Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3

by James Athearn Jones

But, if this region was singular in its formation, it was not less so in the character and manners of the tribe by which it was peopled. They claimed direct descent from the Great Spirit—the Creator of the world. Regarding themselves as his offspring, they deemed themselves the especial objects of his fatherly care. Deeply possessed with a sense of this superhuman relation, it will not be matter of surprise to my brothers that they should refer to it all the more important events of their lives, and that it should impart its influence even to the minuter circumstances of their daily intercourse both with strangers and with each other. From their belief of their relationship to the Good Spirit, they were a good people. Hence they were, according to their crude notions of religion, strictly a religious people; and, although they worshipped the supposed founder of their race, rather with the qualified adoration that one pays to a good father watching over, and guiding from his dwelling among the stars, the destinies of his earthly children; and, although they were insensible to the deep and humble devotion, and piety, which belong to the worshippers of the same Being in the land of the pale-faces; yet was their superstition free from much of the grossness in which the idolatry of the people of the wilderness is usually buried. Their idols and images were indeed numerous and of rude workmanship, but, like the images before whom kneel no small portion of the people of the land which was mine, they were professed to be worshipped only as the visible representations of invisible spirits. Human sacrifices were not known among them—for they rightly held that the Great Spirit was a kind and affectionate Father, and could not delight in the shedding of the blood of his children, or seeing them sacrificed on his peaceful altars. They had numerous fasts and feasts, but they were accompanied by no cruel rites. Those who presided over the religious ceremonies and observances of this simple people, united, as is usual among most, if not all unenlightened nations, the character and office of priest and prophet—of expounders of visions and dreams—and had the ordering of fasts in the acceptable manner, and at the proper time. They were few in number, and universally revered, beloved, and feared. Their influence and authority were felt in every cabin in the nation. No restraint being imposed upon them, as it is upon the priests in the City of the Rock, they had no inclination to impose any unnatural restraint upon others. Assailed by no external temptations to indulgence themselves, their prohibitions were limited to the very few gratifications that are inconsistent with the habits of Indian life. Avarice was a passion of which neither they nor their tribe had, as yet, felt the influence. All things were in common; and individual appropriation of property was unknown. The "strong waters" of the white man, the fire which hath eaten into the bowels of the race of the red man, had not yet diffused their poison, and drunkenness was a vice of which these people did not understand the meaning. A moral influence over the minds of their tribe was the only distinction to which the priests of Onondaga had aspired. This influence they sought to attain, not by inflicting penance upon the people, but by pretending to immediate intercourse and communication with the Great Spirit. Reverencing that Spirit, these good sons of the forest could not forbear to respect the channels through which his wise and benevolent communications were made.

Not only did these priests of the Manitou direct the devotions of the people, and convey to them the responses of the same mighty Being in times of peril, but won their love and confidence by professing to heal their maladies. Identified with them in their ordinary pursuits, they were, on common occasions, distinguished from them in exterior decoration only by a bone which they wore on the left arm, like a bracelet, just above the wrist, and by the method of arranging their hair. On their bracelets were carved, in rude outline, the representations of certain beasts; and on that of the eldest of the prophets were other cabalistic inscriptions, of which none but the wearers themselves could penetrate the meaning. Their hair, instead of hanging loosely over their foreheads and shoulders, as was usual with their tribe, in common with the other red men of the forest, was collected into a roll at the top of the head, and tied round with a string of red wampum, its extremities being suffered to fall on either side, as nature or accident might dispose it. When they would intercede with the Great Spirit, or know his will by divination, they assumed other dresses; the skins of bears or buffaloes, or mantles curiously woven of feathers. They usually dwelt together on a sort of consecrated ground, set apart for their special accommodation, and which was as unlike the rest of the valley, as the valley itself was unlike the ordinary conformation of the earth. The allotted ground, or space set apart for their use, was called The Prophets' Plain, and was situated on a projecting declivity of the western side of this beautiful glen, whose banks, although they presented, as they opened and widened to the north, a regular outline, were, nevertheless, varied in their actual surface by occasional deviations and sinuosities, arising as well from the unexplainable curvatures of its original structure, as from the narrow, deep ravines, that had been worn by the autumn floods and perennial streamlets from the adjacent hills. In like manner the surface of the bed of the valley was subject to frequent inequalities, produced, perhaps, by the nature of the soil on which it rested. It was formed of a soft stone and a hard stone. Where the latter prevailed, the surface was usually more elevated and undulating than where the former was found; and of that description was the spot appropriated to the prophets of Onondaga. It was situated about half a day's journey up the valley from the lake, and was sufficiently elevated above the circumjacent level to command a view of the broad bosom of the Ontario over the tops of the forest. Along its outer extremity glided the beautiful stream of the glen. Upon one side of the plain, where it was united to the hills, were the cabins of the prophets.

The whole range of the valley, including its bed, and steep lofty sides, was overspread with a dark and umbrageous forest. With this circumstance, the few scattered patches appropriated to the cultivation of maize, and "the openings," as they are denominated in the western world, present a problem of no very easy solution. They are unique in the vegetable kingdom, being midway between the nakedness of a prairie and the thick gloom of a wilderness. The few scattered trees that grow upon them are uniformly oak. They are separated from each other at unequal distances, but are rarely less than sixty yards apart. They do not shoot up to a lofty height, and destitute of branches like the tenants of the thick woods, but bow their heads, and spread their arms, as if conscious of their dependence upon the precarious charity of a long-cultivated country. Beneath them grows a coarse thin grass; but they are never encumbered with the shrubs and underwood that usually form very serious obstacles in the way of the forest traveller. The Prophets' Plain was the only exception. Along the junction of the plain with the western hill, its margin was thickly set with stunted pines, hemlocks, cedars, and, beneath, tangled briars. No one ventured to penetrate these sacred recesses, for there were extended, near the inner border, the few scattered wigwams of the prophets. Such was the character and description of the plain where the religious ceremonies of the Onondagas were performed, and where their council fires were lighted.

In the interval of eighteen seasons, that had rolled away since the erection of the fortress at Oswego, the character of the red men of the valley had undergone a great and disastrous change.

From the most peaceable, inoffensive, and happy, of all the sons of the forest, they had become the most dissolute, quarrelsome, and drunken. They were constantly seen about the villages of the whites begging, bartering every thing they possessed, and performing every drudgery, however servile or degrading, for the strong waters of the pale-face. The free and lofty spirit that once animated the nation was gone; a spirit which, though it had not been often aroused to action, was yet susceptible of the highest efforts of Indian heroism. Their encounters with the neighbouring tribes had not been frequent, yet, when they did take place, the Onondagas had displayed a spirit of intrepid daring, of craft, of patience, and of hardihood in suffering, that had seldom been surpassed among the nations of the forest. But now the spirit of the tribe was broken, and they were no longer numbered among the fierce resenters of wrong. The Oneidas trespassed upon their hunting-grounds and slaughtered their people, yet their warriors were too debased and abject to avenge the insult, or wipe away the memory of their wrongs with blood. They were, evidently, hastening to ruin. Their numbers were rapidly diminishing, as well from the usual effects of intoxication as from the exposures and accidents to which they were subjected from its influence; and, more than all, from the constant quarrels and murders which daily took place among them. In a few more years, if the course they then pursued had been continued, the whole tribe must have become utterly extinct; their name existing but in the recollection of the story-teller, and the green turf alone marking the lands they once inhabited. It fortunately happened, however, at the period alluded to, that the prophets, together with a few of the elder chiefs, who had stood aloof from the contaminating influence of the white men, were enabled to arouse the almost extinguished energy of the people, so far as to assemble them round a council-fire, that was lighted at early dawn one frosty morning, in the Moon of Falling Leaves, on the Prophets' Plain. The whole tribe was called together. A solemn gravity, even beyond the ordinary measure of Indian deliberation, sat upon the countenance of each chief and prophet, indicating that matters of high importance were impending. These sat in a circle around the great fire, their eyes cast upon the earth, and all silent as a grove of oaks in a calm morning. Without the circle of chiefs and prophets stood promiscuously grouped the remainder of the tribe—men, women, and children—all discovering more than common anxiety to learn the reason of the extraordinary call.

But let me not anticipate the circumstances that attended, nor the events that followed, the Warning of Tekarrah[48], as recited by Wonnehush, chief of the Onondagas.

From a remote corner of the camp, this aged man intimated an intention to speak. A deep silence pervaded the whole crowd, and every eye was fixed upon him. After a short pause, he slowly rose, and cast an anxious eye around the room in which the fire was lighted. But his eye, although it retained proof of its former power and lustre, had now become dim with age. His furrowed brow, his whitened locks, and bended form, once as straight as the arrow that sped from his youthful bow, evinced the ravages which time had made on his noble form. Yet his voice was still strong and clear. At length, adjusting the folds of his blanket, he stretched forth his withered arm, and, with the dignity of one from the Land of Souls, and with all the eloquence of his race, thus addressed the wandering inmates of the camp:—

Brothers, shall Wonnehush tell you a lie? No! Let the white man, whose heart is the heart of a fawn, and whose ways are the ways of the serpent, let him speak with a forked tongue. It is for him that lives in great towns, and buys his bread by selling strong waters, to poison the red men—it is for him to deal in lies. The red man hunts the buffalo, and traps the beaver in the woods that were given him by the Great Spirit. He crosses the big mountain, and enters the deep valleys beyond it, and no man dares to stop his path. He has a great heart, and scorns to tell a lie. Hear, then, the words of Wonnehush!

Brothers, I am an oak of the forest. The snows of a hundred winters have fallen on my branches. Once the tree was covered with green leaves, but they have dropped at my side, and the sap, which once made the tree strong and flourishing, has left the trunk, and the moisture has decayed from my roots.

Brothers, I am an aged, a very aged man. I can no longer bend the bow of my youth, and my tomahawk falls short of its death-mark. But my ears have been open, and my tongue can repeat to you the traditions of the valley. Listen to the chief of Onondaga, and believe the words he will tell you, for he never spoke other than the truth. He never in youth had a forked tongue, or a faint heart, and why should he bear them now?