Fig. 1.—The pictograph of the sky-dome in the Walum Olum. a is interpreted “At all times above the earth.” b, “He made them [sun and moon] all to move evenly.”
The above examples are only a few of many that might be quoted to show how commonly the Iroquois mentioned the peace tree. There are also references to the tree which was uprooted “to afford a cavity in which to bury all weapons of war,” the tree being replanted as a memorial.
In the Iroquoian myth, whether Cherokee, Huron, Wyandot, Seneca or Mohawk, the “tree of the upper world” is mentioned, though the character of the tree differs according to the tribe and sometimes according to the myth-teller.
Before the formation of the lower or earth-world the Wyandot tell of the upper or sky world and of the “Big Chief” whose daughter became strangely ill.[[86]] The chief instructs his daughter to “dig up the wild apple tree; what will cure her she can pluck from among its roots.” David Boyle[[87]] wondered why the apple tree was called “wild,” but that the narrator meant wild-apple and not wild apple is shown by the fact that the Seneca in some versions called the tree the crab-apple. The native apple tree with its small fruit was intended by the Indian myth teller who knew also of the cultivated apple and took the simplest way to differentiate the two.
With the Seneca this tree is described more fully. In manuscript left by Mrs. Asher Wright, the aged missionary to the Seneca, I find the cosmologic myth as related to her by Esquire Johnson, a Seneca, in 1870. Mrs. Wright and her husband understood the Seneca language perfectly and published a mission magazine as early as 1838 in that tongue. Her translation of Johnson’s myth should therefore be considered authentic. She wrote: “—there was a vast expanse of water—. Above it was the great blue arch of air but no signs of anything solid—. In the clear sky was an unseen floating island sufficiently firm to allow trees to grow upon it, and there were men-beings there. There was one great chief there who gave the law to all the Ongweh or beings on the island. In the center of the island there grew a tree so tall that no one of the beings who lived there could see its top. On its branches flowers and fruit hung all the year round. The beings who lived on the island used to come to the tree and eat the fruit and smell the sweet perfume of the flowers. On one occasion the chief desired that the tree be pulled up. The Great Chief was called to look at the great pit which was to be seen where the tree had stood.” The story continues with the usual description of how the sky-mother was pushed into the hole in the sky and fell upon the wings of the waterfowl who placed her on the turtle’s back. After this mention of the celestial tree in the same manuscript is the story of the central world-tree. After the birth of the twins, Light One and Toad-like (or dark) one, the Light One, also known as Good Minded, noticing that there was no light, created the “tree of light.” This was a great tree having at its topmost branch a great ball of light. At this time the sun had not been created. It is significant as will appear later that the Good Minded made his tree of light one that brought forth flowers from every branch. After he had gone on experimenting and improving the earth “he made a new light and hung it on the neck of a being and he called the new light Gaa-gwaa (gä’´gwā) and instructed its bearer to run his course daily in the heavens.” Shortly after he is said to have “dug up the tree of light and looking into the pool of water in which the stump (trunk) had grown he saw the reflection of his own face and thereupon conceived the idea of creating Ongwe and made them both a man and a woman.”
The central world-tree is found also in Delaware mythology, though as far as I discover it is not called the tree of light. The Journal[[88]] of Dankers and Slyter records the story of creation as heard from the Lenape of New Jersey in 1679. All things came from a tortoise, the Indians told them. “It had brought forth the world and in the middle of its back had sprung a tree upon whose branches men had grown.”[[89]] This relation between men and the tree is interesting in comparison with the Iroquois myth as it is also as the central world-tree. Both Lenape and the Iroquois ideas are symbolic and those who delight in flights of imagination might draw much from both.
Fig. 2.—A false face leader rubbing his rattle on a stump. Drawn from a photograph.
The Seneca world-tree is described elsewhere in my notes as a tree whose branches pierce the sky and whose roots run down into the underground waters of the under-world. This tree is mentioned in various ceremonial rites of the Iroquois. With the False Face Company, Hadĭgon’´săshon’´on, for example, the Great Face, chief of all the False Faces, is said to be the invisible giant that guards the world-tree (gaindowo´nĕ‘). He rubs his turtle shell rattle upon it to obtain its power and this he imparts to all the visible false faces worn by the Company. In visible token of this belief the members of the Company rub their turtle rattles on pine tree trunks, believing that they become filled with both the earth and the sky-power thereby. In this use of the turtle shell rattle there is perhaps a recognition of the connection between the turtle and the world-tree that grows upon the primal turtle’s back.
In the prologue of the Wampum Code of the Five Nations Confederacy we again find references to a symbolic “great tree.” In the code of Dekānăwī´dă and with the Five Nations’ confederate lords (rodiyā´nĕr) “I plant the Tree of the Great Peace. I plant it in your territory, Adōdar´ho‘ and the Onondaga nation, in the territory of you who are Firekeepers.