A constitutional league of peace in the stone age of America

by J. N. B. Hewitt

The descriptive details are highly interesting to the antiquarian because they shed some faint light on the kind of pledge or vouch which was in use before wampum and wampum strings came into vogue for that purpose. On this journey some of the persons delegated to communicate with Hiawatha used for a pledge small shoots of the elderberry bush which were cut into short pieces, and from which the pith was removed, and these little cylinders strung on small cords of sinew; likewise, the tradition continues, the quills of large feathers, cut off and strung on cords, were also used as tokens, pledges, or vouches for the good faith of the messenger or speaker.

Fresh-water shells were substituted by Hiawatha for these things. Coming to a small body of water, he saw its surface literally covered by ducks swimming about. He went near and exclaimed, “Do you not attach any importance to my mission?” At once the ducks flew up into the air, bearing up with them the water of the lake. Hiawatha at once went down into the bottom of the lake, thus made dry, and there he saw many shells of various colors. These he gathered and placed in a skin bag which he carried. When the bag had been filled he returned to the shore of the lake, and selecting a suitable place sat down there and, tradition says, strung the 28 strings with their messages, which are employed in the ritual of the condoling and installation ceremony of the league to this day, although these fresh-water shells have long been replaced by wampum beads.

It is thus seen that this tradition makes Hiawatha the designer of the pledges for this rite, although the matter of the tradition shows that this cannot be true, because the use of a set number of topics of the “comfort,” or rather “requickening address,” was in vogue among other tribes of the Iroquoian linguistic stock—the Huron, for example.

The name Hiawatha was immortalized by Longfellow in the beautiful poem bearing this name, although there is nothing in the poem that can be predicated of the historical person bearing that name. This was due to the mistake of confusing two names—that of Hiawatha with that of the Iroquoian god, the Master of Life, the one who gives or creates all life, both faunal and floral, on the earth.

Mr. J. V. H. Clark, in his “Onondaga, etc.,” is directly responsible for this confusion, for, although Schoolcraft added to it, Mr. Clark brought it to pass in the first instance. In the hands of careless hearers and recorders native Indian names which in fact have no relationship whatsoever are readily confounded. In the Mohawk dialect of the Iroquoian stock of languages (and in all others of this stock using the r-sound in their phonetics) Teharonhiawagon approximately records the sounds in the name of the Life God or the Master of Life; but this name in Onondaga (and in all other dialects of this stock, which do not use the r-sound), becomes Dehaenhiawagi. This name, misspelled, appears in print as Ta-oun-ya-wat-ha, Thannawege, Taonhiawagi, and Tahiawagi, etc.; but between these and the dubious attempts to record the native original for the Anglicised Hiawatha—namely, Tahionwatha, Taoungwatha, Ayonhwatha, Hayenwatha, Hayonwentha, etc.—there is no relationship whatever. But Clark, misled, perhaps, by otosis and misconception and by a confused tradition, identifies in direct statement the two names and the two persons.

Schoolcraft, when gathering material for his Notes on the Iroquois, received a number of fragmentary mythic tales about the Iroquoian god, the Master of Life and also traditional stories about one of the chief founders of the league. But as these had been confounded by Clark and made to relate to a single individual Schoolcraft undiscriminatingly adopted this intermixture, and added to the mischief by transferring Hiawatha to the region of the Great Lakes, and there identified him with Nanabozho, the Master of Life, or God of Life, of the Chippewa and other Algonquian cognates.

Now, the Mohawk Iroquoian Teharonhiawagon and the Chippewa Algonquian Nanabozho are approximately identical mythic conceptions, but neither has in fact or fiction any feature predicable of Hiawatha. Schoolcraft’s The Hiawatha Legends, to which we owe the charming poem of that name by Longfellow, were chiefly mythic tales and fiction about Nanabozho, the Chippewa Master of Life, but which contain nothing about Hiawatha, an Iroquoian chieftain of the sixteenth century.

Were Europeans of some day in the future shown a great narrative of French epic adventure in which Prince Bismarck, the despoiler of France, should appear as the central and leading Gallic hero in the glory and triumph of France, the absurdity and error would not be greater or more towering than in these blunders of Clark and Schoolcraft concerning Hiawatha and the Master of Life of Iroquoian and Algonquian mythic thought.

In the establishment of this highly organized institution the swart statesmen, Deganawida, Hiawatha, and their able colleagues, and the equally astute stateswoman, Djigonsasen, a chieftainess of the Neutral nation (or tribe), then very powerful and warlike, united their efforts in bringing to a successful issue, notwithstanding bitter intratribal opposition, a peaceful revolution in the methods, in the scope, in the forms, and in the purposes of government extant among their respective peoples—a much needed reform which was at once fundamental and far-reaching in its immediate effects and future possibilities.

The dominant motive for the establishment of the League of the Five Iroquois Tribes was the impelling necessity to stop the shedding of human blood by violence through the making and ratifying of a universal peace by all the known tribes of men, to safeguard human life and health and welfare. Moreover, it was intended to be a type or model of government for all tribes alien to the Iroquois. To meet this pressing need for a durable universal peace these reformers proposed and advocated a constitutional form of government as the most effective in the attainment of so desirable an end.