A CONSTITUTIONAL LEAGUE OF PEACE IN THE
                         STONE AGE OF AMERICA

                  THE LEAGUE OF THE IROQUOIS AND ITS
                             CONSTITUTION

                                  BY

                            J. N. B. HEWITT

                    _Bureau of American Ethnology_

          FROM THE SMITHSONIAN REPORT FOR 1918, PAGES 527-545

                            [Illustration]

                          (PUBLICATION 2572)

                              WASHINGTON
                      GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
                                 1920




                A CONSTITUTIONAL LEAGUE OF PEACE IN THE
                         STONE AGE OF AMERICA.

           THE LEAGUE OF THE IROQUOIS AND ITS CONSTITUTION.

                         By. J. N. B. Hewitt.

                    _Bureau of American Ethnology._


In the Stone Age of America the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the Oneida, the
Cayuga, and the Seneca, five Iroquoian tribes dwelling in the central
and the eastern regions of what is to-day the State of New York,
established a tribal federation or league, with a carefully prepared
constitution, based on peace, righteousness, justice, and power.
These five Iroquois tribes spoke dialects of the Iroquoian stock of
languages, which is one of about 50 spoken north of Mexico.

After more than four years of a world war, characterized by such
merciless slaughter of men, women, and children, by such titanic
mobilization of men and weapons of destruction, and by such hideous
brutality, that no past age of savagery has equaled them, the peoples
of the earth are now striving to form a league of nations for the
expressed purpose of abolishing the causes of war and to establish a
lasting peace among all men.

So, of more than passing interest is the fact that in the sixteenth
century, on the North American Continent, there was formed a permanent
league of five tribes of Indians for the purpose of stopping for all
time the shedding of human blood by violence and of establishing
lasting peace among all known men by means of a constitutional form
of government based on peace, justice, righteousness, and power, or
authority.

Its founders did not limit the scope of this confederation to the five
Iroquoian tribes mentioned above, but they proposed for themselves and
their posterity the greater task of gradually bringing under this form
of government all the known tribes of men, not as subject peoples but
as confederates.

The proposal to include all the tribes of men in such a league of
comity and peace is the more remarkable in view of the fact that that
was an age of fierce tribalism, whose creed was that no person had any
rights of life or property outside of the tribe to whose jurisdiction
he or she belonged, and that every person when beyond the limits of his
or her tribe’s protection was an outlaw, and common game for the few
who still indulged in the horrid appetite of cannibalism. So that the
doctrine of the founders of the league that all persons by adopting
their formulae could forego the shedding of human blood and become
related as “fathers” and “mothers” and “sons” and “daughters,” in the
terms of Iroquoian kinship and affinity, was revolutionary and most
disturbing from the viewpoint of this intense tribalism. It was the
central teaching of Deganawida, the great statesman and lawgiver of
the Iroquois people in the sixteenth century, that out of the union of
a common motherhood and a common fatherhood arise the daughtership of
all women and the sonship of all men, and the rich fellowship of all
mankind.

The establishment of the league of the five Iroquois tribes in the
closing decades of the sixteenth century was in large measure not
only a drastic reformation but also an experiment. Avowedly it was
designed as an institution for the extension and preservation of peace
and equity and righteousness among all men; and it made a fundamental
departure from the practice of the past in completely excluding in so
far as terms go the military power from participation in the conduct of
purely civil affairs.

When using the terms war and warfare, it must be remembered that while
they denoted defensive, apprehensive, and offensive strife, and the
mood and the means (the weapons belonging thereto), they did not imply
the war and warfare waged by a military State, a body of soldiers,
drilled and regimented and organized independently of the civil body.
There were, strictly speaking, no armies among tribal men; only the
beginnings, the more or less developed germs of these things. There
were, indeed, groups of fighters who were regimented and organized,
not in a practical or rational manner and mood, but in accordance with
mythical and sociological conceptions and predispositions, and strictly
with relation to their kinship status, individually and severally, in
the tribal organization to which they belonged. For every tribe, great
or small, or group of tribes, was, exclusive of the women and the
children, an inchoate, undifferentiate army, a group of instant or else
actual fighters.

For like reasons there was no State religion, where all forms and moods
of it were tolerated and practised.

At the period of the formation of the league and for at least 75 years
afterwards these five tribes, thus united, were surrounded by a number
of powerful and hostile tribes, nearly all of which were cognate
with them in speech. On the St. Lawrence River, approximately on the
present sites of the cities, Montreal and Quebec, dwelt two strong
Huron tribes. On the upper Ottawa River were the Algonquin and their
congeners. Around Lake Simcoe were two more powerful Huron tribes,
to which the two mentioned above as living on the St. Lawrence River
migrated about the beginning of the seventeenth century, and formed
an alliance with them. These are the four Huron tribes mentioned in
the Jesuit Relations. Southward from the Huron tribes, and in the
peninsula lying westward from Niagara River and northward from Lake
Erie and extending eastward over Niagara River to the watershed of
the Genesee River in New York State, were situated the numerous towns
of the powerful “neuter nation,” also of cognate speech. South and
southeastward of Lake Erie dwelt the warlike Erie, who also were of
cognate speech with the Iroquois tribes; and still farther eastward
were the little known Black Minqua also of cognate language. In the
upper Susquehanna river valley, especially in the Wyoming valley, lived
the noted Massawomeke also of cognate speech. On the lower Susquehanna
dwelt the fiercely warlike Conestoga. On the Delaware river and its
affluents dwelt the Lanape or Delaware tribes who spoke Algonquian
dialects. Eastward, along and beyond the Hudson River dwelt the Mohegan
and their cognates who also spoke Algonquian dialects. Such summarily
was the tribal environment of the five Iroquois tribes at the era of
the institution of their league or confederation. Tradition is silent
as to any extensive warfare with these surrounding tribes anterior to
the founding of the league.

History records the use of two fundamentally distinct methods of
grouping peoples by means of institutional bonds. The grouping of men
in this manner has been aptly termed regimentation. The two systems
mentioned are the tribal system of regimentation and the national
system of regimentation. In the first, men are regimented or organized
on the basis of kinship and affinity, real or as a legal fiction, and
in the second, men are regimented or organized in institutional units
on the basis of territory. But history records transitional forms of
organization, and the most important of these is the feudal, for both
methods mentioned above are found in feudal society, showing transition
from tribal to national society and government.

Now, the tribes of the Iroquoian stock of languages are regimented or
organized on the basis of kinship and affinity, real or as a legal
fiction, and they trace descent or lineage of blood only through the
mother.

To grasp fully and to comprehend clearly the structure and the workings
of the great institution which is called the league or confederation of
the Five Nations, one must have a summary but clear knowledge of the
several constituent units which in the last analysis have voice and
place in its structure and workings.

In brief, these are the ohwachira (= the uterine family), of which
one or more constitutes a clan; the clan, of which one or more may
constitute a sisterhood, or, as it is usually called, a phratry of
clans; the sisterhood or phratry of clans, of which only two constitute
a tribe in Iroquois social organization; the tribe, of which two or
three constitute a sisterhood or phratry of tribes; and finally the
league or confederation which is composed of just two sisterhoods or
phratries of tribes.

The common noun ohwachira (as pronounced by the Mohawk and other
_r_-sounding dialects) or ohwachia (as uttered by the Onondaga and
other _r_-less dialects) signifies a group of male and female uterine
kin, real, or such by legal fiction. It includes all the male and the
female progeny of a woman, and also the progeny of a woman and of
all her female descendants, tracing descent of blood in the female
line and of such other persons as may have been adopted into it. In
so far as known the ohwachira, unlike the clan, does not bear the
designative name of a tutelary or other protecting genius, or “totem”
as it is commonly but loosely called when applied to a clan; and yet
it is commonly known that the influential matron of an ohwachira
usually bears the reputation of being deft in the peculiar arts of the
sorceress, each of which being the potence or orenda of some tutelary.

The matron of an ohwachira is usually, not always, the oldest woman in
it. But, by becoming incapacitated by age or other infirmity to manage
the affairs of an ohwachira as its moderator, she may ask permission to
resign so that a much younger woman of recognized ability and industry
and integrity of character may be nominated and installed to preside
over the ohwachira in her stead.

Naturally, the ohwachira had as many firesides as it had women who were
married. Each married woman of an ohwachira used one side of one of
the fires at the center of the lodge. The Iroquoian lodge was extended
lengthwise to accommodate those who dwelt in it, and the fires were
kindled along the center from place to place.

The members of an ohwachira have (1) the right to the name of the
clan of which that ohwachira is a constituent unit; (2) the right of
inheriting property from deceased members of it; (3) the right to take
a part in the councils of the ohwachira; (4) the right to adopt an
alien through the advice of the presiding matron of it.

In the present organization of the league, only certain ohwachira
have inherited chiefship titles, the principal and the vice-chief,
and, consequently, the right to name any of its members to fill these
offices; after the formation of the league these nominees had to be
installed by federal officers, but previously by tribal officers.
Strictly speaking, these titles of chiefship belong to the mothers in
the ohwachira, over which the presiding matron held a trusteeship.

Rarely, the offspring of an adopted alien came to constitute an
ohwachira having chiefship titles; but this was first only a
trusteeship of the titles, which belonged to an extinct, moribund, or
outlawed, ohwachira. A basic rule of the constitution of the league of
the Iroquois provides in the case of the extinction of an ohwachira
owning chiefship titles, that for the preservation of this title, it
shall be placed in trust with a sister ohwachira of the same clan, if
such there be, during the pleasure of the council of the league. This
was a most important law in view of the fact that no new federal titles
were instituted after the death of Deganawida, the prophet statesman of
the Iroquois.

The women of marriageable age and the mothers in the ohwachira had
the right to hold councils; especially, such as those at which
candidates for chief and vice-chief might be nominated by the mothers
alone. At such councils these women had the right to formulate some
proposition for discussion by the tribal council; it might be done in
conjunction with other ohwachira. (This is, in embryo at least, the
modern so-called right of initiative.) In like manner, a proposition
might be made to the tribal council to submit to the suffrages of all
the people, including infants (the mothers casting their votes), any
question which might be occupying the attention of the council or the
people. (This is, in embryo at least, the modern so-called right of
referendum.)

It is the right of the matron of the ohwachira whose chief wanders away
from the path of rectitude to take the initial step in his deposition
for cause—first, by going in person to him and warning him to reform
and to return to the path of right and duty; if he fails to heed this
warning she seeks out her brother or eldest son, as a representative
of the men of her ohwachira, and together they go to give the erring
chief the second warning. If still he persists in the neglect of duty
and in doing wrong, the matron then goes to the chief warrior of the
ohwachira, and then these three together go to him and merely inform
him that he must appear on a given day at the tribal council. There
the chief warrior asks him categorically whether he will or will not
conform to the expressed wish of his ohwachira. If he refuse to reform
he is at once deposed, the chief warrior figuratively removing from his
head the “symbolic horns” (i. e., receiving back the wampum strings
which are the certificate of his official title) of his title and
handing them to the matron. (This is, in brief, the recall of modern
times.)

In the structure of the league several ohwachira, some having a
chiefship title, are incorporated to form one clan, so that this clan
is represented in the tribal or the federal council by two or more
chieftains. It so happens that the Mohawk and the Oneida tribes have
only three clans each; but each of these clans has three ohwachira
which have a principal chief and a vice-chief, respectively; and so
these two tribes are represented in council, when all are present, by
nine chiefs and nine vice-chiefs or messengers, the latter of course
have no voice in the deliberations except in case the chief be, for
some reason, unable to attend a council when he may deputize for such
council his messenger to act for him. In the nature of things, every
ohwachira of the Iroquoian tribes formerly possessed and worshiped, in
addition to those owned by individuals, one or more tutelary deities or
genii called ochinagenda, in modern usage, but formerly named oiaron
(or oyaron) with a larger meaning, which customarily were in the secret
custodianship or trusteeship of certain wise women who were usually
named physicians, but who were in fact also so-called witches.

The ohwachira or uterine family was the primary unit of the social
organization of all Iroquoian tribes. It must not be overlooked that
the members of an ohwachira could not marry one another, nor could the
members of a clan, composed of one, two, or more, such ohwachira, which
by thus uniting to form a single organic unit become sisters, or sister
ohwachira, and the members of the unit so formed become exogamous
with relation to one another. The union of two or more organic units
naturally produced an organization of a higher order and an enlargement
and a multiplication of rights, obligations and privileges.

It will be needful to keep in mind the fact that the women of an
ohwachira who elected to marry had to do so only with men from
ohwachira which had a cousin relationship to their own, for they must
not commit incest by marrying men from their own ohwachira or men from
a sister ohwachira. Thus, every ohwachira which had women who were
married was interrelated with many cousin streams of blood, and it is
these outside ties which bound together the various blood streams.
Iroquoian society is then held together by the bonds of affinity, while
the tracing of the descent of blood through the women preserved its
purity and insured its continuity.

When an ohwachira became an integral part of a clan—a higher unit—it
necessarily delegated some of its self-government to this higher unit
in such wise as to make this union of coordinate units more cohesive
and interdependent. Thus the institution of every higher organic unit
produced new privileges, duties, and rights, and the individual came
under a more complex control and his welfare become more secure through
tribunals exercising a greater number of delegated powers in wider
jurisdiction.

Status in an Iroquoian tribe was secured only by being born into it,
by virtue of birth in one of its uterine families or by adoption into
it. But an alien could be and was adopted into citizenship in the clan
and tribe only by being adopted into an ohwachira (uterine family) of
some clan. The ceremony of adoption was so potent that where two alien
sisters were adopted, each into a clan which intermarried with the
other, their children intermarried as coming from exogamous groups.

Whatever land was held by the ohwachira for cultivation and on which
fuel and berries and nuts and roots and bark and medicines and poisons
were procured, belonged exclusively to the women of the ohwachira.

Ordinarily, the members of an ohwachira were obligated to purchase the
life of one of its members who had forfeited it by a homicide and to
pay for the life of the victim as well.

It was seen that the earth produced things which were fixed in her
breast; all the things that grow whether corn, beans, squashes,
berries, or nuts, are nourished directly by the earth. In like manner
it appeared that woman, the mother, was a producer, and nourished
what she produced on her breast; hence, the woman and the earth are
sisters. So the cultivation of the things that grow out of the earth
is especially the duty and pleasure of woman. While the pursuit of
game, and fish, and birds, and men who are not fixed in the earth was
strictly within the prerogative of the men.

The ohwachira through its matron exercised the right to spare, or to
take, if needs be, the life of prisoners of war in its behalf and
offered to it for adoption. Such briefly is the ohwachira of Iroquoian
social organization.

The Iroquoian clan is an intratribal exogamic body of uterine kin,
real, or such by legal fiction, regimented for the purpose of securing
and promoting their social and political welfare. The clan has a name,
which serves as a class or preferably unit name for its members, and
which is derived usually from some animal or bird or reptile belonging
to the habitat of the ancestors of this body of kin, or to its
customary tutelary genius. The lineal descent of blood, the inheritance
of property, both personal and common, and the hereditary right of
eligibility to public office and trust are traced in the clan through
the female line attained through the action and interaction of its
constitutive units—the ohwachira (the uterine families).

The Iroquoian clan is constituted organically of one or more ohwachira;
its chief or chieftains came to it through its constituent ohwachira
which may have possessed such officers. A large number of the
characteristics of the ohwachira may be predicated of the clan, for the
reason that the ohwachira gave up for administration to this larger
grouping a number of their functions. So that a clear knowledge of the
ohwachira is first needed to understand what a clan is.

The following summary of the characteristic rights and privileges of
an Iroquoian clan may be enlightening: (1) The right to a distinctive
name, which an invariable custom derives from some animal, bird, or
reptile, characteristic of the habitat, which may have been regarded
as a guardian genius or protecting deity. (2) Representation by one
or more chiefs in the tribal council. (3) An equitable share in the
communal property of the tribe. (4) The right and obligation to have
its nominations for chief and subchief of the clan confirmed and
installed by officers of the tribal council in earlier times, but since
the institution of the league, by officers of the federal council. (5)
The right to the protection of the tribe of which it is a constituent
member. (6) The right of the titles of the chiefships and subchiefships
hereditary in its ohwachira(s). (7) The right to certain songs, chants,
dances, and religious observances. (8) The right of its men or women,
or both together, to meet in council. (9) The right to the use of
certain names of persons, which are given to its members. (10) The
right to adopt aliens through the action of a constituent ohwachira.
(11) The right of its members to a common burial ground. (12) The right
of the mothers of constituent ohwachira(s), in which such official
titles are inherent, to nominate candidates for chief and subchief;
some clans have more than one of each class of chiefs. (13) The right
of these same mothers to take the prescribed steps for impeaching and
deposing their chiefs and subchiefs. (14) The right to share in the
religious rites, ceremonies, and public festivals of the tribe.

The duties incidental to clan membership are the following: The
obligation not to marry within the clan, formerly not even within the
sisterhood or phratry of clans, to which the one in question belonged;
the effect of membership in the sisterhood of clans was to make all men
either mother’s brothers or brothers, and all women mothers or sisters.
(2) The joint obligation to purchase the life of a member of the clan
which has been forfeited by homicide or the murder of a member of the
tribe or of an allied tribe. (3) The duty and obligation to aid and to
defend its members in supplying their wants, redressing their wrongs
and injuries through diplomacy or by force of arms, and in avenging
their death. (4) The joint obligation to replace with prisoners or
other persons other members who have been lost or killed, belonging
to any ohwachira of a clan to which they may be related as father’s
brothers or father’s clansmen, the matron of such ohwachira having the
right to ask that this obligation be fulfilled.

The clan name is not usually among the Iroquois the common designation
of the animal or bird or reptile after which the clan may be called,
but very commonly denotes some marked feature or characteristic or the
favorite haunt of it, or it may be just a survival of an archaic name
of it.

The number of clans in the different Iroquois tribes varies; the
smallest number is three representative clans, found in the Mohawk and
the Oneida, while the Seneca have nine and the Onondaga eight. There
are also some clans which, having no chief titles, are seldom named in
public.

In historical times, and in the past as far as tradition informs us,
every clan belonged to a sisterhood or phratry of clans, and so was not
directly a member of a tribe. In all Iroquois tribes two sisterhoods or
phratries of clans are found, each forming one side of the dual tribal
organization. One of the tribal sides represents the fatherhood or male
principle and the other the motherhood or female principle among living
things.

There are three native terms in the speech of the Iroquois which may be
translated into English by the word chief or chieftain. These are in
the third person and in the Mohawk dialect, as follows: rakowā′nĕⁿ‘,
ră‘sĕñnowā′nĕⁿ‘, and royā′ne‘r, each signifying “he (is) a chief.”
The first two are generic and so may be applied to civil or military
chiefs, while the last is at present restricted to chieftains of the
League, who represent their tribal constituencies both in the tribal
council and in the federal council of the League, and also is applied
to the women chieftainesses. The chief bearing the last name has a
subchief or messenger, who is usually mentioned by the agnomen, “The
Cane” or “The Ear,” and who is symbolically represented as sitting on
the roots of the Tree (the Chieftain) whose subchief he is. It is the
duty of this subchief to see personally that the chief’s orders in his
official capacity are carried out—either in person or by the aid of the
warriors or other members of the clan.

The first of these official names signifies “he great, noble, (is),”
being derived from the stem meaning, “great, large, or noble.” The
second, meaning “his name great, noble, (is),” is derived from
a compound stem composed of the noun “name” and the attributive
qualifying stem just mentioned. The third term is notionally not
connected with the two terms just mentioned. Its stem, -yā′ne‘r,
means “beneficent, bountiful, good, promotive of good or of welfare,
(_to be_).” This stem is also the basis of the words for Law, the
Commonwealth or the Institution of the League. Thus, in Iroquoian
thinking a law, or the body of laws, is what brings to pass what is
highestly or greatestly good. And so, a federal chief could not engage
in warfare while holding such a title.

Some biographic notice of at least four of the chief actors in the
events leading up to the institution of the league may be of interest
and be instructive. These four are Deganawida, Hiawatha, Djigonsasen,
and Atotarho (Wathatotarho).

To begin with the first named. Deganawida was one of the world’s wonder
children. His conception, birth, and career are largely idealized
by tradition. Prophetic dreams and visions announced to his doubting
grandmother his alleged divine origin and heavenly mission among men;
prodigies attended his birth and childhood; he had power on earth and
in heaven—that is to say, he knew and sought to do the will of the
Master of Life, Te‘haroⁿ‘hywă’k′hoⁿ’. His mother and grandmother were
poor and despised and lived alone in a small lodge by themselves on the
outskirts of the village to which they belonged, and so they had few,
if any, visitors who might seek the daughter for a wife. But there came
a day when the watchful mother became aware that her daughter would
herself in due time give birth to a child, and bitterly did she reprove
her for not marrying a man in the customary way, for now she was
bringing scandal upon her mother and herself. The daughter, however,
steadfastly denied that she had had commerce with any man at any time,
but her mother doubted her and carried her reproof so far as to cause
the daughter much bitterness of spirit, and she, therefore, spent much
time in silently weeping, for she loved her mother and claimed that she
did not know the cause of her pregnancy, and she was deeply grieved by
her mother’s chiding. It was then that the mother had a dream in which
she was told by a divine messenger that she was doing her daughter
great wrong in not believing her statement that she did not know the
source of her condition; and she was further told that her daughter
would bear a male child, whom they must call Deganawida, and that he
would be indirectly the cause of ruin to their people.

The repentant mother upon awaking asked her daughter’s forgiveness for
the wrong she had done her in not believing her denials. They, however,
decided to destroy the life of the child when it should be born because
of the dream’s declaration that he would grow up and be the source of
evil to their people. So when the child was born they carried it to a
neighboring stream of water, which was frozen over, and cutting a hole
in the ice thrust the child into it to drown, and they returned to
their lodge. But when they awoke in the morning they found the child
unharmed and lying asleep between them. This attempt to rid themselves
of this child was repeated twice more, but each time no harm came to
the child, and then after consultation the two women decided that it
was the will of the Master of Life that they should raise the child.
They were most kind to him thereafter, and they gave him the name
Deganawida, as the dream had directed the grandmother to do. He was
reputed to have been one of seven brothers, but in regard to the father
or fathers of the six younger brothers tradition is silent.

When he grew to man’s estate he informed his mother and grandmother
that he must leave them to perform a great work in lands lying south
of the great lake. He left them in a “white canoe,” which perhaps was a
canoe of white birch, which later tradition has carelessly confounded
with the ice canoe (= ice block) in which the Iroquoian myth of the
Beginnings says the Winter God goes from place to place and which by
further corruption of the misconception in modern literature has become
a “flint” or “stone” canoe.

Tradition ranks Deganawida with the demigods, because of the masterful
_orenda_ or magic power with which, it was alleged, he tirelessly
overcame the obstacles and difficulties of his great task; because
of the astuteness and the statesmanship he displayed in negotiation;
and lastly, because of the courage and wisdom he showed in patiently
directing the work of framing the laws and elucidating the fundamental
principles on which they and the entire structure of the Iroquois
league or confederation must rest, if these were to endure to secure
the future welfare of their posterity. He was a prophet and statesman
and lawmaker of the Stone Age of North America. Tradition ascribes his
lineage to no tribe, lest his personality be limited thereby.

The traditions concerning the person who has become known as Hiawatha
on close examination are found to describe two very different
personages.

In one tradition Hiawatha when first seen by Deganawida was a cannibal
and was actually engaged in bringing the carcass of a human being into
his lodge, which he quickly proceeded to quarter and cook in a pot of
water. He had been out hunting for human beings, and meeting this one
had killed him for his larder.

Deganawida had previously heard of his cannibalistic habits from
Djigonsasen, the chieftainess of the Neutral nation (or tribe), who was
the first person to understand and to accept the radical program of
Deganawida for stopping the shedding of human blood by violence and for
the establishment of peace and equity and righteousness and power.

Unseen by Hiawatha, Deganawida, the tradition says, mounting to the
top of the lodge watched Hiawatha at work; peering through the smoke
hole from a point just over him, Deganawida saw what was being done
by Hiawatha and, tradition says, caused him by mental suggestion to
realize the horrible enormity of what he was then doing; so he mistook
the face of Deganawida, reflected in the pot, for his own, and being
struck with the great beauty of that face he contrasted it with the
character of the work in which he was then engaged and exclaimed,
tradition says: “That face and this kind of business do not agree”;
and he then and there resolved to give up cannibalism for all time.
He quickly arose and carried the pot out of the lodge and cast its
contents away at some distance from the lodge.

Deganawida having descended from the top of the lodge went forward
to meet his host. Because of his recent experience Hiawatha was very
much pleased to have a guest who brought him the wonderful message of
peace and righteousness and power. The result of this conference was
the conversion of Hiawatha to the reform program of Deganawida and
his agreement to aid in the work of bringing about the change in the
attitude and relation of men one to another.

According to tradition, Deganawida gave him his name after his
conversion, and Hiawatha became a loyal and enthusiastic disciple
of Deganawida and gave up everything in order to devote all his
energies and time to the work of establishing the projected league or
confederation of peoples in accordance with the principles expounded by
Deganawida. He indeed undertook several very important missions for his
great teacher and acquited himself with great credit.

The most effective and unscrupulous opposition the two reformers
encountered in their work came from the noted Onondaga chief, Atotarho
(Watatotarho), a wizard and sorcerer who was feared far and near, who,
during the years in which the league was being brought into being,
removed by secret means, it is said, the seven daughters (some versions
say three) and then the wife of Hiawatha, his opponent.

No place is given by tradition as Hiawatha’s birthplace, although some
analysts declare that he was a half-brother of the fierce chieftain
Atotarho (Watatotarho), of the Onondaga, his pitiless antagonist.

This tradition asserts that he lived among the Mohawk and married the
daughter of a chief there and that he himself became a chief among
these people. His name is still on the list of titles of federal Mohawk
chiefs.

In the other version of the tradition of the founding of the league of
the Iroquois Hiawatha is treated as the chief actor in the conception
and establishment of this confederacy instead of the real founder,
Deganawida. But from a careful survey of the narrative of events herein
this version is found to be much less faithful to facts than the one
first mentioned.

It appears that in this tradition the several missions upon which his
mentor, Deganawida, sent him, were fused together in such wise as to
make them merely a series of events or episodes in a single journey of
Hiawatha, which he was alleged to have made in despair, going directly
southward from the Onondaga council lodge; on this journey he was said
to “have split the sky,” meaning merely that he took a course directly
south. Herein, too, he fled from Onondaga because of vexation of
spirit for the loss of his children by the will of the great sorcerer,
Atotarho (Watatotarho).

The descriptive details are highly interesting to the antiquarian
because they shed some faint light on the kind of pledge or vouch which
was in use before wampum and wampum strings came into vogue for that
purpose. On this journey some of the persons delegated to communicate
with Hiawatha used for a pledge small shoots of the elderberry bush
which were cut into short pieces, and from which the pith was removed,
and these little cylinders strung on small cords of sinew; likewise,
the tradition continues, the quills of large feathers, cut off and
strung on cords, were also used as tokens, pledges, or vouches for the
good faith of the messenger or speaker.

Fresh-water shells were substituted by Hiawatha for these things.
Coming to a small body of water, he saw its surface literally covered
by ducks swimming about. He went near and exclaimed, “Do you not
attach any importance to my mission?” At once the ducks flew up into
the air, bearing up with them the water of the lake. Hiawatha at once
went down into the bottom of the lake, thus made dry, and there he saw
many shells of various colors. These he gathered and placed in a skin
bag which he carried. When the bag had been filled he returned to the
shore of the lake, and selecting a suitable place sat down there and,
tradition says, strung the 28 strings with their messages, which are
employed in the ritual of the condoling and installation ceremony of
the league to this day, although these fresh-water shells have long
been replaced by wampum beads.

It is thus seen that this tradition makes Hiawatha the designer of the
pledges for this rite, although the matter of the tradition shows that
this cannot be true, because the use of a set number of topics of the
“comfort,” or rather “requickening address,” was in vogue among other
tribes of the Iroquoian linguistic stock—the Huron, for example.

The name Hiawatha was immortalized by Longfellow in the beautiful poem
bearing this name, although there is nothing in the poem that can be
predicated of the historical person bearing that name. This was due to
the mistake of confusing two names—that of Hiawatha with that of the
Iroquoian god, the Master of Life, the one who gives or creates all
life, both faunal and floral, on the earth.

Mr. J. V. H. Clark, in his “Onondaga, etc.,” is directly responsible
for this confusion, for, although Schoolcraft added to it, Mr. Clark
brought it to pass in the first instance. In the hands of careless
hearers and recorders native Indian names which in fact have no
relationship whatsoever are readily confounded. In the Mohawk dialect
of the Iroquoian stock of languages (and in all others of this stock
using the r-sound in their phonetics) Teharonhiawagon approximately
records the sounds in the name of the Life God or the Master of
Life; but this name in Onondaga (and in all other dialects of this
stock, which do not use the r-sound), becomes Dehaenhiawagi. This
name, misspelled, appears in print as Ta-oun-ya-wat-ha, Thannawege,
Taonhiawagi, and Tahiawagi, etc.; but between these and the
dubious attempts to record the native original for the Anglicised
Hiawatha—namely, Tahionwatha, Taoungwatha, Ayonhwatha, Hayenwatha,
Hayonwentha, etc.—there is no relationship whatever. But Clark, misled,
perhaps, by otosis and misconception and by a confused tradition,
identifies in direct statement the two names and the two persons.

Schoolcraft, when gathering material for his Notes on the Iroquois,
received a number of fragmentary mythic tales about the Iroquoian god,
the Master of Life and also traditional stories about one of the chief
founders of the league. But as these had been confounded by Clark and
made to relate to a single individual Schoolcraft undiscriminatingly
adopted this intermixture, and added to the mischief by transferring
Hiawatha to the region of the Great Lakes, and there identified him
with Nanabozho, the Master of Life, or God of Life, of the Chippewa and
other Algonquian cognates.

Now, the Mohawk Iroquoian Teharonhiawagon and the Chippewa Algonquian
Nanabozho are approximately identical mythic conceptions, but
neither has in fact or fiction any feature predicable of Hiawatha.
Schoolcraft’s The Hiawatha Legends, to which we owe the charming poem
of that name by Longfellow, were chiefly mythic tales and fiction about
Nanabozho, the Chippewa Master of Life, but which contain nothing about
Hiawatha, an Iroquoian chieftain of the sixteenth century.

Were Europeans of some day in the future shown a great narrative
of French epic adventure in which Prince Bismarck, the despoiler
of France, should appear as the central and leading Gallic hero in
the glory and triumph of France, the absurdity and error would not
be greater or more towering than in these blunders of Clark and
Schoolcraft concerning Hiawatha and the Master of Life of Iroquoian and
Algonquian mythic thought.

In the establishment of this highly organized institution the swart
statesmen, Deganawida, Hiawatha, and their able colleagues, and the
equally astute stateswoman, Djigonsasen, a chieftainess of the Neutral
nation (or tribe), then very powerful and warlike, united their efforts
in bringing to a successful issue, notwithstanding bitter intratribal
opposition, a peaceful revolution in the methods, in the scope, in the
forms, and in the purposes of government extant among their respective
peoples—a much needed reform which was at once fundamental and
far-reaching in its immediate effects and future possibilities.

The dominant motive for the establishment of the League of the Five
Iroquois Tribes was the impelling necessity to stop the shedding of
human blood by violence through the making and ratifying of a universal
peace by all the known tribes of men, to safeguard human life and
health and welfare. Moreover, it was intended to be a type or model of
government for all tribes alien to the Iroquois. To meet this pressing
need for a durable universal peace these reformers proposed and
advocated a constitutional form of government as the most effective in
the attainment of so desirable an end.

The founders of the league, therefore, proposed and expounded as the
requisite basis of all good government three broad “double” doctrines
or principles. The names of these principles in the native tongues vary
dialectically, but these three notable terms are expressed in Onondaga
as follows: (1) _Ne’′ Skĕñ′noⁿ’_, meaning, first, sanity of mind and
the health of the body; and, second, peace between individuals and
between organized bodies or groups of persons. (2) _Ne’′ Gaii‘hwiyo‘_,
meaning, first, righteousness in conduct and its advocacy in thought
and in speech; and, second, equity or justice, the adjustment of
rights and obligations. (3) _Ne’′ Gă’s‘hasdĕⁿ‘′sä’_, meaning, first,
physical strength or power, as military force or civil authority;
and, second, the orenda or magic power of the people or of their
institutions and rituals, having mythic and religious implications.
Six principles in all. The constructive results of the control and
guidance of human thinking and conduct in the private, the public,
and the foreign relations of the peoples so leagued by these six
principles, the reformers maintained, are the establishment and the
conservation of what is reverently called _Ne’′ Gayanĕñ‘sä’gō′nǎ‘_—i.
e., the Great Commonwealth, the great Law of Equity and Righteousness
and Well-being, of all known men. It is thus seen that the mental grasp
and outlook of these prophet-statesmen and stateswomen of the Iroquois
looked out beyond the limits of tribal boundaries to a vast sisterhood
and brotherhood of all the tribes of men, dwelling in harmony and
happiness. This indeed was a notable vision for the Stone Age of
America.

Some of the practical measures that were put in force were the checking
of murder and bloodshed in the ferocious blood-feud by the legal tender
of the prescribed price of the life of a man or a woman—the tender by
the homicide and his clan for accidentally killing such a person was 20
strings of wampum, 10 for the dead man and 10 for the forfeited life
of the homicide; but if the dead person were a woman, the legal tender
was 30 strings of wampum, because the value of a woman’s life to the
community was regarded as double that of a man. And cannibalism, or the
eating of human flesh, was legally prohibited. Even Hiawatha forswore
this abominable practice before taking up the work of forming the
league.

The institution of the condoling and installation council was important
and most essential to the maintenance of the integrity of their state,
for the ordinances of the league constitution required that the number
of the chiefs in the federal council should be kept intact. So to the
orenda, or magic power, believed to emanate and flow from the words,
the chants and songs, and the acts of this council, did the statesmen
and the ancients of the Iroquois peoples look for the conservation of
their political integrity and for the promotion of their welfare.

So potent and terrible was the orenda of the ritual of the mourning
installation council regarded, that it was thought imperative to hold
this council only during the autumn or winter months. Since its orenda
dealt solely with the effects of death and with the restoration and
preservation of the living from death, it was believed that it would be
ruinous and destructive to the growing seeds, plants, and fruits, were
this council held during the days of birth and growth in spring and in
summer. To overcome the power of death, to repair his destructive work,
and to restore to its normal potency the orenda or magic power of the
stricken father side or mother side of the league, and so making the
entire league whole, were some of its motives.[1]

  [1] See the writer’s article on this subject in Holmes Anniversary
  Volume, Washington, 1916.

In eulogizing their completed labors the founders of the league
represented and described it as a great human tree of flesh and blood,
noted for size and length of leaf, which was also represented as being
set up on a great white mat—that is to say, on a broad foundation
of peace, and whose top pierced the visible sky. It was conceived
as having four great white roots composed of living men and women,
extending respectively eastward, southward, westward, and northward,
among the tribes of men who were urgently invited to unite with the
league by laying their heads on the great white root nearest to them.
It was further declared that should some enemy of this great tree of
flesh and blood approach it and should drive his hatchet into one
of its roots, blood indeed would flow from the wound, but it was
said further that this strange tree through its orenda would cause
that assailant to vomit blood before he could escape very far. In
certain laws the federal chiefs are denominated standing trees, who as
essential components of the great tree of the league are absorbed in
it, symbolically, and who are thus said to have one head, one heart,
one mind, one blood, and one dish of food.

The ties which unite a tribe with its gods—ties of faith and the
bonds of duty and obligation of service which bind the persons of the
tribe unitedly together, ties of blood and affinity—are the strongest
operative among tribal men and women. Every undeveloped people or
human brood of one blood and origin live under the direct care and
special providence of its gods and so seeks to maintain, by suitable
rite and ceremony, unbroken and intact relation and converse with them.
From the legends and traditions of such a people it is learned that
all that they have, all that they do ritually, and all that they know,
they have received freely by the grace of their gods. The tribes of the
Iroquois people were no exception to this rule.

In Iroquois polity there was a definite separation of purely civil
from strictly religious affairs. So the office of civil chief was
clearly marked off from that of prophet or priest, and in so far as
an incumbent was concerned it was the gift of the suffrages of a
definite group of his clanswomen, and so in no sense was it hereditary.
The office was hereditary in the clan, and strictly speaking in
some family line of the clan. The civil assembly, or the council of
chiefs and elders or senators, was in no sense a religious gathering,
notwithstanding the custom of opening it with a thanksgiving prayer
in recognition of the Master of Life—a strictly religious act. The
officers of the religious societies and assemblies were not the same as
those who presided over the councils of chiefs. And it is noteworthy
that a federal chief must not engage in warfare while clothed with the
title and insignia of office; to do so he was required to resign his
office of federal chief during his absence on the warpath.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is a dualism in organization running through all public
assemblies of the Iroquois peoples living under the earlier culture.
It must be noted that this dual character of the tribal and league
organization does not rest on blood ties or affinity, or on common
religious rites, but rather on the motive to dramatize two dominant
principles which appear to pervade and energize all observed sentient
life. In short, this dualism is based primarily on certain mythic
concepts regarding the source of life and the most effective means of
conserving it on earth among men. Among the Iroquois people of to-day
the knowledge of the reason for the persistent dual organization
of tribe and league has been lost completely. But a painstaking
analysis of rituals and of certain terms appearing in them gives us
a trustworthy clue to the reason for a dualism in organization. The
reason thus deduced is the need for embodying in the tribal organic
unity the principles of the complementary sexes as organic factors in
order to secure fertility and abundant progeny. In short, it was deemed
imperative to recognize the male and female principles of the biotic
world and all that such recognition implies—fatherhood and motherhood
and the duties and obligations arising from these states, as defined in
Iroquois thinking. This dualism makes the life of the father and the
mother endure with that of the clan of which either is a member. The
same is true of sonship and daughtership.

This ascription of sex to groups—organic groups—of persons measurably
explains the potent motive which underlies the apparently artificial
rule of exogamy that controls certain groups of persons as against
other like groups of persons.

By the prophet-statesmen of the early Iroquois and their cotribesmen
the League of the Five Tribes as an institution—as an organic unity—was
conceived at times as a bisexed being or person; i. e., as an organic
unity formed by the union of two persons of opposite sexes. To those
early prophet-statesmen life was omnipresent—obtrusively so, for,
unconsciously, their ancestors had imputed it to all bodies and objects
and processes of the complex world of human experience. But it must be
noted that the life so imputed was human life, no other. And so as an
institution the league was conceived as an animate being, endowed with
definite biotic properties and functions, as the male and female sexes,
fatherhood and motherhood, mind, eyesight, dream power, human blood,
and the possession of guardian spirits for its two highest organic
members.

In the ritual of the installation of chiefs in all the many addresses
and chants and songs, each of the two constituent organic members,
the father and the mother sides, is addressed as a single individual.
In the famous so-called six songs of the mourning and installation
council, which are so dramatically sung by a chief who represents the
dead chief or chiefs to be resurrected, each of the two constituent
persons is addressed, but in the fifth song, the totality, the league
as a unity is addressed as a person, to whom is sung this farewell song
of the departing chief. This is done evidently to secure the departure
of the ghost in peace.

Again, the lamenting cry of “hai′i, hai′i,“ which is so tediously
recurrent in all the chants and songs, but one, of the mourning and
installation council, is employed, it is said, in order to console the
spirits or spirit of the dead. The reason for using this particular cry
is that it is reputed to be that made by spirits when moving from place
to place. But it was believed that should this cry be omitted in the
rituals the displeasure of the departed spirits would be manifested in
an epidemic of diseases affecting the spine and the head.

The duties and obligations of the clan or sisterhood of clans of a
father to the clan of his children were by the founders of the league
made a part of the functions of the male member, or sisterhood of
tribes, in the organic structure of the league. In like manner the
duties and obligations of the clan or sisterhood of clans of a mother
to the clan or sisterhood of clans of the father of the children were
made a part of the functions of the female member, or sisterhood
of tribes, in the organic structure of the league. Thus the two
constituent members of the highest order in the structure of the
league were the female group of two tribes and the male group of three
tribes, respectively representing the mother and the father sides,
the female and male principles, the whole representing the union of
fatherhood and motherhood for the promotion of the life force and
welfare of the community.

The term _agadoñ′ni_, meaning “my father’s clansmen,” has two very
distinct applications—first, to the clan of one’s father, and, second,
to the male or father side of the league. And the term _kheya’da′wĕⁿ_,
meaning “my offspring,” also has two very different applications—first,
to the clan of the children’s mother, and, second, to the female or
mother side of the league. There were three tribes which constituted
the male or father side of the league structure—namely, the Mohawk, the
Onondaga, and the Seneca; and two tribes, the Oneida and the Cayuga,
originally constituted the female or mother side of the league. To the
Onondaga, however, was given the noteworthy distinction of presiding
over the deliberations of the federal council. This they did of course
through their chiefs; but these chiefs did not have the right to
discuss the question at issue. This apparent primacy of the Onondaga
carried with it the office of fire keeper and the presiding officer of
the federal council.

It must be noted that the mother or female complex of tribes and the
father or male complex of tribes were held together by the exercise of
certain rights and the performance of certain duties and obligations of
the one to the other side.

The federal council, sitting as a court without a jury, heard and
determined causes in accordance with established rules and principles
of procedure, and with precedent.


Transcriber’s Notes:

  - Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
  - Blank pages have been removed.
  - Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.