ANTIQUITIES—HISTORY—ETHNOLOGY.
New-York, January 7th, 1846.
Sir:—I have now the honor to submit a supplementary report, embracing minutes and remarks on the aboriginal history, antiquities and general ethnology of Western New-York, made in accordance with an expression permitting the collection of such materials in your general instructions of the 26th of June last.
To these details I have prefixed some general considerations on the early period of the Iroquois history, the affinities of the several tribes, and the era and principles of their confederation; the antiquarian remains and general archæology of the western countries; the ancient state of Indian art; some traits of their traditions and religion; and a few connected topics which, it is hoped, will tend to render the report more acceptable and valuable.
I regret, indeed, that time has not permitted me to enter more fully on some of the topics introduced, and that of others, I have been obliged to cut them short or omit them altogether, including the subject of their languages, geographical terminology, and personal names, the latter of which is a very curious inquiry of itself. I confess it would have fallen in with my inclinations, as well as my conceptions of the true nature and extent of the inquiries confided to me, to have extended them to other parts of the State, and given a more complete view of our ethnology, had it been practicable to do so before the meeting of the Legislature.
I cannot, however, close this note without expressing the hope that the Legislature will authorize you to take further measures for completing the work. There are a large number of the class of antique, circular and elliptical works scattered over the western and southwestern part of the State, of an age anterior to the discovery, which it would be important to examine and describe. These chiefly lie west of Cayuga, and upon the sources of the Susquehanna. Interspersed amid this system of common ring-forts of the west there are some of a still earlier period, which exhibit squares and parallelograms, yet without any defensive work in the nature of bastions.
The area of early French occupancy, or attempt at colonization, within the State, extends east and west between the waters of the Cayuga and Oneida lakes, as general boundaries, having the county of Onondaga as its chief and central point. This area will comprehend the most striking part of the numerous remains of implements of art, and other antiquities of European origin, which have heretofore excited attention. How far these evidences extend north is not known. But any examination of either the aboriginal or foreign remains would be incomplete which did not extend also along the line of the St. Lawrence and the waters of Lake Champlain.
The valley of the Hudson, and the southern part of the State generally, although it has not been explored with this view, is known to have some antiquarian features worthy examination. And were there none others than the artificial shell mounds and beds on the sea coast and the fossil bones of the valley, so remarkable in themselves, these would alone be entitled to the highest interest in studying the ancient history of the races of man in this area.
Geological action subsequent to the period of the habitation of the globe, has not been examined with this view, but is believed to be important in denoting eras of former occupancy; it is known that various parts of the State have yielded, at considerable depths below the surface, many curious evidences of artificial remains, along with relics of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
There is an apparent extension of the system of works which characterize the fort and mound period of the Ohio valley, reaching from the Alleghany waters in Chautauque and Cattaraugus, along the southern shore of Lake Erie, indefinitely eastward, which it would be interesting to trace.
One of the most reliable proofs of eras and races of men is found in the remains of art.
There are some striking coincidences in this respect between the antiquities of New-York and the Mississippi valley, which denote precisely the same state of arts and the same eras of occupancy. Such are the Minace Alleghanic which occurs alike in the Grave Creek mound and the simple places of sepulture in Onondaga, the Nabikoaguna Antique, which has been found at Upper Sandusky and at Onondaga; and the Medaëka Missouri, from the valley of the Sciota, in Ohio, and the Kasonda in New-York.
Accurate descriptions of the whole class of our antiquarian remains could not, if thoroughly executed, but throw much light on, and introduce precision in, periods of remote history in this State, and indeed the continent, which are now either involved in obscurity, or constitute themes of mere conjecture.
I. HISTORICAL AND ETHNOLOGICAL MINUTES.
MADE ON TAKING THE CENSUS OF THE IROQUOIS OF NEW-YORK, IN CONFORMITY WITH AN ACT OF THE LEGISLATURE, IN 1845.
[a.] A Sketch of the Iroquois Groupe of Aboriginal Tribes.
On the discovery of North America, the Iroquois tribes, were found seated chiefly in the wide and fertile territory of western and northern New-York, reaching west to the sources of the Ohio;[10] north, to the banks of Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence; and east, to the site of Albany. They had as much nationality of character, then, as any of the populous tribes, who, in the 4th century wandered over central and western Europe. They were, in a high degree, warlike, handling the bow and arrow with the skill and dexterity of the ancient Thracians and Parthians. They were confederated in peace and war, and had begun to lay the foundations of a power, against which, the surrounding nations, in the Mississippi valley, and along the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, and the Delaware, could not stand. The French, when they effectually entered the St. Lawrence in 1608,[11] courted their alliance on the north, and the Dutch did the same in 1609, on the Hudson. Virginia had been apprised of their power, at an early day, and the other English colonies, as they arrived, were soon made acquainted with the existence of this native confederacy in the north. By putting fire-arms into their hands, they doubled the aboriginal power, and became themselves, for more than a century, dependant on their caprice or friendship.
[10] They always denominated the Alleghany river by the name of Ohio. This I found to be the term constantly used for that river in 1845. They give the vowel i, in this word, the sound of i, in machine.
[11] They actually discovered this river, in 1535.
The word Iroquois, as we are told by Charlevoix, who is a competent and reliable witness on this point, is founded on an exclamation, or response, made by the sachems and warriors, on the delivery to them, of an address. This response, as heard among the Senecas, it appeared to me, might be written eoh; perhaps, the Mohawks, and other harsher dialects of this family, threw in an r, between the vowels. It is recorded in the term Iroquois, on French principles of annotation, with the substantive inflection in ois, which is characteristic of French lexicography. It is a term which has been long, and extensively used, both for the language and the history of this people; and is preferable, on enlarged considerations, to any other. The term Five Nations, used by Colden, and in popular use during the earlier period of the colony, ceased to be appropriate after the Tuscarora revolt in North Carolina, and the reunion of this tribe with the parent stock, subsequent to 1712. From that period they were called the Six Nations,[12] and continued to acquire increased reputation as a confederacy, under this name, until the termination of the American Revolution in 1783, and the flight of the Mohawks and Cayugas to Canada, when this partial separation and breaking up of the confederacy, rendered it no longer applicable.
[12] In 1723, they adopted the Necariages, as a Seventh Nation, as will be noticed under the appropriate head.
The term New-York Indians, applied to them in modern days, by the eminence in their position, is liable to be confounded, by the common reader, with the names of several tribes of the generic Algonquin family, who formerly occupied the southern part of the State, down to the Atlantic. Some of these tribes lived in the west, and owned and occupied lands, among the Iroquois, until within a few years. And, at any rate, it is too vague and imprecise a term to be employed in philology or history.
By the people themselves, however, neither the first nor the last of the foregoing terms appear ever to have been adopted, nor are they now used. They have no word to signify “New-York” in a sense more specific, than as the territory possessed by themselves—a claim which they were certainly justified in making, at the era of the discovery, when they are admitted, on all hands, to have carried their conquests to the sea.
The term Ongwe Honwe, or a people surpassing all others, which Colden was informed they applied proudly to themselves, may be strictly true, if limited, as they did, to mean a people surpassing all other red men. This they believed, and this was the sense in which they boastfully applied it. But it was a term older than the discovery, and had no reference to European races. The word Honwe, as will appear by the vocabulary hereto appended, means man. By the prefixed term Ongwe, it is qualified according to various interpretations, to mean real, as contradistinguished from sham men, or cowards; it may also mean strong, wise, or expert men, and, by ellipsis, men excelling others in manliness. But it was in no other sense distinctive of them. It was the common term for the red race of this continent, which they would appear, by the phrase, to acknowledge as a unity, and is, the word as I found it, used at this day, as the equivalent for our term “Indian.”
Each tribe had, at some period of their progress, a distinctive appellation, as Onondaga, Oneida, &c. of which some traditionary matter will be stated, further on. When they came to confederate, and form a general council, they took the name of Konoshioni, (or as the French authors write it, Acquinoshioni), meaning literally, People of the Long House, and figuratively a United People, a term by which they still denominate themselves, when speaking in a national sense. This distinction, it is well to bear in mind, and not confound. This Long House, to employ their own figure, extended east and west from the present site of Albany to the foot of the great lakes, a distance, by modern admeasurement, of 325 miles, which is now traversed by railroad. An air palace, we may grant them, having beams and rafters, higher and longer than any pile of regal magnificence, yet reared by human hands.
Thus much may be said, with certainty, of the name of this celebrated family of red men, by which they are identified and distinguished from other stocks of the hunter tribes of North America. Where they originated, relatively to their position on this continent, the progress of ethnology does not, at this incipient period of that science, enable us to determine, nor is it proposed, save with the merest brevity, now to inquire. Veiling their own origin, if anciently known, in allegory, or designing by fancy to supply the utter want of early history, to the intent, perhaps, that they might put forth an undisputed title to the country they occupied, the relations of their old sages affirm that they originated in the territorial area of western New-York. Their tradition on this point, as put on record by the pen of one of their own people, (see extracts from Cusic’s historical and traditionary tract, hereto appended,) fixes the locality of their actual origin at an eminence near the falls of the Oswego river. To cut short the narration, they assert that their ancestors were called forth, from the bowels of a mountain, by Tarenyawagon, the Holder of the Heavens. It represents them as one people, who moved first towards the east, as far as the sea, and then fell back, partly on their own tracks, towards the west and southwest. So far, and so far only, the tale appears credible enough, and as there is no chronology established by it, although dates are freely introduced, and consequently nothing to contradict it, their track of migration and countermigration from the Oswego, may be deemed as probable.
The diversities of language, and the separation into tribes, are represented to have taken place, according to known principles of ethnological inference.
Ondiyaka, an Onondaga sage, and the ruling chief of the confederacy, who died on an official visit to the Oneidas in 1839, at the age of ninety, confirmed these general traditions of the Tuscarora scribe. He informed Le Fort, who was with him in that journey and at his death, that the Onondagas were created by Neo,[13] in the country where they lived; that he made this island or continent, “Hawoneo,” for the red race, and meant it for them alone. He did not allude to or acknowledge any migration from other lands. This, Le Fort, himself an Onondaga, a chief, and an educated man, told me during the several interviews I had with him, the present year, at the Onondaga Castle.
[13] The term “Neo,” God, is generally used reverently, with a syllable prefixed in the different Iroquois dialects, as Yawa-Neo, in the Tuscarora, Howai-Neo in the Seneca, Hawai-Neo, Onondaga, Lawai-Neo, Mohawk, &c.
Ondiyaka proceeded to say, as they walked over the ancient ruins in the valley of the Kasonda,[14] that this was the spot where the Onondagas formerly lived, before they fixed themselves in the Onondaga valley, and before they had entered into confederation. In those days they were at enmity with each other; they raised the old forts to defend themselves. They wandered about a great deal. They frequently changed their places of residence. They lived in perpetual fear. They kept fighting, and moving their villages often. This reduced their numbers, and rendered their condition one of alarms and trials. Sometimes they abandoned a village, and all their gardens and clearings, because they had encountered much sickness, and believed the place to be doomed. They were always ready to hope for better luck in a new spot. At length they confederated, and then their fortifications were no longer necessary, and fell into decay. This, he believed, was the origin of these old ruins, which were not of foreign construction.[15] Before the confederacy, they had been not only at war among themselves, but had been driven by other enemies.[16] After it, they carried their wars out of their own country, and began to bring home prisoners. Their plan was to select for adoption from the prisoners, and captives, and fragments of tribes whom they conquered. These captives were equally divided among each of the tribes, were adopted and incorporated with them, and served to make good their losses. They used the term, We-Hait-Wat-Sha, in relation to these captives. This term means a body cut into parts and scattered around. In this manner, they figuratively scattered their prisoners, and sunk and destroyed their nationality, and built up their own.
[14] Butternut Creek, which runs through parts of the towns of Pompey, Lafayette and De Witt, Onondaga county.
[15] This remark must be considered as applied only to the class of simple ring forts, so frequent in western New-York. These forts are proved by antiquarian remains, forest growth, &c. to be the most ancient of any works, in Onondaga county, in the shape of forts.
[16] Colden represents them as driven by the Algonquins, on the discovery of Canada.
At what period they confederated, we have no exact means of deciding. It appears to have been comparatively recent, judging from traditionary testimony.[17] While their advancement in the economy of living, in arms, in diplomacy and in civil polity, would lead conjecture to a more remote date. Their own legends, like those of some other leading stocks of the continent, carry them back to a period of wars with giants and demons and monsters of the sea, the land, and the air, and are fraught with strange and grotesque fancies of wizards and enchanters. But history, guiding the pen of the French Jesuit, describes them first as pouring in their canoes through the myriad streams that interlace in western New-York, and debouching, now on the gulf of the St. Lawrence, now on the Chesapeake—glancing again over the waves of Michigan, and now again plying their paddles in the waters of the turbid Mississippi. Wherever they went, they carried proofs of their energy, courage, and enterprise.
[17] Vide Pyrlaus.
At one period we hear the sound of their war cry, along the straits of the St. Mary’s and at the foot of Lake Superior. At another under the walls of Quebec, where they finally defeated the Hurons under the eyes of the French. They put out the fires of the Gahkwas and Eries. They eradicated the Susquehannocks. They placed the Lenapees, the Nanticokes, and the Munsees under the yoke of subjection. They put the Metoacks and the Manhattans under tribute. They spread the terror of their arms over all New-England.
They traversed the whole length of the Appalachian chain, and descended like the enraged Gish and Megalonyx, on the Cherokees and the Catawbas. Smith encountered their warriors, in the settlement of Virginia, and La Salle on the discovery of the Illinois. Nations trembled when they heard the name of the Konoshioni.
They possessed a fine physical structure—they lived in a climate which imparted energy to their motions. They used a sonorous and commanding language, which had its dual number, and its neuter, masculine, and feminine genders. They were excellent natural orators, and expert diplomatists. They began early to cherish a national pride, which grew with their conquests. They had, like the Algonquins, in the organization of the several clans, or families, which composed each tribe, a curious heraldic tie, founded on original relationship, which exercised a strong influence, but which has never been satisfactorily explained. They were governed by hereditary chieftaincies, like others of the aboriginal stocks, but contrary to the usage of these other stocks, the claims of their chiefs, were subjected to the decision of a national council. The aristocratic and democratic principles, were thus both brought into requisition, in candidates for office. But in all that constituted national action, they were a pure Republic. So far was this carried, that it is believed the veto of any one chief, to a public measure, was sufficient to arrest its adoption by the Council.
In the development of their nationality, they have produced several men of energy and ability, who were equal, in natural force of character, to some of the most shining warriors and orators of antiquity. Few war captains have exceeded Hendrick, Brant or Skenandoah. The eloquence and force of Garangula, Logan and Red Jacket, in their public speeches, have commanded universal admiration. Mr. Jefferson considered the appeal of Logan to the white race, after the extirpation of his family, as without a parallel; and it has been imitated in vain, by distinguished poets and orators.
Such were the aboriginal people who occupied western New-York, and their memory will forever live in the significant names which they have bestowed upon Niagara and Ontario, and a thousand lesser waters, which beautify and adorn the land. Viewed as one of the Indo-American stocks, they possessed some very striking traits.
Few barbarous nations have ever existed on the globe, who have shown more native energy, and distinctiveness of character. Still fewer who have evinced so firm a devotion to the spirit of independence. Yet all their native manliness and energy of character and action, would have failed, or become inoperative, had they not abandoned the fatal Indian principle of tribal supremacy, or independent chieftainships, and made common cause in a national confederacy. The moment this was done, and each of the component clans or tribes, had surrendered the power of sovereignty to a general council of the whole, the foundation for their rise was laid, and they soon became the most powerful political body among the native tribes of North America, this side of the palace of Montezuma.
In visiting the descendants of such a people, after a lapse of more than two centuries and a quarter from the discovery, it was the impulse of the commonest interest, to make some inquiries into their former history, and antiquities. These have been pursued under favorable circumstances, for the most part, at all points of my journey, and have been resumed, when broken off, whenever practical. The only method pursued, was to obtain all the facts possible, from red or white men, of reliable testimony. There was no time and no intention, to digest them, into a connected history. They were collected in the pauses which intervened, in the obtaining of the statistics of the census, and they are contributed herewith, in the simple garb and freshness of the original minutes. Those who related the traditions, did not suppose themselves to be delivering the important lore of their history. They were related, along the road, or seated around the evening circle, as the current belief of the people. Sometimes the fields or hills, disclosing the localities of old forts, were the scene of the narrations; sometimes the Indian burial ground; sometimes more formal interviews. He who gleans popular traditions among this race, must have his ear ever open, his memory under notice “to retain,” and his pen or pencil ever ready.
Historical and biographical notices, names of places, and sketches of antiquarian remains, were thus entered on or dropped, as time or occasion prompted. To make minutes of what occurred, was all that time permitted me; but it was a rule, to make them promptly and on the spot. This much seemed necessary in despatching this portion of my report, with the miscellaneous details accompanying it; and having accomplished this object, my present task is terminated.
[b.] Ethnological Suggestions.
Where we have nothing else to rely upon, we may receive the rudest traditions of an Indian nation, although they be regarded as mere historical phenomena, or materials to be considered. Whether such materials are to be credited or disbelieved wholly, or in part, is quite another thing. Our Indians, like some of the ancient nations of Asia, whom they resemble in many points of character, were prone to refer their origin to myths and legends, under which they doubtless, sometimes meant to represent truths, or at least, to express opinions. The Indian tribes, very much like their ancient prototypes of the old world, seemed to have felt a necessity for inventing some story of their origin, where it is sometimes probable there was little or nothing of actual tradition to build it upon. They were manifestly under a kind of self-reproach, to reflect that they had indeed no history; nothing to connect their descent from prior races; and if they have not proved themselves men of much judgment in their attempts to supply the deficiency in their fabrications and allegories, they must often come in, it must be confessed, for no little share of imagination.
There appears, throughout the whole race, to be the vestiges of a tradition of the creation and the deluge, two great and striking points in the history of man, which, however he wandered, he would be most likely to remember. They uniformly attribute their origin to a superior and divine power. They do not suppose that they came into existence without the act of this pre-existing almighty power, who is called NEO, or OWANEO. This is the third great and leading point in their traditions. And these three primary vestiges of the original history of the race are to be found among the rudest tribes, between the straits of Terra del Fuego and the Arctic Ocean, notwithstanding the amount of grotesque and puerile matter which serves as the vehicle of the traditions.
Between the creation and the deluge and the present era of the world, there is nearly an entire blank. Ages have dropped out of their memory, with all their stirring incidents of wars and migrations, and the first reliable truth we hear is, that at such a time they lived on the banks of the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Lakes, or the St. Lawrence, &c. Nothing but this kind of proximate origin could indeed be expected to be retained. They acknowledge relationship to no prior race of man. We see that they are sui generis with, and much resemble some of the eastern nations in color and features. Physiologists have never been able to detect a bone or muscle, more or less, than the Caucasian race possess. Philologists listen to their speech and admit that in one tribe or another they possess all the powers of articulate utterance known to that race. We know by this kind of evidence, physical and moral, that they are a branch of the original Adamic stock, without reference to the pages of revelation, where we learn the same truth, and are told in so many words, that “God out of one flesh, formed all men.” And we must perforce infer, that the Indian race is of foreign origin, and must have crossed an ocean to reach the continent.
Ask not the red sage to tell you how? or when? or where? He knows it not, and if he should pretend to the knowledge, it would be the surest possible evidence, philosophically considered, that his responses were fabulous. Three hundred and fifty-three years only has America been known to Europe, and yet should we strike our history out of existence, what should we know of the leading facts of the discovery and the discoverer from Indian tradition? Still the inquisitive spirit of research leads us to ask, where were this race eighteen hundred and forty-five years ago? or at the invasion of Britain by Julius Cæsar? or at the outpouring of the Gothic hordes under Alaric or Brennus? Scandinavian research tells us they were here in the 10th century. The Mexican picture writings inform us that some of them reached the valley of Mexico in the 11th century. Welsh history claims to have sent one of her princes among them in the 12th century. The mounds of the Mississippi valley do not appear to have had an origin much earlier. The whole range of even historical conjecture is absolutely limited within eight or nine hundred years. Nothing older, of their presence here certainly, is known, than about the time of the crowning of Charlemagne, A. D. 800, unless we take the Grecian tradition of Atlantis.
That we have nothing in the way of tradition older than the dates referred to, is no positive proof that the tribes were not upon the continent long prior. There are some considerations, in the very nature of the case, which argue a remote continental antiquity for these tribes. It is hardly to be supposed that large numbers of the primitive adventurers landed at any one time or place; nor is it more probable that the epochs of these early adventurers were very numerous. The absolute conformity of physical features renders this improbable. The early migrations must have been necessarily confined to portions of the old world peopled by the Red Race—by a race, not only of red skins, black hair and eyes, and high cheek bones, who would reproduce these fixed characteristics, ad infinitum, but whose whole mental as well as physiological development assimilates it, as a distinct unity of the species. While physiology, however, asserts this unity, in the course of the dispersion and multiplication of tribes, their languages, granting all that can be asked for on the score of original diversity, became divided into an infinite number of dialects and tongues. Between these dialects, however, where they are even the most diverse, there is a singular coincidence in many of the leading principles of concord and regimen, and polysynthetic arrangement. Such diversities in sound, amounting, as they do in many cases, for instance, in the stocks of the Algonquin and Iroquois, to an almost total difference, must have required many ages for their production. And this fact alone affords a proof of the continental antiquity of the American race.
[c.] Indian Cosmogony.
Origin of the Continent, of the Animal Creation, and of the Indian Race: The Introduction of the Two Principles of Good and Evil Into The Government of the World.
Iroquois tradition opens with the notion that there were originally two worlds, or regions of space, namely, an upper and lower world. The upper was inhabited by beings similar to the human race; the lower by monsters, moving in the waters. When the human species were transferred below, and the lower sphere was about to be rendered fit for their residence, the act of their transference or reproduction is concentrated in the idea of a female, who began to descend into the lower world, which is depicted as a region of darkness, waters and monsters. She was received on the back of a tortoise, where she gave birth to male twins, and expired. The shell of this tortoise expanded into the continent, which, in their phraseology, is called an “island;” and is named by the Onondagas, AONAO. One of the infants was called Inigorio, or the Good Mind; the other, Inigohatea, or the Bad Mind. These two antagonistical principles, which are such perfect counterparts of the Ormuzd and Ahriman of the Zoroaster, were at perpetual variance, it being the law of one to counteract whatever the other did. They were not, however, men, but gods, or existences, through whom the “Great Spirit,” or “Holder of the Heavens,” carried out his purposes. The first labor of Inigorio was to create the sun out of the head of his dead mother, and the moon and the stars out of other parts of the body. The light these gave, drove the monsters into deep water, to hide themselves. He then prepared the surface of the continent, and fitted it for human habitation, by diversifying it with creeks, rivers, lakes and plains, and by filling these with the various species of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. He then formed a man and woman out of earth, gave them life, and called them “Ea-gwe-ho-we,” or, as it is more generally known to Indian archæologists, Ong-we-Hon-we; that is to say, a real people. [[D].]
Meanwhile the Bad Mind created mountains, waterfalls, and steeps and morasses, reptiles, serpents, apes, and other objects supposed to be injurious to, or in mockery of mankind. He made attempts also to conceal the land animals in the ground, so as to deprive man of the means of subsistence. This continued opposition to the wishes of the Good Mind, who was perpetually busied in restoring the effects of the displacements and wicked devices of the other, at length led to a personal combat, of which the time and instruments of battle were agreed on. They fought for two days, the one using deer’s horns, and the other flag roots, as arms.[18] Inigorio, who had chosen horns, finally prevailed; his antagonist sunk down to a region of darkness, and became the Evil Spirit, or Kluneolux,[19] of the world of despair. Inigorio, having obtained this triumph, retired from the earth.
[18] By reference to the Algonquin story of the combat between Manabozho and his father, the West Wind, as given in Algic Researches, vol. 1, p. 134, it will be seen that the weapons chosen by the parties were the same as those employed by Inigorio and Inigohatea, namely, deer’s horns and flag roots.
[19] Oneida.
This piece of ingenuity, or philosophy of the Indian mind, much of which is pure allegory, under which truths are hid, stands in the remote vista of Iroquois tradition, and it seemed necessary to notice it, in preparing to take up their more sober traditions. It is picked out of a mass of incongruous details, published by a native, [see [App. D].] which only serve, peradventure, to denote its genuineness, for divested of absurdity, in the original, we should not ascribe much antiquity to it, or be prone to attribute it to an ignorant, superstitious, pagan people, living in all their earlier times without arts, letters or civilization. Futile as it is, it will be found veritable philosophy, compared with most of the earlier theories of the renowned nations of antiquity. Take, as an instance, the account Sanconeathus gives of the theology of the Phœnicians.[20]
[20] Gowan’s Ancient Fragments, 1 vol. 8vo., N. Y., 1835.
[d.] Gleams of their General Ancient History.
Items: Indians claim to be the offspring of an independent act of creation. The Iroquois name themselves in proud allusion to their supposed supremacy. Tribes on the St. Lawrence and the lakes live in disputes. War with a race of giants called Ronongweca: the fiend Shotrowea,—contests with the great Kwiss Kwiss, or Mastodon,—the Big Elk,—and the Horned Serpent. A meteor falls in the camp. Northern tribes confederate; send an unfortunate embassage to a great chief south,—war with him,—war with each other, and the country thereby depopulated and left to its original desolation.
When we come to draw the minds of the sages and chroniclers of the Iroquois cantons, to the facts of their early history and origin, they treat us with legendary fables, and myths of gods and men, and changes and freaks in elementary matter, which indicate that such ideas, were common to their progenitors, whatever part of the world they occupied. We have adverted to their notions on this head, in the preceding remarks on their cosmogony, tinctured, as it strongly is, with the old Persian philosophy.
They deny, as do all the tribes, a foreign origin. They assert, that America, or AONAO, was the place of their origin. They begin by laying down the theory, that they were the peculiar care of the Supernal Power who created all things, and who, as a proof of his care and benevolence of a race whom he had marked by a distinct color, created the continent for their especial use, and placed them upon it. None of the tribes pretend to establish dates, nor have they any astronomical data, to fix them. But they all give to the story of their origin, or creation, a locality, which is generally fixed to some prominent geographical feature near to their present respective place of abode, or at least, a spot well known. This spot, among the Iroquois cantons, is located in the northern hemisphere.
The term, Ongwe Honwe, is used by these tribes, very much in the manner in which the ancient Teutons called themselves, Allamanna, or Ghermanna, from which we have the modern terms, Allemand and German. If they did not literally call themselves “all-men,” as did these proud tribes, they implied as much, in a term which is interpreted to mean, real men, or a people surpassing all others. It is the common term for the red race, as contradistinguished from all other races, and the true equivalent of the phrase, “Indian.”
By their earliest traditions, we are told that a body of the Ongwe Honwe, encamped on the banks of the St. Lawrence, where they were invaded by a nation few in number, but of giant stature, called Ronongweca.[21] After a war, brought on by personal encounters and incidents, and carried on with perfidy and cruelty, they were delivered at length, by the skill and courage of Yatontea,[21] who, after retreating before them, raised a large body of men and defeated them, after which they were supposed to be extinct. They next suffered from the malice, perfidy, and lust of an extraordinary person called Shotrowea,[21] who was finally driven across the St. Lawrence, and came to a town south of the shores of lake Ontario, where, however, he only disguised his intentions, to repeat his cruel and perfidious deeds. This person, who assassinated many persons, and violated six virgins, they point to as a fiend in human shape.
[21] I abbreviate these words from the originals, for the sole purpose of making them readable to the ordinary reader.
At this time the Big Quisquis[22] invaded the country, who pushed down the houses of the people, and created great consternation and disturbance. After making ineffectual resistance, they fled, but were at length relieved by a brave chief, who raised a body of men to battle him, but the animal himself retired. In this age of monsters, their country was invaded by another monster called the “Big Elk,” who was furious against men,[23] and destroyed the lives of many persons, but he was at length killed after a severe contest.
[22] Kwis Kwis is the name of a hog in modern Iroquois.
[23] Carnivorous—but this is not a characteristic of the Elk.
A great horned serpent next appeared on Lake Ontario, who, by means of his poisonous breath, produced diseases, and caused the death of many, but he was at last compelled to retire by thunderbolts. This fourth calamity was not forgotten, when a fifth happened. A blazing star fell into a fort situated on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and destroyed the people. Such a phenomenon caused great panic and dread, and they regarded it as ominous of their entire destruction. Prior to this, a confederation had taken place among these northern tribes, situated north of and along the banks of the great lakes, and they had a ruling chief over all. This ruler repaired to the south to visit a ruler of great fame and authority, who resided at a great town in A Lodge of Gold. But it only proved to be an embassy of folly, for this great ruler, exercising an imperial sway, availing himself of the information thus derived, of a great country full of resources, built many forts throughout the country, and almost penetrated to the banks of Lake Erie. The people who had confederated on the North resisted. A long war of a hundred years standing ensued, but the northern people were better skilled in the use of the bow and arrow, and were more expert woodsmen and warriors. They at length prevailed, and taking all these towns and forts, left them a heap of ruins.
But the prediction of the blazing star was now verified. The tribes who were held together by feeble bands, fell into disputes, and wars among themselves, which were pursued through a long period, until they utterly destroyed each other, and so reduced their numbers, that the land was again overrun by wild beasts. [[D].]