The founders of the league, therefore, proposed and expounded as the requisite basis of all good government three broad “double” doctrines or principles. The names of these principles in the native tongues vary dialectically, but these three notable terms are expressed in Onondaga as follows: (1) Ne’′ Skĕñ′non’, meaning, first, sanity of mind and the health of the body; and, second, peace between individuals and between organized bodies or groups of persons. (2) Ne’′ Gaii‘hwiyo‘, meaning, first, righteousness in conduct and its advocacy in thought and in speech; and, second, equity or justice, the adjustment of rights and obligations. (3) Ne’′ Gă’s‘hasdĕn‘′sä’, meaning, first, physical strength or power, as military force or civil authority; and, second, the orenda or magic power of the people or of their institutions and rituals, having mythic and religious implications. Six principles in all. The constructive results of the control and guidance of human thinking and conduct in the private, the public, and the foreign relations of the peoples so leagued by these six principles, the reformers maintained, are the establishment and the conservation of what is reverently called Ne’′ Gayanĕñ‘sä’gō′nǎ‘—i. e., the Great Commonwealth, the great Law of Equity and Righteousness and Well-being, of all known men. It is thus seen that the mental grasp and outlook of these prophet-statesmen and stateswomen of the Iroquois looked out beyond the limits of tribal boundaries to a vast sisterhood and brotherhood of all the tribes of men, dwelling in harmony and happiness. This indeed was a notable vision for the Stone Age of America.
Some of the practical measures that were put in force were the checking of murder and bloodshed in the ferocious blood-feud by the legal tender of the prescribed price of the life of a man or a woman—the tender by the homicide and his clan for accidentally killing such a person was 20 strings of wampum, 10 for the dead man and 10 for the forfeited life of the homicide; but if the dead person were a woman, the legal tender was 30 strings of wampum, because the value of a woman’s life to the community was regarded as double that of a man. And cannibalism, or the eating of human flesh, was legally prohibited. Even Hiawatha forswore this abominable practice before taking up the work of forming the league.
The institution of the condoling and installation council was important and most essential to the maintenance of the integrity of their state, for the ordinances of the league constitution required that the number of the chiefs in the federal council should be kept intact. So to the orenda, or magic power, believed to emanate and flow from the words, the chants and songs, and the acts of this council, did the statesmen and the ancients of the Iroquois peoples look for the conservation of their political integrity and for the promotion of their welfare.
So potent and terrible was the orenda of the ritual of the mourning installation council regarded, that it was thought imperative to hold this council only during the autumn or winter months. Since its orenda dealt solely with the effects of death and with the restoration and preservation of the living from death, it was believed that it would be ruinous and destructive to the growing seeds, plants, and fruits, were this council held during the days of birth and growth in spring and in summer. To overcome the power of death, to repair his destructive work, and to restore to its normal potency the orenda or magic power of the stricken father side or mother side of the league, and so making the entire league whole, were some of its motives.[1]
[1] See the writer’s article on this subject in Holmes Anniversary Volume, Washington, 1916.
In eulogizing their completed labors the founders of the league represented and described it as a great human tree of flesh and blood, noted for size and length of leaf, which was also represented as being set up on a great white mat—that is to say, on a broad foundation of peace, and whose top pierced the visible sky. It was conceived as having four great white roots composed of living men and women, extending respectively eastward, southward, westward, and northward, among the tribes of men who were urgently invited to unite with the league by laying their heads on the great white root nearest to them. It was further declared that should some enemy of this great tree of flesh and blood approach it and should drive his hatchet into one of its roots, blood indeed would flow from the wound, but it was said further that this strange tree through its orenda would cause that assailant to vomit blood before he could escape very far. In certain laws the federal chiefs are denominated standing trees, who as essential components of the great tree of the league are absorbed in it, symbolically, and who are thus said to have one head, one heart, one mind, one blood, and one dish of food.
The ties which unite a tribe with its gods—ties of faith and the bonds of duty and obligation of service which bind the persons of the tribe unitedly together, ties of blood and affinity—are the strongest operative among tribal men and women. Every undeveloped people or human brood of one blood and origin live under the direct care and special providence of its gods and so seeks to maintain, by suitable rite and ceremony, unbroken and intact relation and converse with them. From the legends and traditions of such a people it is learned that all that they have, all that they do ritually, and all that they know, they have received freely by the grace of their gods. The tribes of the Iroquois people were no exception to this rule.
In Iroquois polity there was a definite separation of purely civil from strictly religious affairs. So the office of civil chief was clearly marked off from that of prophet or priest, and in so far as an incumbent was concerned it was the gift of the suffrages of a definite group of his clanswomen, and so in no sense was it hereditary. The office was hereditary in the clan, and strictly speaking in some family line of the clan. The civil assembly, or the council of chiefs and elders or senators, was in no sense a religious gathering, notwithstanding the custom of opening it with a thanksgiving prayer in recognition of the Master of Life—a strictly religious act. The officers of the religious societies and assemblies were not the same as those who presided over the councils of chiefs. And it is noteworthy that a federal chief must not engage in warfare while clothed with the title and insignia of office; to do so he was required to resign his office of federal chief during his absence on the warpath.
There is a dualism in organization running through all public assemblies of the Iroquois peoples living under the earlier culture. It must be noted that this dual character of the tribal and league organization does not rest on blood ties or affinity, or on common religious rites, but rather on the motive to dramatize two dominant principles which appear to pervade and energize all observed sentient life. In short, this dualism is based primarily on certain mythic concepts regarding the source of life and the most effective means of conserving it on earth among men. Among the Iroquois people of to-day the knowledge of the reason for the persistent dual organization of tribe and league has been lost completely. But a painstaking analysis of rituals and of certain terms appearing in them gives us a trustworthy clue to the reason for a dualism in organization. The reason thus deduced is the need for embodying in the tribal organic unity the principles of the complementary sexes as organic factors in order to secure fertility and abundant progeny. In short, it was deemed imperative to recognize the male and female principles of the biotic world and all that such recognition implies—fatherhood and motherhood and the duties and obligations arising from these states, as defined in Iroquois thinking. This dualism makes the life of the father and the mother endure with that of the clan of which either is a member. The same is true of sonship and daughtership.