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The Iroquois Book of Rites

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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.

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