The "Green Corn Festival" was held when the season had so far advanced that the corn was ready to be used as roasting ears. The old women decided when this time had come, and none might partake of the corn until the festival had proceeded to the proper stage. This was a time of returning to the Great Spirit their thanks for his goodness, and the festivities lasted several days. They were wild and uncouth, of course, but the participants had faith that these ceremonies were pleasing to the Great Spirit. The revelry was conducted in a prescribed form that probably did not change for centuries. In the midst of one of the dances peculiar to the "Green Corn Festival" the oldest sachem of the tribe gave utterance to a prayer of thanksgiving, which has been translated as follows:
Great Spirit in the Happy Hunting-Grounds, listen to our words. We have assembled to perform a sacred duty as thou hast commanded and which has been performed by our fathers since thou taught them to observe this festival. We salute thee with our thanks that thou hast caused our supporters to yield abundant harvest.
Great Spirit, our words continue to flow towards thee. Preserve us from all danger. Preserve our aged men. Preserve our mothers. Preserve our warriors. Preserve our children. Preserve our old men that they may remember all that thou hast told them. Preserve our young men and give them strength to celebrate with pleasure thy sacred festival.
Great Spirit, the council of thy people here assembled, the men and women with many winters on their heads, the strong warriors, the women and children, unite their voices in thanksgiving to thee.
The "Harvest Festival" was held a few weeks afterwards and was similar in character, though not considered of so much importance as the "Green Corn Festival."
Some time during the winter was held the "White Dog Dance." This, however, was not of so ancient an origin as the other festivals and was probably a superstition promulgated by some of the great "medicine men" within the last two hundred and fifty years. Evil spirits that might have been driven into the houses of the Indians by the cold, were induced by various ceremonies to enter the body of a white dog or gray fox that was led from house to house for that purpose. Then, with due ceremony, the animal was killed and the bad spirits cremated with the body—the jaws having been tied together so that the spirits could not escape through its mouth, into which they had entered.
The Indians had numerous other ceremonial dances and any number of social dances—more than any other race of people, for they had few other amusements—but those enumerated above were the only strictly religious festivals. These were in every sense reverential, devotional and inspired by faith. The red men believed that if they observed them according to ancient customs and usages it would please the Great Spirit and that he would eventually take them all to the Happy Hunting-Grounds. While they clearly believed in an immortal life and in the resurrection of the body, they had no belief whatever in the infliction of future punishment, other than that experienced by the hunter whose arrows could not procure the game he coveted and trailed in the land where game abounded forever.
Had these people, possessing (as they most certainly did) a religion combining so many of the elements of the Christian religion, been discovered by any one of the enlightened nations of the present day instead of by the intolerant and greedy bigots of four hundred years ago, their history would not have been written with so many sad scenes for illustrations.
About the year 1800 a new religion was revealed to the members of the Iroquois then residing in New York State, and as it is what is now known as the Pagan belief, it may be well to describe it briefly. At that time there was living on Cornplanter Island, in the State of Pennsylvania, a half-brother of Cornplanter and Blacksnake by a common father—Abeel, the white trader. His name was Handsome Lake (Ga-ne-o-di-yo), and he was born near the site of the village of Avon, N. Y., in 1735, and died in 1815 at Onondaga when on a pastoral visit to that nation. His life had been spent mainly in dissipation, and in his old age he fell ill and was not expected to live from day to day. One night he sent his daughter to summon his renowned brothers to his bedside, as he was convinced that his end was drawing near. His brothers reached the house shortly after daylight and found Handsome Lake at some distance from the hut, apparently dead. They carried him in and had commenced to make preparations for the funeral, when suddenly he revived, sat upright and commenced to talk very strangely. He recovered rapidly and at his urgent request a council of his people was summoned to meet at Cornplanter, and to this assembly he revealed all that had befallen him.
His revelations soon became the religion of the Iroquois and may be considered their creed at the present time. Handsome Lake journeyed from tribe to tribe and taught the new faith till his death, fifteen years after. He was regarded as a second Hiawatha and had wonderful influence. After his death other teachers took his place and continued to expound the new faith as nearly as possible in the exact words of him to whom it was believed to have been first revealed. Unlike modern theologians, they made no attempt to put their views and ideas ahead of the original revelation, for they commenced each new section of the long and tedious recital with the words, "Thus said Handsome Lake," and they followed him as closely as possible, both in words and gestures. They did not add to or take away—they simply repeated. The last great follower of Handsome Lake was his grandson (Sase-ha-wa), known to the whites as Jimmy Johnson, who died about 1830. About the middle of August, 1894, a grand council of the chiefs was held at Onondaga, and on that occasion these traditions were revived, several days being spent in the work.