A constitutional league of peace in the stone age of America

by J. N. B. Hewitt

In one tradition Hiawatha when first seen by Deganawida was a cannibal and was actually engaged in bringing the carcass of a human being into his lodge, which he quickly proceeded to quarter and cook in a pot of water. He had been out hunting for human beings, and meeting this one had killed him for his larder.

Deganawida had previously heard of his cannibalistic habits from Djigonsasen, the chieftainess of the Neutral nation (or tribe), who was the first person to understand and to accept the radical program of Deganawida for stopping the shedding of human blood by violence and for the establishment of peace and equity and righteousness and power.

Unseen by Hiawatha, Deganawida, the tradition says, mounting to the top of the lodge watched Hiawatha at work; peering through the smoke hole from a point just over him, Deganawida saw what was being done by Hiawatha and, tradition says, caused him by mental suggestion to realize the horrible enormity of what he was then doing; so he mistook the face of Deganawida, reflected in the pot, for his own, and being struck with the great beauty of that face he contrasted it with the character of the work in which he was then engaged and exclaimed, tradition says: “That face and this kind of business do not agree”; and he then and there resolved to give up cannibalism for all time. He quickly arose and carried the pot out of the lodge and cast its contents away at some distance from the lodge.

Deganawida having descended from the top of the lodge went forward to meet his host. Because of his recent experience Hiawatha was very much pleased to have a guest who brought him the wonderful message of peace and righteousness and power. The result of this conference was the conversion of Hiawatha to the reform program of Deganawida and his agreement to aid in the work of bringing about the change in the attitude and relation of men one to another.

According to tradition, Deganawida gave him his name after his conversion, and Hiawatha became a loyal and enthusiastic disciple of Deganawida and gave up everything in order to devote all his energies and time to the work of establishing the projected league or confederation of peoples in accordance with the principles expounded by Deganawida. He indeed undertook several very important missions for his great teacher and acquited himself with great credit.

The most effective and unscrupulous opposition the two reformers encountered in their work came from the noted Onondaga chief, Atotarho (Watatotarho), a wizard and sorcerer who was feared far and near, who, during the years in which the league was being brought into being, removed by secret means, it is said, the seven daughters (some versions say three) and then the wife of Hiawatha, his opponent.

No place is given by tradition as Hiawatha’s birthplace, although some analysts declare that he was a half-brother of the fierce chieftain Atotarho (Watatotarho), of the Onondaga, his pitiless antagonist.

This tradition asserts that he lived among the Mohawk and married the daughter of a chief there and that he himself became a chief among these people. His name is still on the list of titles of federal Mohawk chiefs.

In the other version of the tradition of the founding of the league of the Iroquois Hiawatha is treated as the chief actor in the conception and establishment of this confederacy instead of the real founder, Deganawida. But from a careful survey of the narrative of events herein this version is found to be much less faithful to facts than the one first mentioned.

It appears that in this tradition the several missions upon which his mentor, Deganawida, sent him, were fused together in such wise as to make them merely a series of events or episodes in a single journey of Hiawatha, which he was alleged to have made in despair, going directly southward from the Onondaga council lodge; on this journey he was said to “have split the sky,” meaning merely that he took a course directly south. Herein, too, he fled from Onondaga because of vexation of spirit for the loss of his children by the will of the great sorcerer, Atotarho (Watatotarho).