538 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



Deganawida having descended from the top of the lodge went 

 forward to meet his host. Because of his recent experience Hia- 

 watha was very much pleased to have a guest who brought him the 

 wonderful message of peace and righteousness and power. The 

 result of this conference was the conversion of Hiawatha to the 

 reform program of Deganawida and his agreement to aid in the 

 work of bringing about the change in the attitude and relation of 

 men one to another. 



According to tradition, Deganawida gave him his name after his 

 conversion, and Hiawatha became a loyal and enthusiastic disciple 

 of Deganawida and gave up everything in order to devote all his 

 energies and time to the work of establishing the projected league 

 or confederation of peoples in accordance with the principles ex- 

 pounded by Deganawida. He indeed undertook several very impor- 

 tant missions for his great teacher and acquited himself with great 

 credit. 



The most effective and unscrupulous opposition the two reformers 

 encountered in their work came from the noted Onondaga chief, 

 Atotarho (Wat'atotarho), a wizard and sorcerer who was feared 

 far and near, who, during the years in which the league was being 

 brought into being, removed by secret means, it is said, the seven 

 daughters (some versions say three) and then the wife of Hiawatha, 

 his opponent. 



No place is given by tradition as Hiawatha's birthplace, although 

 some analysts declare that he was a half-brother of the fierce chief- 

 tain Atotarho (Watatotarho), of the Onondaga, his pitiless antag- 

 onist. 



This tradition assjerts that he lived among the Mohawk and mar- 

 ried the daughter of a chief there and that he himself became a chief 

 among these people. His name is still on the list of titles of federal 

 Mohawk chiefs. 



In the other version of the tradition of the founding of the league 

 of the Iroquois Hiawatha is treated as the chief actor in the con- 

 ception and establishment of this confederacy instead of the real 

 founder, Deganawida. But from a careful survey of the narrative 

 of events herein this version is found to be much less faithful to facts 

 than the one first mentioned. 



It appears that in this tradition the several missions upon which 

 his mentor, Deganawida, sent him, were fused together in such wise 

 as to make them merely a series of events or episodes in a single 

 journey of Hiawatha, which he was alleged to have made in despair, 

 going directly southward from the Onondaga council lodge ; on this 

 journey he was said to " have split the sky," meaning merely that he 

 took' a course directly south. Herein, too, he fled from Onondaga 



