Part 2

In contemplating this system, there is more than one point to admire. History gives us no example of a confederacy in which the principle of political and domestic union, were so intimately bound together. By the establishment of the Totemic Bond, the clans were separated on the principle of near kindred, between which all marriage was inhibited. Every marriage between these separated clans, therefore, bound them closer together, and the consequence soon must have been, their entire amalgamation, had it not been provided, that each clan, through the female line, should preserve inviolate forever, its own Totemic independency. In other words, the female was never so incorporated into a new relation by the matrimonial tie, as to lose her family name, and her mother's ancestral rights. If, for example, a deer totem female, married a wolf or hawk male, she was still counted in the clan of the deer, and never gave up her political rights, to the wolf or hawk clans, which had provided for her a husband. Her position may, perhaps, be better understood, by observing that the married woman, still retained her maiden name--the sir name of her family. By this means she preserved the identity of her clan, and with it, its heraldic and political rights. Not only so, the property of a female, never vested in, or belonged to the husband. This trait is still in full vogue, among each of the tribes. Its operation has been witnessed the present year.

Matrons had also the right to attend and sit in council, and there were occasions, in which they were permitted to speak. For this purpose, a speaker was assigned to them, and this person became a standing officer in the council.--It might pertain to the nations to bring in propositions of peace. Such propositions might prejudice the character of a warrior, but they were appropriate to the female, and the wise men knew how to avail themselves of this stroke of policy. We speak of the general and burdensome subjection of the female, among our Red Men--a condition, indeed, inseparable from the hunter state, but here is a trait of power and consideration, which has not yet been reached by refined nations.

With respect to the cause of descent through the female line, it is believed there are sound and politic reasons for such a custom, in the nomadic state; but we have not time to examine them. The whole subject of the separation of the tribes into a fixed member of original clans; the connexion of these clans, preserved by the totems, and the selection of the female as the preserver of these totemic ties, is one of deep interest, and worthy of your inquiries. So far as the investigation has been carried, it appears, that the primary object of this organization was to preserve the NAMES of the original founders of the nation.--These founders are said to have been the children of two brothers, and were cousin-germans. But why preserve their names? What object was to result from it? Were the persons who bore the names of the wolf, and the turtle and the falcon and other species, famed as hunters or warriors? Had they delivered their people, from imminent peril, or performed any noble act? Had they conducted their people across the sea, from other countries? Did they expect to return, and was _this_ the object of preserving their names, in the line of their descendants? Or was the institution, as it does not appear to have been, mere caprice? Nothing could give more interest to your enquiries than a search into these obscure matters. They are, in fact, at the foundation of their system of government, and will enable you, with more clearness, to ascertain and fix its principles.

4. Of this government itself, we know very little, beyond the fact, that it had attained great celebrity among the other tribes. It was evidently founded on the overthrow of that of the ancient Alleghans. It appears to have been full of intricacies, yet simple. A republic, yet embracing aristocratic features. A mere government of opinion; yet fixed, effective, and powerful. It would be well to sift it, by the best lights yet within reach. These are verbal and traditionary. There is little to be had from books.

If we look at the political theory of this government it had traits both peculiar and prescient. Their councils were not constituted, primarily, by elective representation. Yet they secured the chief benefits of it. The chiefs, had a life office, and were incapable of transmitting it to their descendants. The organic council was a representation of tribes, not of members. This aristocratic feature, was balanced and its tendency to absorb authority prevented, by permitting the warriors to sit in these primary councils. In these councils, there was free discussion and full deliberation. But there was no formal vote taken, nor any measure carried by counting persons, or ascertaining a majority or plurality. Tradition declares against any such test. The popular sense appears to have been secured alone by the scope and tenor of the debates. I cannot learn that there ever was any formal expression, equivalent to the modern practice of taking of the sense of the council on a measure. Perhaps something of this kind is to be found in the approbatory response, from which the French are said to have made up the word IROQUOIS.

If the aristocratic feature of life-sachemship, was counteracted by the influence of the warriors in council, at the Council Fire of the Tribes; this feature was shorn still more of its objectionable tendencies in the General or Central Council of the Confederacy. Chiefs attended this national assemblage, as delegates or representatives, although not elected representatives, of their tribes. The number depended on circumstances; and varied with the occasion. They were sent, or went, to deliberate on a specific question, or questions, for which, the tribe was summoned, by the Executive Sachem of the Nation holding the high office of Attotarho,[C] or Convener of the Council. This central council, headed by this kind of a Presidency, was in fact, more purely democratic in its structure, than the home councils. It consisted essentially of a Congress of Chiefs, having a right as chiefs to attend, or delegated for the purpose, and aided also, by the warriors. It had the character of being a representative national body, delegated for a single session; and of a local body of life chiefs constituting the home sachemry, or a limited senate.

[C] The corresponding word in the Seneca dialect is Tod-o-dah-hoh.

Such I apprehend to have been the structure of the Iroquois government. It was strong, efficient and popular.--It had its fixity in the life tenure of the chiefs and the customs of proceeding. The voice of the warriors constituted a counterbalance, or species of second estate. But practically, whatever the theory, the chief and warriors, acted as one body. They came, generally, to advocate, or announce what had already been decided on, in the body of the tribe.

It is evident, in viewing this scheme of a native federative government, that its tendencies were always in favor of the power of the separate tribes. No people ever existed, who watched more narrowly the existence of power, and its innate tendency to centralize, and usurp. Suspicious to a fault, their eyes and ears were ever open to the least tone or gesture of alarm. They had only confided, to the Central Council, the power to make war or peace, and to regulate public policy. This Central Council, received embassies, not only from the numerous nations with whom they warred; but the delegates of the crowns of France and England, often stood in their presence.

The assent of each tribe is believed to have been requisite to an alliance, or rupture. When this had been given at the central council, it was explained before the local council, and the concurrence of the body of the tribe, was essential to make it binding and effective. In case of war, there was no fixed scale by which men were to be raised. It was deemed obligatory for each tribe to raise men according to its strength. But each was left free to its own action, being responsible for such action, to PUBLIC OPINION. All warriors were volunteers, and were raised for specific expeditions, and were bound no longer. To take up the war club, and join in the war dance, was to enlist. There was no other enlistment--no bounties--no pay--no standing force--no public provisions--no public arms--no clothing--no public hospital. The martial impulse of the people was sufficient. All was left to personal effort and provision. Self dependence was never carried to such height. The thirst for glory--the honor of the confederacy--the strife for personal distinction, filled their ranks; and led them, through desert paths, to the St. Lawrence, the Illinois, the Atlantic seaboard and the southern Alleghanies. Nor did they need the roll of the river to animate their courage, or regulate their steps. Theirs was a high energetic devotion, equal or superior to even that of ancient Sparta and Lacedaemon. They conquered wherever they went. They subdued nations in their immediate vicinity. They exterminated others. They adopted the fragments of subjugated tribes into their confederacy, sunk their national homes into oblivion, and thus repaired the irresistable losses of war. They had eloquence, as well as courage. Their speakers maintained a high rank along side of the best generals and negotiators of France, England and America. We owe this tribute to their valor and talents. One thousand such men, equipped for war as _they_ were, and led by _their_ spirit, would have effected more in battle, than the tens of thousands of effeminate Aztecks and Peruvians who shouted, but often did no more than _shout_, around the piratical bands of Cortez and Pizarro.

5. I have left myself but little time to speak of the origin and early history of this people--topics which are of deep interest in themselves, but which are involved in great obscurity. They are subjects which commend themselves to your attention, and offer a wide field for your future research. There are three periods in our Indian history:

1. THE ALLEGORIC AND FABULOUS AGE. This includes the creation, the deluge, the creation of Holiness and Evil, and some analogous points, in the general and shadowy traditions of men, which our hunter race, have almost universally concealed under the allegoric figures, of a creative bird or beast, or the exploits of some potent personage, endowed with supernatural courage or power. In this era, the earth was also covered with monsters and giants, who waged war, and drove men into caves and recesses; until the interposition of the original creative power, for their relief.

2. THE ANTE-HISTORICAL PERIOD, in which tradition begins to assume the character of truth, but is still obscured by fable. This period includes the early discoveries by the Northmen, the reputed voyage of Prince Madoc, &c.

3. THE PERIOD OF ACTUAL HISTORY, dating from the earliest voyage of Columbus and his companions.

I have alluded, in a preceding part of this address, to the mode of studying their early history. Where little or nothing is to be obtained from books, it requires a cautious investigation of these traditions and antiquities. Ethnology, in all its branches, has a direct and practical bearing on this subject. The physical type of man, the means of his subsistence, the state of his arts, the language he speaks, the hieroglyphics he carves, the mounds he builds--the fortifications he erects,--his religion, his superstitions, his legendary lore--the very geography of the country he inhabits, are so many direct and palpable means of acquiring historical evidence. It is from the investigation of these, that tribes and nations are grouped and classified, and the original stocks of mankind denoted, and the track of their dispersion over the globe traced. And they constitute so many topics of study and investigation.

In relating their traditions, our Red Men are prone, to connect, (as if these were portions of a continuous and consistent narrative) the most _recent_ and most _remote_ events, which dwell in their memory. And from their present residence and recent history, to run back, by a few sentences, into purely fabulous and allegoric periods. Fiction and fact, are mingled in the same strain. In listening to those relations, it is important to establish in the mind, historical periods, and to separate that which is grotesque or imaginative from the narration of real events. The latter, may be sometimes distorted by this juxtaposition, but it is, in general, easy to separate the two, and to re-adopt them, on their own principles. The early nations of Europe and Asia, pursued the same system. Their men were soon traced into gods, and their gods, soon ended in sensualists, or demons. Greek and Roman history, before the period of Herodotus, must have been little better than a jargon of such incongruities, and nearly all the earlier part of it, is no better now. To teach our children these nonsensical fables, is to vitiate their imagination, and the thing would never have been dreamt of, in a moral age, were not the ancient mythology, inseparably mixed up with the present state of ancient history, poetry and letters. We must teach it as a fable, and rely on truth to counteract its effects.

The Iroquois have their full share in the fabulous and allegoric periods, and an examination of their tales and traditions will be found, I apprehend, to give ample scope to poetry and imagination. In their fabulous age, as recorded by Cusick, they have their war, with flying Heads, the Stone Giants, the Great Serpent, the Gigantic Musquito, the Spirit of Witchcraft, and several other eras, which afford curious evidences of the way-farings and wanderings of the human intellect, unaided by letters, or the spirit of truth.

Actual history plants its standard close on the confines of these benighted regions of fable and allegory. It is not proposed to enter into much detail on this topic. The modern facts are pretty well known, but have never been thoroughly investigated or arranged. Of the earlier facts in their origin and history, we know very little. The first writers on the subject of the Indians generally, after the settlement of America, dealt in wild speculations, and were carried away with preconceived theories, which destroy their value. Colden, who directed his attention to the Iroquois, scarcely attempted any thing beyond a specific relation of transactions, which are intended for the information of the Board of Trade and Plantations, and these do not come down beyond the peace of Ryswick. There is a large amount of printed information, adequate for the completion of their history in the 18th and 19th centuries, but most of the works are of rare occurrence, and are only to be found in large libraries at home and abroad. Other facts exist in manuscript official documents, numbers of which, have recently been obtained by the State, from foreign offices, and are now deposited in the Secretary's office at Albany. The lost correspondence on Indian affairs, of Sir William Johnson, may yet come to light, and would necessarily be important. Private manuscripts and the traditions of aged Indians, still living, would further contribute to their history. They are a people worthy the separate pen of a historian, and it may be hoped that an elaborate and full work, may be produced.

Where the Iroquois originated? is a question, which involves the prior and general one, of the origin of the Red Race. So far as relates to their proximate origin, on this continent, I am inclined to think, that it was in the tropical latitudes extending west from the Gulf of Mexico.--Facts indicate the great tide of our migration, to have been from that general race. The zea maize which is a southern plant, came from that quarter, and was spread, as the tribes moved from the south to the north, the east, and northeast, and north west. Which of the ancient Indian stocks came first we know not. The Iroquois, if we follow one of their own authors, have strong claims to antiquity, but we cannot accept this in full. That they migrated up the valley of the Mississippi, and the Ohio to its extreme head (they call the Alleghany Oheo) is probable. Our actual knowledge on this subject, historically speaking, is very small, and we must grope our way through dark and shadowy traditions. These, however, sustain the general fact stated, which is helped out by other accessions. That they had crossed the great artery of the continent, (the Mississippi river) prior to the Algonquin race, but after the Alleghans, is shown by the traditions of the latter. [P.W.][D] With this race, tradition asserts, that they formed an alliance, at a remote era, and maintained a bloody war, for many years, against the ancient Alleghans, who are supposed, in these wars, to have erected the fortifications and mounds, of the Mississippi valley. That this ancient Alleghanic empire of the West, so to call it, fell before the combined courage and energy of the Iroquois and Algonquins, and that the defeated tribes either retired down the waters of the Mississippi, or were in part incorporated with themselves, or yet exist in the Far West, under other names, we have various traditions for asserting or believing.

[D] Indian Picture Writing.

Thus far we are speaking of the ante-historical period. When the colonies came to be planted, and our ancestors spread themselves along the Atlantic coast, from the initial points of settlement in Virginia, Nova Belgica, and New England, the Iroquois were already well seated, and spoke and acted, whenever they desired to make allusion to the matter, as if they had been _forever_ seated on the soil they then occupied. To conceal the fact of their title being held by right of conquest, or to supply the actual want of history, one tribe, the Oneidas, asserted that they had sprung from a rock. Another, the Wyandots, alleged that they came out of the ground by the fiat of the great spirit. [Oneota.] None of them acknowledged a _foreign origin_ beyond seas. None of them acknowledged, at first, that they knew aught of the ancient mound-builders and people who built the old fortifications in the West, or in their own country; but they subsequently connected, or accommodated these mounds, to their war with the Alleghans. This is in accordance with Indian policy, and suspicious foresight. When closely questioned, they told Gov. Clinton that these old works were by an _earlier_ people, and that their oldest traditions related to their wars with the Cherokees, and the people of the extreme south. That they originally dwelt in those latitudes--that they migrated north through the Ohio valley, around the Alleghanies, and came into Western New-York from the borders of the Lakes and the St. Lawrence, are points very well denoted by their languages, vestiges of arts, geographical nomenclature and history, so far as we have had the means of recording it.

Cartier, in 1535, found them seated at Hochelaga, the present site of Montreal. They had an ancient station, as low down the Connecticut at least, as Northfield. Towards the north of lakes Ontario and Erie, they extended to the chain of lakes which stretches through from the northern shores of the former to lake Huron. It is seen from Le Jeune, that they ordered the Wyandots of the ancient Hochelaga Canton, who had formed an alliance with the French and with the Algonquins, to quit that spot, and remove into the territory south of the lakes. And in default of this, they warred against them, and drove them west, through the great chain of lakes to Michilimackinac, and even to the western extremity of lake Superior.

The period of the settlement of Canada, ripened causes of hostility to the entire Algonquin, or as they called them, Adirondak race, into maturity. The Wyandot alliance with the French gave an edge to this contest, and having soon been supplied with guns and ammunition by the Dutch, they defeated this race in several sanguinary battles between Montreal and Quebec, and drove them out of this valley, by the way of the Ontario river, and pursued them to their villages and hunting grounds in area of lakes Huron, Michigan and Algoma. They defeated the Kah Kwahes or Eries. They pushed their war parties, from the lakes, through to the MIAMI, the WABASH, and the ILLINOIS, on the latter of which they were encountered by La Salle and his people, in his early expedition, in the seventeenth century. Their great avenue to the west, the avenue by which, in part at least, they appear to have migrated at an early day, was the Alleghany river, through which, they continued to exercise their ancient or acquired authority in the Ohio valley, and the Alleghanian range.

Back on this route, they continued their war expeditions against the tribes of the southern Alleghanies _at_ and, for some time, _after_ the era of the first settlement of the country. The point of their hostility, was directed against the Catawbas, the Cherokees, and their allies, the Abiecas, Hutchees and others. Smith encountered them on these wars, in the interior of Virginia, in 1608. And it is well known, that they brought off their brothers, the Tuscaroras, after the settlement of North Carolina, and gave them a location among themselves, and a seat at their council fire, in Western New-York.

Launching their war canoes on the Delaware and the Susquehanna, they extended their sway over the present area of New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, bringing under their sovereign power, that member of the great Algonic family of America, who call themselves Lenni Lenapees, but who are better known in our history as Delawares. Go which way the traveler will, even at this day, for a thousand miles west, southwest and northwest of their great council fire at Onondaga, and the inquirer will find that the name of a NADOWA, which is the Algonquin term for Iroquois, was a word of terror to the remotest tribes. Writers tell us it was the same throughout New England. By the peaceful and wise policy of the Dutch prior to 1664, and of the English subsequent to that date, this confederacy was kept in our interest; and he must be a careless reader of our history, who does not know, that they formed a perfect wall of defence against the encroachments of the French Crown upon our territories. It was to curb this power, and gain some permanent foot-hold on the soil, that La Salle built fort Niagara in 1678. Vaudruiel, the Governor General of New France, could give no stronger reason to his King, for taking post on the straits of Detroit, and fortifying that point, in 1701, than that it would enable him to "curb the Iroquois." [Oneota.]