70 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1924 



terful hand of a prophet-statesman, he also graphically recapitulated 

 the work accomplished by the several co- working founders. 



Mr. Hewitt also translated from the Onondaga text the laws 

 first recognizing the extant institution of chieftainess in uterine 

 kindreds and then adopting it for the purpose of making it funda- 

 mental among the institutions of the League of the Iroquois, the laws 

 defining the duties, rights, and obligations of the incumbent of such 

 office and carefully prescribing the method by which a woman should 

 be nominated by the mothers of her own uterine kindred, the 

 method by which the choice should be confirmed, first by her own, 

 and then by sister, and then by cousin clans, and then finally how 

 this candidate should be installed at a federal council of condolence 

 and installation. These laws also prescribe the method by which 

 such chieftainess can, for cause, be deposed and a successor nomi- 

 nated and installed as prescribed by these laws; and they also pre- 

 scribe the method of nominating and installing the male aid to 

 the chieftainess, who must be a warrior and an orator to fulfill his 

 adjuvant duties. 



As a member of the United States Geographic Board, representing 

 thereon the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution, Mr. Hewitt has attended all regular and special meetings of 

 the board with a single exception. As custodian of manuscripts of 

 the Bureau of American Ethnology Mr. Hewitt reports that more 

 than 250 items were withdrawn and consulted by the various col- 

 laborators of the bureau and by other students. 



In past years, in studying the social and political institutions of 

 the Iroquoian peoples, especially of the Five (latterly Six) Nations 

 or Tribes, Mr. Hewitt has spent a number of field seasons in carefully 

 collecting and recording in native texts from the best available 

 leadei^, chieftains, chieftainesses, ritualists, and ceremonialists, 

 chiefly in the Mohawk, Onondaga, and Cayuga dialects, extensive 

 material and data concerning the principles, the laws, decrees and 

 ordinances of the instituting councils, the set rituals, the prescribed 

 chants, and the ceremonial addresses, which together defined the 

 functioning apparatus of the great commonwealth, commonly called 

 the League or Confederation of the Iroquois. Mr. Hewitt has under- 

 taken to subject, so far as possible, this text material to a careful 

 literary and historical analysis and also to a thorough grammatic 

 and lexic criticism, in order to restore as far 'as the evidence thus 

 secured will warrant, these rituals and chants and set addresses to 

 the earlier forms which were probably used when the League of the 

 Iroquois was instituted in the closing decades of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury. This work is necessarily tedious and slow but is of supreme 

 necessity. The results thus far are highly gratifying. 



