528 ANNUAL. REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



jurisdiction he or she belonged, and that every person when beyond 

 the limits of his or her tribe's protection was an outlaw, and com- 

 mon game for the few who still indulged in the horrid appetite of 

 cannibalism. So that the doctrine of the founders of the league that 

 all persons by adopting their formulae could forego the shedding 

 of human blood and become related as " fathers " and " mothers " 

 and "sons" and "daughters," in the terms of Iroquoian kinship and 

 affinity, was revolutionary and most disturbing from the viewpoint 

 of this intense tribalism. It was the central teaching of Deganawida, 

 the great statesman and lawgiver of the Iroquois people in the six- 

 teenth century, that out of the union of a common motherhood and 

 a common fatherhood arise the daughtership of all women and 

 the sonship of all men, and the rich fellowship of all mankind. 



The establishment of the league of the five Iroquois tribes in the 

 closing decades of the sixteenth century was in large measure not 

 only a drastic reformation but also an experiment. Avowedly it 

 was designed as an institution for the extension and preservation 

 of peace and equity and righteousness among all men; and it made 

 a fundamental departure from the practice of the past in completely 

 excluding in so far as terms go the military power from participa- 

 tion in the conduct of purely civil affairs. 



When using the terms war and warfare, it must be remembered 

 that while they denoted defensive, apprehensive, and offensive strife, 

 and the mood and the means (the weapons belonging thereto), 

 they did not imply the war and warfare waged by a military State, 

 a body of soldiers, drilled and regimented and organized independ- 

 ently of the civil body. There were, strictly speaking, no armies 

 among tribal men; only the beginnings, the more or less developed 

 germs of these things. There were, indeed, groups of fighters who 

 were regimented and organized, not in a practical or rational 

 manner and mood, but in accordance with mythical and sociological 

 conceptions and predispositions, and strictly with relation to their 

 kinship status, individually and severally, in the tribal organization 

 to which they belonged. For every tribe, great or small, or group 

 of tribes, was, exclusive of the women and the children, an inchoate, 

 undifferentiate army, a group of instant or else actual fighters. 



For like reasons there was no State religion, where all forms and 

 moods of it were tolerated and practised. 



At the period of the formation of the league and for at least 75 

 years afterwards these five tribes, thus united, were surrounded by 

 a number of powerful and hostile tribes, nearly all of which were 

 cognate with them in speech. On the St. Lawrence River, ap- 

 proximately on the present sites of the cities, Montreal and Quebec, 

 dwelt two strong Huron tribes. On the upper Ottawa River were 

 the Algonquin and their congeners. Around Lake Simcoe were two 



