The Iroquois Book Of Rites Part 16

David Cusick, in his _"Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations,"_ supposes that the League was formed "perhaps 1000 years before Columbus discovered America." His reasons for this supposition, however, do not bear examination. He makes Atotarho the hereditary t.i.tle of a monarch, like Pharaoh or Caesar, and states that thirteen potentates bearing that t.i.tle had "reigned" between the formation of the confederacy and the discovery of America by Columbus. The duration of each of these reigns he computes, absurdly enough, at exactly fifty years, which, however, would give altogether a term of only six hundred and fifty years. He supposes the discovery of America to have taken place during the reign of the thirteenth Atotarho; and he adds that the conquest and dispersion of the Eries occurred "about this time." The latter event, as we know, took place in 1656. It is evident that Cusick's chronology is totally at fault. As an Iroquois chief was never succeeded by his son, but often by his brother, it is by no means improbable that thirteen persons may have held successively the t.i.tle of Atotarho in the term of nearly two centuries, between the years 1459 and 1656.

On the other hand, Heckewelder, in his well-known work on the "History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations." cites a pa.s.sage from a ma.n.u.script book of his predecessor, the Rev. C. Pyrlaeus, formerly missionary among the Mohawks, from which a comparatively recent date would be inferred for the confederation. The inference, however, is probably due to a mistake of Heckewelder himself. The pa.s.sage, as it stands in his volume, [Footnote: P. 56 of the revised edition of 1875, published by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.] is as follows:--

"The Rev. C. Pyrlaeus, in his ma.n.u.script book, p. 234, says: 'The alliance or confederacy of the Five Nations was established, as near as can be conjectured, one age (or the length of a man's life) before the white people (the Dutch) came into the country. Thannawage was the name of the aged Indian, a Mohawk, who first proposed such an alliance.'"

The words which Heckewelder has here included between parentheses arc apparently explanations which he himself added to the original statement of Pyrlaeus. The first of these glosses, by which an "age" is explained to be the length of a man's life, is doubtless correct; but the second, which identifies the "white people" of Pyrlaeus with the Dutch, is probably wrong. The white people who first "came into the country" of the Huron-Iroquois nations were the French, under Cartier. It was in the summer of 1535 that the bold Breton navigator, with three vessels commissioned to establish a colony in Canada, entered the St. Lawrence, and ascended the great river as far as the sites of Quebec and Montreal.

He spent the subsequent winter at Quebec. The presence of this expedition, with its soldiers and sailors of strange complexion and armed with terrible weapons, must have been known to all the tribes dwelling along the river, and would naturally make an epoch in their chronology. a.s.suming the year 1535 as the time when the white people first "came into the country," and taking "the length of a man's life"

at seventy-five years (or three generations) we should arrive at the year 1460 as the date of the formation of the Iroquois League.

[Footnote: There is an evident difference between the expression used by my Onondaga informants and that which is quoted by Heckewelder from Pyrlaeus. The latter speaks of the time before the white people "came into the country;" the Onondagas referred to the time before they "came to these parts." The pa.s.sage cited from Bancroft seems to indicate that the white men of Hudson's crew presented no novel or startling aspect to the Mohawks. The French had been "in the country" before them.]

The brief period allowed by Heckewelder's version is on many accounts inadmissible. If, when the Dutch first came among the Iroquois, the confederacy had existed for only about eighty years, there must have been many persons then living who had personally known some of its founders. It is quite inconceivable that the cloud of mythological legends which has gathered around the names of these founders--of which Clark, in his "Onondaga," gives only the smaller portion--should have arisen in so short a term. Nor is it probable that in so brief a period as has elapsed since the date suggested by Heckewelder, a fourth part of the names of the fifty chiefs who formed the first council would have become unintelligible, or at least doubtful in meaning. Schoolcraft, who was inclined to defer to Heckewelder's authority on this point, did so with evident doubt and perplexity. "We cannot," he says, "without rejecting many positive traditions of the Iroquois themselves, refuse to concede a much earlier period to the first attempts of these interesting tribes to form a general political a.s.sociation." [Footnote: "_Notes on the Iroquois_ p. 75,"]

In view of all the facts there seems no reason for withholding credence from the clear and positive statement of the Iroquois chroniclers, who place the commencement of their confederate government at about the middle of the fifteenth century.

NOTE D.

THE HIAWATHA MYTHS.

While many of the narratives of preternatural events recounted by Clark, Schoolcraft and others, in which the name of Hiawatha occurs, are merely adaptations of older myths relating to primitive Iroquois or Algonkin deities, there are a few which are actual traditions, though much confused and distorted, of incidents that really occurred. Among these is the story told by Clark, of the marvelous bird by which Hiawatha's only daughter was destroyed. Longfellow has avoided all reference to this preposterous tale; but to Mr. Clark, if we may judge from the fullness and solemnity with which he has recorded it, it appeared very impressive. [Footnote: _"Onondaga"_ Vol. I, p. 25.] According to his narrative, when the great convention a.s.sembled at the summons of Hiawatha, to form the league of the Five Nations, he came to it in company with his darling and only daughter, a girl of twelve. Suddenly a loud rushing sound was heard. A dark spot appeared in the sky. Hiawatha warned his daughter to be prepared for the coming doom from the Great Spirit, and she meekly bowed in resignation. The dark spot, rapidly descending, became an immense bird, which, with long and pointed beak and wide-extended wings, swept down upon the beautiful girl, and crushed her to atoms. Many other incidents are added, and we are told, what we might well believe, that the hero's grief for the loss so suddenly and frightfully inflicted upon him was intense and long protracted.

That a story related with so much particularity should be utterly without foundation did not appear probable. It seemed not unlikely that a daughter of Hiawatha might have been killed at some public meeting, either accidentally or purposely, and possibly by an Indian belonging to one of the bird clans, the Snipe, the Heron, or the Crane. But further inquiry showed that even this conjecture involved more of what may be styled mythology than the simple facts called for. The Onondaga chiefs on the Canadian Reserve, when asked if they had heard anything about a strange bird causing the death of Hiawatha's daughter, replied at once that the event was well known. As they related it, the occurrence became natural and intelligible. It formed, indeed, a not unimportant link in the chain of events which led to the establishment of the confederacy.

The catastrophe, for such it truly was, took place not at the great a.s.sembly which met for the formation of the league, but at one of the Onondaga councils which were convened prior to that meeting, and before Hiawatha had fled to the Caniengas. The council was held in an open plain, encircled by a forest, near which temporary lodges had been erected for the Councillors and their attendants. Hiawatha was present, accompanied by his daughter, the last surviving member of his family.

She was married, but still lived with her father, after the custom of the people; for the wife did not join her husband in his own home until she had borne him a child. The discussions had lasted through the day, and at nightfall the people retired to their lodges. Hiawatha's daughter had been out, probably with other women, into the adjacent woods, to gather their light fuel of dry sticks for cooking. She was great with child, and moved slowly, with her f.a.ggot, across the sward. An evil eye was upon her. Suddenly the loud voice of Atotarho was heard, shouting that a strange bird was in the air, and bidding one of his best archers shoot it. The archer shot, and the bird fell. A sudden rush took place from all quarters toward it, and in the rush Hiawatha's daughter was thrown down and trampled to death. No one could prove that Atotarho had planned this terrible blow at his great adversary, but no one doubted it. Hiawatha's grief was profound; but it was then, according to the tradition of the Canadian Onondagas,--when the last tie of kindred which bound him to his own people was broken,--that the idea occurred to him of seeking aid among the eastern nations. [Footnote: This account of the events which immediately preceded Hiawatha's flight differs somewhat from the narrative which I received from the New York Onondagas, as recorded in the Introduction (p. 22). The difference, however, is not important; and possibly, if it had occurred to me to inquire of these latter informants about the incident of the bird, I might have heard from them particulars which would have brought the two versions of the story still nearer to accord. The notable fact is that the reports of a tradition preserved for four hundred years, in two divisions of a broken tribe, which have been widely separated for more than a century, should agree so closely in all important particulars. Such concurrence of different chroniclers in the main narrative of an event, with some diversity in the details, is usually regarded as the best evidence of the truth of the history.]

Clark's informants also told him much about a snow-white canoe in which Hiawatha--or, rather, Ta-oun-ya-wa-tha--made his first appearance to human eyes. In this canoe the demiG.o.d was seen on Lake Ontario, approaching the sh.o.r.e at Oswego. In it he ascended the river and its various branches, removing all obstructions, and destroying all enemies, natural and preternatural. And when his work was completed by the establishment of the League, the hero, in his human form of Hiawatha, seated himself in this canoe, and ascended in it to heaven, amid "the sweetest melody of celestial music."

The nucleus and probable origin of this singular story is perhaps to be found in the simple fact that Hiawatha, after his flight from the Onondagas, made his appearance among the Caniengas a solitary voyager, in a canoe, in which he had floated down the Mohawk river. The canoes of the Caniengas were usually made of elm-bark, the birch not being common in their country. If Hiawatha, as is not unlikely, had found or constructed a small canoe of birch-bark on the upper waters of the stream, and used it for his voyage to the Canienga town, it might naturally attract some attention. The great celebrity and high position which he soon attained, and the important work which he accomplished, would cause the people who adopted him as a chief to look back upon all the circ.u.mstances of his first arrival among them with special interest.

That the canoe was preserved till his death, and that he was buried in it, amid funeral wails and mournful songs from a vast mult.i.tude, such as had never before lamented a chief of the Kanonsioani, may be deemed probable enough; and in these or some similar events we may look for the origin of this beautiful myth, which reappears, with such striking effect, in the closing scene of Longfellow's poem.

NOTE E.

THE IROQUOIS TOWNS.

The list of towns comprised in the text contains twenty-three names. Of this number only eight or nine resemble names which have been in use since the Five Nations were known to the whites; and even of this small number it is not certain that all, or indeed any, were in these more recent times applied to their original localities. My friend, General John S. Clark, of Auburn, N. Y., who has made a special study of the positions of the Indian tribes and villages, and whose notes on this subject ill.u.s.trate the excellent work of Dr. Hawley on the early history of the Cayuga nation, [Footnote: _Early Chapters of Cayuga History:_ By Charles Hawley, D.D., President of the Cayuga Historical Society.] has favored me, in a recent letter, with the following brief but valuable summary of what is known in regard to the Iroquois towns:--

"When the Mohawks were first known, they occupied three princ.i.p.al towns on the south side of the Mohawk river, between Ganajoharie and Schoharie creeks. The most eastern was that of the "Turtles" (or Tortoise clan), and was usually designated as such, and by the Dutch as the Lower or First Castle. The Middle or Second Castle was commonly termed the village of the "Bears;" while the Third or Upper Castle was generally called Teonnondoge or Tionnontogen, a name apparently having reference to the 'two mountains' near which the original town stood. After these towns were destroyed by the French, in 1666, their people removed to the north side of the river,--those of the lower town retreating a few miles up the stream to the rapids; and then for a hundred years this was generally known Caughnawaga (_Kahnawake_) "At the Rapids." The Middle or Second Castle was called Gandagaro in 1670, Kanagiro in 1744, etc. The third appears to have retained its old name in all positions."

"When the Oneidas were first known they occupied a position on the headwaters of the Oneida inlet, and afterward gradually drew northward toward the lake. Their great town was usually called by the name of the tribe, as Onneiot, Onoyut, etc. One site, occupied about 1700, was called and known generally as Kanowaroghare, said to signify 'a head on a pole.'"

"The Onondagas, first known in 1615, occupied several sites, from a point south of the east end of Oneida lake, where they were when first known, to the Onondaga valley; but in all cases the chief town, when named, was called Onondaga, from the name of the tribe. Their great village in the Onondaga valley, according to Zeisberger, was known in 1750 as Tagochsanagecht, but this was a form derived from the name of the Onondagas as used in council. In all ages this chief town, wherever located, had other minor towns within from two to five miles, but they are rarely named. The great town was also divided into districts, one for each clan, each of which must have been known by the clan name, but this is seldom referred to. This rule held good also in all the large towns. A 'Bear village' was not occupied exclusively by members of the Bear clan; but these predominated and exercised authority."

"The Cayugas in 1656 occupied three villages,--Onnontare, on a hill near the Canandaigua river,--Thiohero, near the foot of Cayuga lake ('By the Marsh,' or, 'Where the Rushes are'),--and a third, which generally took the name of the tribe, Cayuga, but was occasionally divided into three districts, like the other large towns."

"The Senecas, when visited by the Jesuits, occupied two great towns, and several minor villages. The eastern of the two towns, near Victor, was called Gandougarae. The western, on Honcoye creek, nearly always, in all localities, took the name of the stream, which signifies 'bending.' It is said that when the League was first formed, it was agreed that the two great Seneca towns should be called by the names of two princ.i.p.al sachems; but I am unable to find that this was carried out in practice.

In La Hontan's narrative of the De Nonville expedition, the great western town was separated into two parts, Thegaronhies and Danoncaritowi, which were the names of two important chiefs; while De Nonville's and other accounts describe it as Totiakton, 'at the bend.'

This discrepancy, however, is found in all cases where the several towns are mentioned, as it was quite common to speak of them by the name of the princ.i.p.al chief. Thus, Cayuga in 1750 was called Tagayu, from Togahayu, the well-known chief sachem; Onondaga was called Canasatago's town, etc."

The frequent changes in the positions and names of Indian towns, thus well explained and exemplified, will account; for the fact that so few of the ancient names in the list which the tenacious memories of the record-keepers retained have come down in actual use to modern times.

The well-known landmark of the Oneida stone seems to have preserved the name of the town,--_Onenyute,_ "the projecting rock,"--from which the nation derived its usual designation. _Deserokenh_, or, as the Jesuit missionaries wrote it, _Techiroguen_, was situated near the outlet of the Oneida lake, at the point where the great northern trail crossed this outlet. A village of some importance is likely to have been always found at or near that locality. The same may be said of _Deyuhhero,_ or _Tiohero,_ where the main trail which united all the cantons crossed the river outlet of Lake Cayuga.

In other cases, though the ident.i.ty of names is clear, that of the localities is more doubtful. The _Kaneghsadakeh_ of the list, the "Hill-side town," may be the _Kanasadaga_ of the Senecas; but, as General Clark remarks, the name might have been applied to any town on the side of a mountain. In like manner _Deyughsweken_ (or _Deyohsweken_), which is said to mean "flowing out," may have been the town from which the Oswego river took its name, or a town at the mouth of any other river; and _Deyaokenh,_ "the Forks," may have been Tioga, or any other village at the junction of two streams. _Fonondese_ ("it is a high hill") is perhaps the same name as Onontare, which in Charlevoix's map appears as Onnontatacet; [Footnote: See _"Early Chapters of Cayuga History,"_ p. 48.] but the name may well have been a common one. A few other apparent coincidences might be pointed out; but of most of the towns in the list we can only say that no trace remains in name or known locality, and that in some cases even the meaning of the names has ceased to be remembered. General Clark sums up his conclusions on this point in the following words: "They appear to belong to a remote--I may say a very remote--age, and not to be referred to any particular known localities; and this, as it appears to me, is more to the credit of the ma.n.u.script as an archaic work."

NOTE F.

THE PRE-ARYAN RACE IN EUROPE AND AMERICA.

[The following is the concluding portion of an essay on "Indian Migrations, as evidenced by Language," which was read at the Montreal meeting of the American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science, in August, 1882, and published in the "American Antiquarian" for January and April, 1883. As the views set forth in this extract have a bearing on the subjects discussed in the present work, the author takes the opportunity of reproducing them here for the consideration of its readers.]

It will be noticed that the evidence of language, and to some extent that of tradition, leads to the conclusion that the course of migration of the Indian tribes has been from the Atlantic coast westward and southward. The Huron-Iroquois tribes had their pristine seat on the lower St. Lawrence. The traditions of the Algonkins seem to point to Hudson's Bay and the coast of Labrador. The Dakota stock had its oldest branch east of the Alleghenies, and possibly (if the Catawba nation shall be proved to be of that stock), on the Carolina coast.

Philologists are well aware that there is nothing in the language of the American Indians to favor the conjecture (for it is nothing else) which derives the race from eastern Asia. But in western Europe one community is known to exist, speaking a language which in its general structure manifests a near likeness to the Indian tongues. Alone of all the races of the old continent the Basques or Euskarians of northern Spain and southwestern France have a speech of that highly complex and polysynthetic character which distinguishes the American languages.

There is not, indeed, any such positive similarity, in words or grammar, as would prove a direct affiliation. The likeness is merely in the general cast and mould of speech; but this likeness is so marked as to have awakened much attention. If the scholars who have noticed it had been aware of the facts now adduced with regard to the course of migration on this continent, they would probably have been led to the conclusion that this similarity in the type of speech was an evidence of the unity of race. There seems reason to believe that Europe--at least in its southern and western portions--was occupied in early times by a race having many of the characteristics, physical and mental, of the American aborigines. The evidences which lead to this conclusion are well set forth in Dr. Dawson's recent work on "Fossil Man." Of this early European people, by some called the Iberian race, who were ultimately overwhelmed by the Aryan emigrants from central Asia, the Basques are the only survivors that have retained their original language; but all the nations of southern Europe, commencing with the Greeks, show in their physical and mental traits a large intermixture of this aboriginal race. As we advance westward, the evidence of this infusion becomes stronger, until in the Celts of France and of the British Islands it gives the predominant cast to the character of the people. [Footnote: "The Basque may then be the sole surviving relic and witness of an aboriginal western European population, dispossessed by the intrusive Indo-European tribes. It stands entirely alone, no kindred having yet been found for it in any part of the world. It is of an exaggeratedly agglutinative type, incorporating into its verb a variety of relations which are almost everywhere else expressed by an independent word."--"The Basque forms a suitable stepping-stone from which to enter the peculiar linguistic domain of the New World, since there is no other dialect of the Old World which so much resembles in structure the American languages."--Professor Whitney, in _"The Life and Growth of Language"_ p. 258.]

If the early population of Europe were really similar to that of America, then we may infer that it was composed of many tribes, scattered in loose bands over the country, and speaking languages widely and sometimes radically different, but all of a polysynthetic structure.

They were a bold, proud, adventurous people, good hunters and good sailors. In the latter respect they were wholly unlike the primitive Aryans, who, as was natural in a pastoral people of inland origin, have always had in the east a terror of the ocean, and in Europe were, within historic times, the clumsiest and least venturous of navigators. If communities resembling the Iroquois and the Caribs once inhabited the British islands and the western coasts of the adjacent continent, we may be sure that their fleets of large canoes, such as have been exhumed from the peat-deposits and ancient river-beds of Ireland, Scotland, and France, swarmed along all the sh.o.r.es and estuaries of that region.

Accident or adventure may easily have carried some of them across the Atlantic, not merely once, but in many successive emigrations from different parts of western Europe. The distance is less than that which the canoes of the Polynesians were accustomed to traverse. The derivation of the American population from this source presents no serious improbability whatever. [Footnote: The distance from Ireland to Newfoundland is only sixteen hundred miles. The distance from the Sandwich Islands to Tahiti (whence the natives of the former group affirm that their ancestors came) is twenty-two hundred miles. The distance from the former islands to the Marquesas group, the nearest inhabited land, is seventeen hundred miles. The canoes of the Sandwich Islands (as we are a.s.sured by Ellis, in his _"Polynesian Researches"_) "seldom exceed fifty feet in length." In the river-beds of France, ancient canoes have been found, exceeding forty feet in length. One was more than forty-five feet long, and nearly four feet deep. See the particulars in Figuier's _"Primitive Man,"_ Appleton's edit., p. 177.

See also Prof. D. Wilson's _"Prehistoric Man,"_ 2d edit., p. 102, for a full discussion of this question, with instances of long canoe voyages.]

On the theory which seems thus rendered probable, that the early Europeans were of the same race as the Indians of America, we are able to account for certain characteristics of the modern nations of Europe, which would otherwise present to the student of anthropology a perplexing problem. The Aryans of Asia, ancient and modern, as we know them in the Hindoos, the Persians, and the Armenians, with the evidence afforded by their history, their literature and their present condition, have always been utterly devoid of the sentiment of political rights.

The love of freedom is a feeling of which they seem incapable. To humble themselves before some superior power--deity, king, or brahmin--seems to be with them a natural and overpowering inclination. Next to this feeling is the love of contemplation and of abstract reasoning. A dreamy life of worship and thought is the highest felicity of the Asiatic Aryan. On the other hand, if the ancient Europeans were what the Basques and the American Indians are now, they were a people imbued with the strongest possible sense of personal independence, and, resulting from that, a pa.s.sion for political freedom. They were also a shrewd, practical, observant people, with little taste for abstract reasoning.

It is easy to see that from a mingling of two races of such opposite dispositions, a people of mixed character would be formed, very similar to that which has existed in Europe since the advent of the Aryan emigrants. In eastern Europe, among the Greeks and Sclavonians, where the Iberian element would be weakest, the Aryan characteristics of reverence and contemplation would be most apparent. As we advance westward, among the Latin and Teutonic populations, the sense of political rights, the taste for adventure, and the observing, practical tendency, would be more and more manifest; until at length, among the western Celts, as among the American Indians, the love of freedom would become exalted to an almost morbid distrust of all governing authority.

If this theory is correct, the nations of modern Europe have derived those traits of character and those inst.i.tutions which have given them their present headship of power and civilization among the peoples of the globe, not from their Aryan forefathers, but mainly from this other portion of their ancestry, belonging to the earlier population which the Aryans overcame and absorbed. That this primitive population was tolerably numerous is evident from the fact that the Aryans, particularly of the Latin, Teutonic, and Celtic nations lost in absorbing it many vocal elements and many grammatical inflections of their speech. They gained, at the same time, the self-respect, the love of liberty, and the capacity for selfgovernment, which were unknown to them in their Asiatic home. Knowing that these characteristics have always marked the American race, we need not be surprised when modern researches demonstrate the fact that many of our Indian communities have had political systems embodying some of the most valuable principles of popular government. We shall no longer feel inclined to question the truth of the conclusion which has been announced by Carli, Draper, and other philosophic investigators, who affirm that the Spaniards, in their conquest of Mexico, Yucatan, and Peru, destroyed a better form of society than that which they established in its place. The intellectual but servile Aryans will cease to attract the undue admiration which they have received for qualities not their own; and we shall look with a new interest on the remnant of the Indian race, as possibly representing this n.o.bler type of man, whose inextinguishable love of freedom has evoked the idea of political rights, and has created those inst.i.tutions of regulated self-government by which genuine civilization and progress are a.s.sured to the world.

CANIENGA GLOSSARY.

The following Glossary comprises all the words of the Canienga text. The meanings of these words are given as they were, received from the interpreters. For most of them these definitions are confirmed by the dictionaries of Bruyas and Cuoq. Some of the words, which are either archaic forms or peculiar to the Council ceremonies, are not found in those dictionaries; and in a few instances the precise purport of these words must be considered doubtful. In some cases, also, the force of a grammatical inflection or of an affix may not have been correctly ascertained; but it is believed that the vocabulary will be found, in general, sufficiently accurate to be of service to the student who may desire to acquire some knowledge of the Canienga speech.

When the words of John Buck's copy differ in orthography from those of the Johnson MS., the former are added in brackets. Words cited from the dictionary of Bruyas are distinguished by the letter B; those from the lexicon of M. Cuoq by C.

A.