dental _t_, which the French missionaries
represent sometimes by the Greek _theta_ and sometimes by _th_, and
which the English have also occasionally expressed by the latter method,
may possibly furnish an additional element. The Greek _theta_ of the
former is simply the English _w_.] The absence of labials and the
frequent aspirated gutturals give to the utterance of the best speakers
a deep and sonorous character which reminds the hearer of the stately
Castilian speech.

The "Book of Rites," or, rather, the Canienga portion of it, is written
in the orthography first employed by the English missionaries. The _d_
is frequently used, and must be regarded merely as a variant of the _t_
sound. The _g_ is sometimes, though rarely, employed as a variant of the
_k_. The digraph _gh_ is common and represents the guttural aspirate,
which in German is indicated by _ch_ and in Spanish by _j_. The French
missionaries write it now simply _h_, and consider it merely a harsh
pronunciation of the aspirate. The _j_ is sounded as in English; it
usually represents a complex sound, which might be analysed into _ts_ or
_tsi_; _jathondek_ is properly _tsiatontek_. The _x_, which occasionally
appears, is to be pronounced _ks_, as in English. _An, en, on_, when not
followed by a vowel, have a nasal sound, as in French. This sound is
heard even when those syllables are followed by another _n_. Thus
_Kanonsionni_ is pronounced as if written _Kanonsionni_ and _yondennase_
as if written _yondennase_. The vowels have usually the same sound as in
German and Italian; but in the nasal _en_ the vowel has an obscure
sound, nearly like that of the short _u_ in _but_. Thus _yondennase_
sounds almost as if written _yondunnase_, and _kanienke_ is pronounced
nearly like _kaniunke_.

The nouns in Iroquois are varied, but with accidence differing from the
Aryan and Semitic variations, some of the distinctions being more
subtle, and, so to speak, metaphysical. The dual is expressed by
prefixing the particle _te_, and suffixing _ke_ to the noun; thus, from
_kanonsa_, house, we have _tekanonsake_, two houses. These syllables, or
at least the first, are supposed to be derived from _tekeni_, two. The
plural, when it follows an adjective expressive of number, is indicated
by the syllable _ni_ prefixed to the noun, and _ke_ suffixed; as, _eso
nikanonsake_, many houses. In other cases the plural is sometimes
expressed by one of the words _okon_ (or _hokon_) _okonha_, _son_ and
_sonha_, following the noun. In general, however, the plural
significance of nouns is left to be inferred from the context, the verb
always and the adjective frequently indicating it.

All beings are divided into two classes, which do not correspond either
with the Aryan genders or with the distinctions of animate and inanimate
which prevail in the Algonkin tongues. These classes have been styled
noble and common. To the noble belong male human beings and deities. The
other class comprises women and all other objects. It seems probable,
however, that the distinction in the first instance was merely that of
sex,--that it was, in fact, a true gender. Deities, being regarded as
male, were included in the masculine gender. There being no neuter form,
the feminine gender was extended, and made to comprise all other beings.
These classes, however, are not indicated by any change in the noun, but
merely by the forms of the pronoun and the verb.

The local relations of nouns are expressed by affixed particles, such as
_ke_, _ne_, _kon_, _akon_, _akta._ Thus, from _onónta_ mountain, we have
_onontáke_, at (or to) the mountain; from _akéhrat_, dish, _akehrátne_,
in (or on) the dish; from _kanónsa_, house, _kanonsákon_, or
_kanónskon_, in the house, _kanonsókon_, under the house, and
_kanonsákta_, near the house. These locative particles, it will be seen,
usually, though not always, draw the accent towards them.

The most peculiar and perplexing variation is that made by what is
termed the "crement," affixed to many (though not all) nouns. This
crement in the Canienga takes various forms, _ta, sera, tsera, kwa._
_Onkwe_, man, becomes _onkwéta_; _otkon_, spirit, _otkónsera_; _akáwe_,
oar, _akawétsera_; _ahta_, shoe, _ahhtákwa_. The crement is employed
when the noun is used with numeral adjectives, when it has adjective or
other affixes, and generally when it enters into composition with other
words. Thus _onkwe_, man, combined with the adjective termination _iyo_
(from the obsolete _wiyo_, good) becomes _onkwetiyo_, good man. _Wenni_,
day, becomes in the plural _niate_ _niwenniserake_, many days, etc. The
change, however, is not grammatical merely, but conveys a peculiar shade
of meaning difficult to define. The noun, according to M. Cuoq, passes
from a general and determinate to a special and restricted sense.
_Onkwe_ means man in general; _asen nionkwetake_, three men (in
particular.) One interpreter rendered _akawétsera_, "the oar itself."
The affix _sera_ or _tsera_ seems to be employed to form what we should
term abstract nouns, though to the Iroquois mind they apparently present
themselves as possessing a restricted or specialized sense. Thus from
_iotarihen_, it is warm, we have _otarihénsera_, heat; from _wakeriat_,
to be brave, _ateriatitsera_, courage. So _kakweniátsera_, authority;
_kanaiésera_, pride; _kanakwénsera_, anger. Words of this class abound
in the Iroquois; so little ground is there for the common opinion that
the language is destitute of abstract nouns. [Footnote: See, on this
point, the remarks of Dr Brinton to the same effect, in regard to the
Aztec, Qquichua, and other languages, with interesting illustrations, in
his _"American Hero Myths"_, p. 25]

The adjective, when employed in an isolated form, follows the
substantive; as _kanonsa kowa_, large house; _onkwe honwe_ (or _onwe_) a
real man. But, in general, the substantive and the adjective coalesce in
one word. _Ase_ signifies new, and added to _kanonsa_ gives us
_kanonsáse_, new house. Karonta, tree, and _kowa_, or _kowanen_, great,
make together _karontowánen_, great tree. Frequently the affixed
adjective is never employed as an isolated word. The termination _iyo_
(or _iio_) expresses good or beautiful, and _aksen_, bad or ugly; thus
_kanonsiyo_, fine house, _kanonsasken_, ugly house. These compound forms
frequently make their plural by adding _s_, as _kanonsiyos_,
_kanonsaksens_.

The pronouns are more numerous than in any European language, and show
clearer distinctions in meaning. Thus, in the singular, besides the
ordinary pronouns, I, thou, he and she, the language possesses an
indeterminate form, which answers very nearly to the French _on_. The
first person of the dual has two forms, the one including, the other
excluding, the person addressed, and signifying, therefore,
respectively, "thou and I," and "he and I." The first person plural has
the same twofold form. The third persons dual and plural have masculine
and feminine forms. Thus the language has fifteen personal pronouns, all
in common use, and all, it may be added, useful in expressing
distinctions which the English can only indicate by circumlocutions.
These pronouns are best shown in the form in which they are prefixed to
a verb. The following are examples of the verb _katkahtos_, I see (root
_atkahto_) and _kenonwes_, I love (root _nonwe_), as conjugated in the
present tense:--

  _katkahtos_, I see.
  _satkahtos_, thou seest.
  _ratkahtos_, he sees.
  _watkahtos_, she sees,
  _iontkahtos_, one sees.
  _tiatkahtos_, we two see (thou and I.)
  _iakiatkahtos_, we two see (he and I.)
  _tsiatkahtos_, ye two see.
  _hiatkahtos_, they two see (masc.)
  _kiatkahtos_, they two see (fem.)
  _tewatkahtos_, we see (ye and I.)
  _iakwatkahtos_, we see (they and I.)
  _sewatkahtos_, ye see.
  _rontkahtos_, they see (masc.)
  _kontkahtos_, they see (fem.)

  _kenonwes_, I love.
  _senonwes_, thou lovest.
  _rononwes_, he loves.
  _kanonwes_, she loves.
  _icnonwes_, one loves.
  _teninonwes_, we two love (thou and I)
  _iakeninonwes_, we two love (he and I)
  _seninonwes_, ye two love.
  _hninonwes_, they two love (masc.)
  _keninonwes_, they two love (fem.)
  _tewanonwes_, we love (ye and I.)
  _iakwanonwes_, we love (they and I.)
  _sewanonwes_, ye love.
  _ratinonwes_, they love (masc.)
  _kontinonwes_, they love (fem.)

It will be observed that in these examples the prefixed pronouns differ
considerably in some cases. These differences determine (or are
determined by) the conjugation of the verbs. _Katkahtos_ belongs to the
first conjugation, and _kenonwes_ to the second. There are three other
conjugations, each of which shows some peculiarity in the prefixed
pronouns, though, in the main, a general resemblance runs through them
all. There are other va

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