NATIONAL GOVERNMENT; OR, LONG HOUSE OF THE IROQUOIS LEAGUE.
Let us look for a moment into the Long House of the Indian confederacy, and learn something of the government of a people, whom we have been in the habit of considering ungoverned, and utterly lawless and rude.
In the country which stretches from the Hudson to Lake Erie, and from the St. Lawrence to the Susquehanna, there dwelt five separate nations, concerning whose origin we have no knowledge, and with regard to whom all conjecture is vain.
Concerning themselves they can only say, they grew up out of the ground, or sprung up like the trees of the forest. They cannot remember when they were not as the sand on the sea-shore for multitude, and when their laws and manners and customs were not the same as when white people came among them.
They had no written language, and, of course, no written lore; and not a trace of any thing their fathers did, is upon leaf or parchment; but by studying their legends and fables, observing and understanding their customs, we can easily imagine what they were.
The Five Nations, called by the French, the Iroquois, date the formation of the league only a few years before [[33]]the white man first landed upon their shores, and it seems to be Columbus to whom they refer as the first invader.
They called themselves the Ho-de-no-sau-ne, or People of the Long House; implying that they were one family, sheltered by the same roof.
Each nation was divided into eight tribes or clans, which bear the names of Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle, Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk, and at the formation of the League these names were retained and all their laws and customs made with reference to this division into tribes.
One of the historical traditions concerning this union relates that just before its formation there appeared among them a most extraordinary and formidable warrior, To-do-da-ho, whose hair was a mass of living snakes, and whose fingers and toes also terminated in living serpents, that kept continually hissing and darting their forked tongues. The snakes were combed out of his hair by a Mohawk Sachem, who was afterwards called Ha-yo-went-ha, the man who combs.
To-do-da-ho, was at first opposed to the league, because as the Sachems were all to be of equal power, he would be deprived of his importance. But to compensate him for giving up the absolute authority he had been accustomed to exercise, the first Sachemship was named for him, and the title would descend to all who afterwards should fill the same office. And though he who inherits it has really no more power than the others, the name signifies to them a combination of more noble qualities than any other, and is regarded with a little more reverence.