Part 3

But, I do not stand before you to enter into a critical history of the Iroquois' powers. Who has not heard of their fame and prowess--of their indomitable courage in war,--of their admirable policy in peace: of their eloquence in council: of the noble fire of patriotic independence, which led them to defend the integrity of their soil against all invaders; and of the triumphs they achieved, throughout ABORIGINAL AMERICA, by the wisdom of their principles of confederation. The history of their rise and early progress, we shall probably never satisfactorily know. It is said by early writers, that the origin of their confederation was not very remote. But so much as we know of them--so much of their career as has passed while we have been their neighbors, proves that they had well established claims to antiquity--that they were a free, bold and valorous stock of the human race--that they had thought to plan, language to express, and energy to execute.--Compared to other races north of the tropics, there were two principles, apparent in their history, which give them the palm, as statesmen and warriors, although in some other departments of intellectual attainment, they were probably excelled by certain of the Algonquins. I allude to the principles of political union; and the wise and humane policy, which led them to adopt, into their body, the remnants of the nations whom they conquered. Here were two elements of political power, in which they were not only a century in advance of _all_ the other stocks of the north; but they were in advance of the most prominent examples of the semi-civilized Indian tribes of _this_ day.--Neither the Choctaws, the Cherokees, or other expatriated tribes now assembled on the Neosho territory, west of the Mississippi, although they adopted governments for themselves, have had the wisdom to adopt a general union.--The worst and most discouraging fact to the friends of the aboriginal race, in these Tribes, is, that they will not confederate. Discord, internal and external, has assailed them with great power, in late years, and threaten even to defeat the humane policy of the government, in their colonization.

So superior were the Iroquois, in this particular, so deeply imbued were their minds with the wisdom of union; that had the discovery of the continent, been postponed half a century longer, they would have presented a compact representative empire in North America, far more stable, energetic and sound, if not so brilliant as that of Mexico. They were a people of physically better nerve and mould. Of ample stature and great personal activity and courage, they were capable of offering a more efficient resistance to their invaders. The climate itself was more favorable to energetic action; and it can scarcely be deemed fanciful to assert, that had Hernando Cortez, in 1519, entered the Mohawk Valley, instead of that of Mexico, with the force he actually had, his ranks would have gone down under the skillfulness of the Iroquois' ambuscades, and himself perished ingloriously at the stake.

The number of warriors they could bring into the field, was large, although it has probably been over-rated. Let it not be overlooked, in estimating the ancient vigor and military power of this race, that in 1677, one year after the _final_ transfer of political power, in New-York, from the Stadtholder of Holland to the British crown, the Iroquois wielded more than 2000 hatches. [Clint's Dis. N. Y. Col. Vol. 2, p. 80.] Sixteen hundred of these warriors, are estimated to have ranged themselves on the side of Great Britain, in the memorable contest of the Revolution.

Misled in this contest, they certainly were--doubting long which of two branches of the same white race, they should side with, but overpowered by external pomp, by specious promises, and by false appearances, they committed a fatal mistake. They fought, in fact, against the very principles of republican confederation, which they had so long upheld in their own body, and which, I may add, had so long upheld them. They perilled all upon the issue; and the issue went against them. Their great and eloquent leader Thayendanegea, better known as Joseph Brant, had been educated in British schools, he could speak two tongues, and his counsels prevailed. He was not in the old line of the chieftainship, but had placed himself at the head of the confederacy by his brilliant talents, and by favorable circumstances. That line fell with the great Mohawk sachem Hendrick, at the battle of lake George, in 1755, and with the wise civilian Little Abraham, who in right of his mother, succeeded him, and died at his Castle at Dionderoga. Brant was, however, a man of great energy of character, of shrewd principles of policy, and of great personal, as well as moral courage. As a war captain and a civil leader, the Red Race of America has produced no superior. He led 1580 tomahawks against the armies of the Revolution--at his war cry 15,000 arrows were launched from their fatal bows. The voice of Kirkland--the voice of Schuyler--the voice of Washington were exerted in vain. Had he hearkened to these friendly voices, the Iroquois confederacy would now have stood in the plenitude of power, and we should not have assembled to-day to light the fires of this Young Institution from its dying embers.

These things are past. The contest of the revolution was one, which our fathers waged. Many of you may have heard the graphic recitals of those days of peril, as I have, from the lips of actors, who now rest from their toils.--They were days of high and sanguinary import. The deeds of daring which they brought forth, came like a mighty tempest over the face of this fair land. It prostrated many a noble trunk. It swept for seven long years, over the beauteous lakes and forests, which now constitute our homes. It left them almost denuded and desolate. But the mild airs and gentle summer winds of peace succeeded. The hoarse voice of the Iroquois, O-WAY-NE-O, has been transformed into the soft and silver tones of GOD. Flowers and fruits, and fields of waving grain, soon rose up in every valley, and shed their fragrance along every sylvan shore. Joy and prosperity succeeded the arrowy storm of war. And it has been given to us, to carry out scenes of improvement, and of moral and intellectual progress, which providence, in its profound workings, has deemed it best for the prosperity of man, that _we_, and not _they_, should be entrusted with. We have succeeded to their inheritance: but we regard them as brothers. We cherish their memory: we admire their virtues; and we aim to rescue from oblivion their noble deeds.

I have merely alluded to the importance of the Iroquois decision at the critical period, 1776. The erroneous policy they adopted, with some exceptions, is among the events of past times, which wiser and more learned and resplendent nations, than they professed to be, have committed. We regret the error of the decision, but we hold fellowship with the man. He is our brother; and we meet this day to consecrate a literary institution in the land, more enduring, we trust, than deeds of strife and battle, and better suited to elicit studies to exalt the heart and dignify the understanding. Your weapons are not spears and clubs, but letters. Your means are the quiet and peaceful paths of inquiry. If these paths are often obscured by the foot of time and tangled by the interlacings of history and antiquity, be it yours to put the branches aside, and lead the right way. Truth is your aim, and justice and benevolence your guides. They hold before you the lamp of science so clearly, that you cannot mistake your way. While you essay, with modesty and diligence to tread in this path, and render justice to a proud and noble branch of the aboriginal race, your ultimate ends are moral improvement, the accumulation of useful facts, and the general advancement of historical letters.

You have selected, out of a wide field of aboriginal nations, the history and ethnography of the Iroquois, as the theme of your particular inquiries. To us, at least, these Tribes, stand in the most interesting relations. They occupied our soil; they gave names to our rivers and mountains. They figure in the foreground of our history. The very names of the minor streams and lakes we dwell beside, bring up, by association, the free and bold race, who once claimed them as their patrimony. Before Columbus set out, on his solitary mule, to solicit the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella, they were here. Before Hudson dropped anchor north of the, to him, wonderful peaks of the Ontiora, or Highlands, they were here. Other Indian races have left their names on other portions of the continent. The names of the Missouri and Mississippi, the Alleghany and the Oregon, we trace to other stocks of red men. But the Akonoshioni, or Iroquois, has consecrated the early history of Western New-York. Their history is, to some extent, our history; and we turn, with intellectual refreshment from the thread-bare themes of Europe and the Europeans, to trace the humble sepulchres where the Iroquois buried his dead--the mounds, which entombed his rulers or his battle slain,--or lifted on high, his sacrificial lights--the long and half obliterated trenches of embankments which encompassed his ancient towns--the heaps of stone that lie at the angles and sally ports of his simple fortresses, on the circular trenches, which enclosed his beacon fires on the mountain tops. It is in localities of this kind, that the ploughman turns up fragments of the Red Man's time wasted and broken pottery--his stone pestles, his carved pipes, and his skilfully chipped arrow heads, and spear heads, and tomahawks of stone. These, and analogous remains, are the objects of our antiquarian researches. Prouder monuments he had none. There was neither column, nor arch, statue nor inscription. But we may trace, by a careful inspection of the objects, the state and progress of his ancient and rude arts. We may denote, by their occurrence, in the same localities, the era of the arrival of the white man. We may establish other eras, from geological changes,--the growth of forest trees, and other inductive means.

There are three eras in American antiquity.

1. Vestiges of their primary migration and origin.

2. Vestiges of their international changes and intestine wars, prior to the discovery of the continent by Columbus.

3. Evidences of wars, migrations and remains of occupancy, subsequent to the arrival of Europeans.

These are to be studied in the inverse order of their being stated. We must proceed from the known to the unknown--from the recent, to the remote.

Ethnography offers a species of proof, to determine the migrations and divisions in the original family of man, which is to be drawn from geographical considerations--the relative position of islands, seas and continents--the means of subsistence as governed and limited by climate, and soil; the state of ancient arts, agriculture, languages, &c.

Philology denotes the affinities of nations, by the analogies of words, and forms of syntax, and the place of expressing ideas.

The remains of arts, monuments, inscriptions, hieroglyphics, picture writing, and architecture, constitute so many means of comparing one nation with another, and thus determining their affinities; and although most of our aboriginal nations had made but little progress in these departments, the state of ruins in Mexico, Central Mexico and Yucatan; the mounds and fortifications of the West; and even the remains of forts and barrows in Western New-York, entitle them to consideration.

There is another department of observation on our aborigines, which, from the light it has shed on the mental characteristics of the Algic, and some other stocks, offers a new field for investigation. I allude to the subject of the imaginative legends and tales of the Red Race. Such tales have been found abundantly in the lodge circles of the tribes about the Upper Lakes and the source of the Mississippi. They reveal the sources of many of their peculiar opinions on life, death, and immortality, and open, if I may so say, a vista to the philosophy of the Indian mind, and the theory of his religion.

An ample field for investigation is thus before you. And it is one full of attractions alike for the man of science, research, learned leisure and philosophy. But it is not alone to these, that the Red man and his associations, present a field for study and contemplation. His history and existence on this continent, is blended with the richest sources of poetry and imagination. His beautiful and sonorous geographical nomenclature alone, has clothed our hills and lakes and streams, with the charms of poetic numbers.--The Red man himself, who once roved these attractive scenes, with his bow and arrows, and his brow crowned with the highest honors of the war path and the chase, was a being of NOBLE MOULD. He felt the true sentiment of independence. He was capable of high deeds of courage, disinterestedness and virtue. His generosity and hospitality were unbounded. His constancy in professed friendship was universal, and his memory of a good deed, done to him, or his kindred, never faded. His breast was animated with a noble thirst of fame. To acquire this, he trod the war path, he submitted to long and severe privations. Neither fatigue, hunger or thirst were permitted to gain the mastery over him. A stoic in endurance he was above complaint, and when a prisoner at the stake, he triumphed over his enemy in his death song. The history of such a people must be full of deep tragic and poetic incidents; and their antiquities, cannot fail to illustrate it.--The tomb that holds a man, derives all its moral interest _from_ the man, and would be destitute of it, without him. America is the tomb of the Red man.

A single objection, to the plan of the institution, remains to be answered. It may be deemed too intricate and complex to secure unity in action. The inquiries are admitted to be interesting and capable of furnishing intellectual aliment for a literary society; but why not establish it on plain principles, in the ordinary mode? All that is sought, it may be said, could be accomplished without such a weight of associated machinery. By organizing it on the basis of the several tribes, and the several clans of each tribe; spreading over so wide an area of territory, and adopting so many of the aboriginal peculiarities, in terms, form of admission, and you have exposed the institution to serious objections, and to the danger of an early decline. But, are not these traits, rather the guarantees of its success and perpetuity? It addresses itself, particularly to the YOUNG. To them, it brings the attractions of novelty. Much of the ardor of association and desire of action, peculiar to this age, may find its gratification in these co-fraternal, and ceremonial observances; and be supposed to act as stimulants to the higher, and ulterior objects of the association. These objects are, both in their nature, and associations, of an inspiring cast. They bring before you, a new world, with its ancient inhabitants, as themes of contemplation. And these themes spring up, with a freshness and vigor, well suited to attract the pen and pencil.--Tired with poring over the dusty volumes, which detail the ruins of the temples and cities of the eastern hemisphere, the spirit of research asks, whether, in the very magnificence of the continent, there be not now a temple, whose history is worth study? Cloyed with the accounts handed down of the renowned places and renowned men of antiquity, it is inquired, whether these broad forests and far-spread vistas of woods and waters, do not conceal something of the foot-prints of past time, which is worth labor and learning to investigate, and reveal?

Nature is found here, in some of her sublimest moods. She is still in her questive youth, but it is a youth of gigantic proportions. Her largest rivers occupy thousands of miles in displaying their winding channels, between these sources and their outlets, in the sea. Her broad forests still wave with their leafy honors unshorn. Her lakes occupy a length and breadth and depth, which give them far more the aspect of seas. Ships, bear a heavy commerce on their bosoms, and navies have battled for supremacy upon their ample breasts. It is a region destined for the human race to develope itself and expand in. It is a seat prepared for the re-union of the different stocks of mankind. It is an area of magnificent extent. Higher mountains fill other parts of the world, and other parts of _this_ continent. The Alps, the Atlas, the Andes and the Cordilleras reach into the skies, but they encumber the earth with their vast proportions, and render the surface sterile. They take away from the area of tillable soil, and add it to waste and unprofitable districts. If our greatest elevations, are humble compared to these, they are clothed with verdure, and break into countless valleys, which afford a habitation to man. No country on the globe abounds with so many beautiful lakes of every size, and our rivers display a succession of cataracts and falls, alike attractive to the eye of taste and art.

Is all this profusion designed to employ the pens of naturalists and statesmen only? Is there no field in the mighty past, for the philosopher and the historian? for the ethnologist and the antiquarian? Is civilized man alone the only object, wanting in the consideration of its former history? We answer, no. Centuries on centuries have passed away, since first the Red man planted his foot on this continent. The very paucity of his knowledge and simplicity of his arts, tell a story of great antiquity. The diversities of language answer to the same end. And, for aught that is known, long before the eras of Socrates and Pythagoras, Plato and Confucius, the Mongol and the Persian. The Tartar and the Mesopotamean, the Chinese and Japanese, and we know not how many other shades of the Red man of Asia, were in AWONEO[E] or America. Of their wonderful histories and wars and overturnings, by land and sea, of their mixtures and intermixtures of blood and language and lineage and nationality, we know little, or nothing. But, after all the centuries of separation, we find in his physiological characteristics and conformation of visage and expression, the same Asiatic type of man--whom the first adventurers to these shores, did not hesitate to pronounce the man of India. Use, has perpetuated the term, and if the discoveries of geography, have, ages since, shown the appellation of Indians, in the sense then employed, to be incorrect, physiologists and ethnographers, have but found stronger and stronger proofs, that Asia, in preference to every other quarter of the globe, was the true land of his origin.

[E] Onondaga.

* * * * *

PREFACE.

In Indian mythology may be found the richest poetic materials. An American Author is unworthy of the land that gave him birth if he passes by with indifference this well-spring of inspiration, sending liberally forth a thousand enchanted streams. It has given spiritual inhabitants to our valleys, rivers, hills and inland seas; it has peopled the dim and awful depths of our forests with spectres, and, by the power of association, given our scenery a charm that will make it attractive forever. The material eye is gratified by a passing glimpse of nature's external features, but a beauty, unseen, unknown before, invests them if linked to stories of the past, in the creation of which fabling fancy has been a diligent co-worker with memory.

The red man was a being who delighted in the mystical and the wild--it was a part of his woodland inheritance. Good and evil genii performed for him their allotted tasks. Joyous tidings, freedom from disease and disaster--success in the chase, and on the war path were traceable to the Master of Life and his subordinate ministers:--blight that fell upon the corn was attributed, on the contrary, to demoniac agency, and the shaft that missed its mark was turned aside by the invisible hand of some mischievous sprite. Deities presided over the elements. The Chippewas have their little wild men of the woods, that remind us of Puck and his frolicsome brotherhood, and the dark son of the wilderness, like our first parents

--"from the steep Of echoing hill or thicket often heard Celestial voices."

My tent is pitched on the hunting grounds of the Senecas, (or So-non-ton-ons) and I deem it not inappropriate to select for my theme the Legend of their origin.

Different versions of the story are in circulation, but I have been guided mainly, in the narrative part of my poem, by notes taken down after an interview with the late Captain Horatio Jones, the Indian Interpreter of the Six Nations.

The great hill at the head of Canandaigua Lake, from whence the Senecas sprung, is called Genundewah. Tradition says that it was crowned by a fort to which the braves of the tribe resorted at night-fall, after waging war with a race of giants. These giants were worshippers of Ut-co, or the Evil Spirit, who sent, after their extermination, a great serpent to destroy the conquerors. Quitting its watery lair in Canandaigua Lake, the monster encircled their fortification. The head and tail completed a horrid _ring_ at the gateway, and, when half famished, the wretched inmates vainly attempted to escape. All were destroyed with the exception of a pair, whose miraculous preservation is related in the poem that follows. Ever after Genundewah was a chosen seat of Iroquois Council, and wrinkled seers were in the habit of climbing its sides for the purpose of offering up prayers to the Great Spirit.

GENUNDEWAH,

[A LEGEND OF CANANDAIGUA LAKE.]

BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER.

WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE "NEW CONFEDERATION OF THE IROQUOIS," AND PRONOUNCED BEFORE THEM IN GENERAL COUNCIL, AT AURORA, AUGUST 15th, 1845.

I.

Why, Chieftain, linger on this barren hill That overbrows yon azure sheet below? Red sunset glimmers on the leaping rill, Dark night is near, and we have far to go. This scene--replied he leaning on big bow-- Is hallowed by tradition--wondrous birth Here to my Tribe was given long ago; We stand where rose they from disparting earth To light a deathless blaze on Fame's unmouldering hearth.

II.

A fort they reared upon this summit bleak Guided by counsel from the Spirit Land, And clad in dart-proof panoply would seek The plains beneath each morn, a valiant band, And warfare wage with giants hand to hand: They conquered in the struggle, and the bones Of their dead foemen on the echoing strand Of the clear lake lay blent with wave-washed stones, And pale, unbodied ghosts filled air with hollow moans.

III.

Ut-co, the scowling King of Evil, heard The voice of lamentation, and wild ire The depths of his remorseless bosom stirr'd; Of that gigantic brood he was the sire, And flying from his cavern, arched with fire, He hovered o'er these, waters--at his call Up rushed a hideous monster, spire on spire;-- _Call_ so astounding that the rocky wall Of this blue chain of hills seemed tott'ring to its fall!

IV.

With his infernal parent for a guide, The hungry serpent left his watery lair, Dragging his scaly terrors up the side Of this tall hill, now desolate and bare: Filled with alarm the Senecas espied His dread approach, and launched a whizzing shower Of arrows on the foe, whose iron hide Repelled their flinty points--and in that hour The boldest warrior fled from strife with fiendish power.

V.