Part 8

Thy children thank thee for the life thou hast given the dead seeds. Give us a good season that our crops may be plentiful. Continue to listen for the smoke still rises. Preserve our old men among us and protect the young. Help us to celebrate this festival as did our fathers.

The "Green Corn Festival" was held when the season had so far advanced that the corn was ready to be used as roasting ears. The old women decided when this time had come, and none might partake of the corn until the festival had proceeded to the proper stage. This was a time of returning to the Great Spirit their thanks for his goodness, and the festivities lasted several days. They were wild and uncouth, of course, but the participants had faith that these ceremonies were pleasing to the Great Spirit. The revelry was conducted in a prescribed form that probably did not change for centuries. In the midst of one of the dances peculiar to the "Green Corn Festival" the oldest sachem of the tribe gave utterance to a prayer of thanksgiving, which has been translated as follows:

Great Spirit in the Happy Hunting-Grounds, listen to our words. We have assembled to perform a sacred duty as thou hast commanded and which has been performed by our fathers since thou taught them to observe this festival. We salute thee with our thanks that thou hast caused our supporters to yield abundant harvest.

Great Spirit, our words continue to flow towards thee. Preserve us from all danger. Preserve our aged men. Preserve our mothers. Preserve our warriors. Preserve our children. Preserve our old men that they may remember all that thou hast told them. Preserve our young men and give them strength to celebrate with pleasure thy sacred festival.

Great Spirit, the council of thy people here assembled, the men and women with many winters on their heads, the strong warriors, the women and children, unite their voices in thanksgiving to thee.

The "Harvest Festival" was held a few weeks afterwards and was similar in character, though not considered of so much importance as the "Green Corn Festival."

Some time during the winter was held the "White Dog Dance." This, however, was not of so ancient an origin as the other festivals and was probably a superstition promulgated by some of the great "medicine men" within the last two hundred and fifty years. Evil spirits that might have been driven into the houses of the Indians by the cold, were induced by various ceremonies to enter the body of a white dog or gray fox that was led from house to house for that purpose. Then, with due ceremony, the animal was killed and the bad spirits cremated with the body--the jaws having been tied together so that the spirits could not escape through its mouth, into which they had entered.

The Indians had numerous other ceremonial dances and any number of social dances--more than any other race of people, for they had few other amusements--but those enumerated above were the only strictly religious festivals. These were in every sense reverential, devotional and inspired by faith. The red men believed that if they observed them according to ancient customs and usages it would please the Great Spirit and that he would eventually take them all to the Happy Hunting-Grounds. While they clearly believed in an immortal life and in the resurrection of the body, they had no belief whatever in the infliction of future punishment, other than that experienced by the hunter whose arrows could not procure the game he coveted and trailed in the land where game abounded forever.

Had these people, possessing (as they most certainly did) a religion combining so many of the elements of the Christian religion, been discovered by any one of the enlightened nations of the present day instead of by the intolerant and greedy bigots of four hundred years ago, their history would not have been written with so many sad scenes for illustrations.

About the year 1800 a new religion was revealed to the members of the Iroquois then residing in New York State, and as it is what is now known as the Pagan belief, it may be well to describe it briefly. At that time there was living on Cornplanter Island, in the State of Pennsylvania, a half-brother of Cornplanter and Blacksnake by a common father--Abeel, the white trader. His name was Handsome Lake (Ga-ne-o-di-yo), and he was born near the site of the village of Avon, N. Y., in 1735, and died in 1815 at Onondaga when on a pastoral visit to that nation. His life had been spent mainly in dissipation, and in his old age he fell ill and was not expected to live from day to day. One night he sent his daughter to summon his renowned brothers to his bedside, as he was convinced that his end was drawing near. His brothers reached the house shortly after daylight and found Handsome Lake at some distance from the hut, apparently dead. They carried him in and had commenced to make preparations for the funeral, when suddenly he revived, sat upright and commenced to talk very strangely. He recovered rapidly and at his urgent request a council of his people was summoned to meet at Cornplanter, and to this assembly he revealed all that had befallen him.

His revelations soon became the religion of the Iroquois and may be considered their creed at the present time. Handsome Lake journeyed from tribe to tribe and taught the new faith till his death, fifteen years after. He was regarded as a second Hiawatha and had wonderful influence. After his death other teachers took his place and continued to expound the new faith as nearly as possible in the exact words of him to whom it was believed to have been first revealed. Unlike modern theologians, they made no attempt to put their views and ideas ahead of the original revelation, for they commenced each new section of the long and tedious recital with the words, "Thus said Handsome Lake," and they followed him as closely as possible, both in words and gestures. They did not add to or take away--they simply repeated. The last great follower of Handsome Lake was his grandson (Sase-ha-wa), known to the whites as Jimmy Johnson, who died about 1830. About the middle of August, 1894, a grand council of the chiefs was held at Onondaga, and on that occasion these traditions were revived, several days being spent in the work.

Stripped of long explanations as to how the message was told and the details of the various provisions and requirements, the creed of Handsome Lake was as follows:

As he lay in his cabin looking out of the window at the stars, momentarily expecting death, three beautiful men came to his couch and gave him some berries to eat, which threw him into a deep sleep. When he awoke he was told by one of the men that he might live if he would throughout the remainder of his life be a teacher of his people and speak to them the words that the Great Spirit put into his mouth. He promised to do this and immediately became strong. Then the men conducted him to the outer air, where he was found by his brothers, and, after showing him many wonderful things concerning the Happy Hunting-Grounds, again threw him into a sleep and disappeared. When he taught he closed his eyes and spoke only the words put into his mouth by the Great Spirit; therefore, whatever he told them was inspired. The doctrines expounded by him did not displace any of the old ceremonies so dear to the heart of the Iroquois. In fact, he urged the observance of all the religious dances, saying they were pleasing to the Creator. His first efforts were directed toward the eradication of intemperance, and here entered the first threat of future punishment in the creed of the Iroquois. A drunkard was promised boiling hot liquor, which he must drink in great quantities. When he had drunk until he could hold no more, streams of fire would issue from his mouth and he would be commanded to sing as he had done on earth after drinking the fire-water. Husbands and wives who had been quarrelsome on earth were to be compelled to rage at each other till their eyes and tongues ran out so far they could neither see nor speak. A wife-beater would be repeatedly led before a red-hot statue which he would be told to strike as he struck his wife upon earth, and when the blow fell, molten sparks would fly from the image and burn his arm to the bone. Lazy people were compelled to till cornfields in a burning sun, and as fast as the weeds were struck down they would again spring up with renewed luxuriance. Those who sold the lands of their people to the whites were assigned to the task of removing a never-diminishing pile of sand, one grain at a time, over a vast distance.

These are but samples of the terrible punishments to be dealt out to evil-doers of all kinds.

At the same time he taught that rewards would be freely bestowed to those who kept the laws laid down by the Great Spirit, and into these laws as revealed by Handsome Lake, with many fanciful and poetical imaginings that pleased the simple people to whom he taught, he wove the Ten Commandments. He taught morality, temperance, patience, forbearance, charity, forgiveness, and all the cardinal virtues.

Handsome Lake implicitly believed that the vision he described was a direct visitation from the Creator, and he also believed that in his teachings he was simply giving voice to the wishes of that Creator. There is little doubt that he exerted a decided influence for good, as did also his followers for many years after his death; but when sects and denominations commenced to tumble over each other in their zeal to "Christianize the Iroquois," and hair-splitting questions of theology were put forward to confuse and confound the teachings of the prophet of their own blood, the Indians began to doubt all that had been told them in the past and their ears were stopped to all that might be preached to them in the future. It may be truthfully stated that few Indians have at present any well-grounded religious belief, yet if they were not fearful that it would cause them to be subjected to further legal restrictions they would be well pleased to return once more to the free enjoyment of the teachings of Handsome Lake, their greatest prophet.

_Sacred Stone of the Oneidas_

_The Sacred Stone of the Oneida Indians_

THE SACRED STONE OF THE ONEIDAS

IN Forest Hill Cemetery, at Utica, New York, a short distance from the entrance, may be seen what is probably the most interesting historical relic of the Iroquois--the Sacred Stone of the Oneida Indians. The legend connected with this monument is as strange and poetic as any of those given in the preceding pages, and quite naturally should have a place in this volume. The story was obtained from the Indians by the late William Tracy before their removal to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and as told by him and by contemporary writers is as follows:

Two brothers and their families left the Onondagas and erected their wigwams on the north shore of the Oneida River, at the outlet of the lake bearing that name. They kept the celebrations commanded by the Great Spirit and he was pleased with their obedience. One morning there appeared at their resting place an oblong stone, unlike any of the rocks in the vicinity, and the Indians were told that from it their name should be taken, and that it would for all time be the altar around which their councils and their festive and religious ceremonies should take place, as it would follow them wherever they should go. So they took the name of "The People of the Upright Stone," and kept their home beside this altar many years. But finally they became so numerous that there was not room for them here, and they builded their chief village upon the south side of the lake, where a creek bearing the same name discharges its waters. True to the promise, and unassisted by human hands, the sacred stone followed and located once more in the midst of them.

Here the Oneidas flourished till the confederation of the Iroquois was formed, and they became second in the order of precedence in the confederacy. After many years it was determined by the chief men of the nation to remove their council-fire to the summit of one of a chain of hills about twenty miles distant--a commanding point before which is spread a broad view of the fertile Stockbridge valley. And when the council of the nation had selected this new home for its people, the sacred stone once more followed in the train of its children. It rested in a grove of butternut trees, from beneath whose branches the eye could look out upon a landscape not equaled elsewhere in their national domain. Here it remained to see the Iroquois increase in power and importance until the name struck terror to their foes from the Hudson to the Father of Waters. Around this unhewn altar, within its leafy temple was gathered all the wisdom of the nation when measures affecting its welfare were to be considered. Their eloquence, as effective and beautiful as ever fell from Greek or Roman lips, was poured forth upon the ears of the sons and daughters of the forest. Logan, the white man's friend, was there trained to utter words that burned, and there Sconondoa, the last orator of his race, the warrior chief and lowly Christian convert, with matchless power swayed the hearts of his countrymen; there the sacred rites were celebrated at the return of each harvest moon and each new year, when every son and daughter of the stone came up like the Jewish tribes of old to join in the national festivities.

This was the resting place of the stone when the first news came that the paleface had come from beyond the bitter waters. It remained to see him penetrate the forest and come among its children a stranger; to see him welcomed by the red men to a home, and then to see its red children shrink and wither away until the white man's sons plowed the fields beneath whose forest coverings slept many generations.

At length the council-fire of the Oneidas was extinguished; its people were scattered, and there was no new resting place for them to which this palladium might betake itself and again become their altar. It was a stranger in the ancient home of its children, an exile upon its own soil.

* * * * *

It was known to several of the trustees of the Forest Hill Cemetery Association that when the Oneidas removed to Green Bay and broke up their tribal relations they were very loath to leave their altar unprotected, and when the association was formed in the spring of 1849, correspondence was had with some of the head men of the nation, and consultations were held with the few remaining in the vicinity of their old home. They were most desirous that the stone should be protected, and were happy in the prospect of its removal to some place where it would remain secure from the contingencies and dangers to which it might be exposed in a private holding, liable to constant change of owners. With the consent of the owner of the farm upon which it was located, the huge boulder was carefully loaded upon a wagon drawn by four horses, and in the autumn of 1849, accompanied by a delegation of Oneida Indians and two of the trustees of the cemetery association, it was conveyed with considerable difficulty to its present site. It is said by some who remember the occasion, that before the Indians departed from the cemetery, they assembled around the stone and betrayed in their leave-taking pitiful manifestations of grief, several of them kneeling beside the boulder and kissing it.

Here this mass of white granite, which is unlike any of the stones or rocks to be found south of the northern dip of the Adirondacks, or the granite hills of Vermont and New Hampshire, remained on a grassy mound a half century. Its weight is estimated to be about four thousand pounds. In the spring of 1902 the cemetery authorities caused it to be placed upon a base of Westerly marble, upon one side of which is fixed a bronze tablet bearing this inscription:

SACRED STONE OF THE ONEIDA INDIANS

THIS STONE WAS THE NATIONAL ALTAR OF THE ONEIDA INDIANS, AROUND WHICH THEY GATHERED FROM YEAR TO YEAR TO CELEBRATE SOLEMN RELIGIOUS RITES AND TO WORSHIP THE GREAT SPIRIT. THEY WERE KNOWN AS THE TRIBE OF THE UPRIGHT STONE. THIS VALUABLE HISTORICAL RELIC WAS BROUGHT HERE FROM STOCKBRIDGE, MADISON COUNTY, N. Y., IN 1849.

Many times during the first twenty-five or thirty years after the sacred stone was deposited upon Forest Hill it was visited by members of its tribe; and even now at occasional intervals the cemetery employees see the figure of an Indian passing along the graveled paths to pause beside this sole remaining monument of a broken race.

It is pleasing to know that this granite boulder will here forever remain, a memorial to a people celebrated for their savage virtues, and who were once by no means obscure actors in some of the stirring passages of our country's history; a people who were happy in their homes and who loved these fertile hills and valleys as we love them, but of whose ownership and sovereignty, whose teeming life and undisputed sway, there remains only this mute, unembellished monument.

Truthfully it may be said: "He-o-weh-go-gek"--once a home, now a memory.

_Notes to the Legends_

NOTES TO THE LEGENDS

THE CONFEDERATION OF THE IROQUOIS, Page 23.--When the Europeans discovered North America they found that portion of the continent lying east of a line about as far west as the city of Cleveland, Ohio, and from the great lakes on the north to the Chesapeake Bay on the south, practically under the control of a confederacy of tribes, to which the French in after years applied the term Iroquois, and which the English called the Five Nations. This confederacy was composed of the Senecas, Mohawks, Onondagas, Oneidas and Cayugas. In the year 1712 the Tuscaroras, a tribe previously located in North Carolina, were defeated in a war with their white neighbors, and about one thousand eight hundred of them fled to what is now New York State, then the actual dwelling-place of most of the Iroquois, and were adopted into the confederacy. The new tribe did not possess the energy and courage of their associates, and for several years after their coming the men wore the tobacco pouches of the women, thus acknowledging upon all occasions that they were inferior to the other five nations comprising the union which had become their protectors. After the coming of the Tuscaroras the confederacy was known as the Six Nations of Indians--a designation which is often used at the present time in law in matters pertaining to the Indians of New York State.

The date of the formation of this confederacy has never been settled with any degree of certainty, and all attempts have ended in mere conjecture and speculation. The most authentic tradition heretofore published places the date about the year 1589, but there is no positive proof that this date is accurate. The legend of its formation here published is not only based upon what was considered reliable authority by Cornplanter, but has also the sanction of that other noted Seneca chief, Governor Blacksnake (the Nephew), who was contemporaneous with Cornplanter, and who was probably born about the year 1736 and died in 1859, at the supposed age of one hundred and twenty-three years. These chiefs both claimed to have seen a string of wampum in their early years that placed the formation of the confederacy at a time when there occurred a total eclipse of the sun--"a darkening of the Great Spirit's smiling face"--that took place when the corn was receiving its last tillage, long before events that could be reliably ascribed to the year 1540.

At this point it will be well to say that the Indians possessed strings of wampum which actually recorded historical events. They were made upon the skins of some animal and were formed of small pieces of bone, variously shaped and colored, small stones, and a variety of small shells, quills and sometimes the teeth or claws of animals. These were strung upon the tanned skin by piercing holes through them and tying them securely with sinews. Certain ones in the tribe were selected as keepers of the wampum and it was their duty to store all necessary facts in their memory and associate with them the successive lines and arrangement of the stones, shells, quills, etc., so that they could be readily called to mind. At general councils these records were brought before the people and solemnly expounded. As these people possessed remarkable memories, the meaning of the wampum string was accurately carried down from generation to generation.

The place of holding the council that formed the confederacy has also been the subject of some dispute, but it is pretty certain that it was near the northern end of either Seneca or Cayuga Lake, and that it took place in that year previous to 1540 in which occurred an eclipse of the sun in the month when the corn receives its last tilling.

Professor Lewis Swift, of the Warner Observatory, Rochester, kindly furnished the following table of dates:

Annular Eclipse October 11, 1520

Annular Eclipse May 8, 1491

Total Eclipse July 29, 1478

Total Eclipse June 28, 1451

Annular Eclipse April 26, 1427

The first given, October, 1520, is out of the question, as the corn would have been harvested at that time of year.

The second, May, 1491, would have been too early in the season to comply with the conditions of the wampum record, for the corn would hardly have made its appearance above the ground as early as the 8th of May.

The third, the last of July, 1478, will not answer the account given, for the ears of the maize would have been forming at that time and the plant would have passed its period of tillage.

The fourth date, June 28, 1451, must, therefore, have been the one upon which the confederation took place, as at that time of the year the corn in Central New York Is about ready for its final tilling.

Upon the authority of these two chiefs it is not difficult to believe that this date is historically correct and that the incident related in the legend was the occasion upon which this wonderful union of republics was formed. Considered as a government formed by a savage people, the confederation of the Iroquois certainly was a wonderful union. Had it not been broken and destroyed by the whites after a series of wars extending over two centuries and culminating in the great village-burning expedition of Sullivan in 1779, this confederacy would have made rapid progress in civilization.

Among the Five Nations alone can be found the Indian of the novelist and poet. The Iroquois stand out and above all other aboriginal inhabitants in their intelligence, their oratory, their friendship and their character. Had they been treated with fairness; had they not been made the subjects of the most cruel wrongs and deceptions; had they not been driven to retaliation and finally to relentless slaughter, the pages of our histories would doubtless have recorded of this people achievements of which any nation might be proud.