FIELD-WORK AMONG THE IROQUOIS INDIANS OF 

 NEW YORK AND CANADA 



By J. N. B. HEWITT 

 Ethnologist, Bureau of American Ethnology 



To resume his ethnological studies among the members of the 

 former Six Nations of Iroquois Indians dwelling on the Grand River 

 Grant, near Brantford, Ontario, Canada, and in New York State, the 

 writer left Washington in May, 1932. His researches began with a 

 study of the present status and effectiveness of the clan form of 

 governmental organization, based as it is on the fundamental unit of 

 blood kinship, the ohwachira (or uterine brood or family), for with- 

 out the integrity of this organic unit the Iroquois clan cannot function 

 normally, if at all. And the structure of which it is an organic unit 

 becomes inevitably disorganized as a consequence. 



This slow process of disintegration of the organic units of the in- 

 stitutions of the League of the Iroquois was long manifest to people 

 and leaders, but no one was inspired to devise and to apply remedial 

 measures to check the decay and to reconstitute the ancient integrity of 

 these forms of discipline. The result was inevitable. There came a 

 day when form and spirit had left the regulations, the ordinances, and 

 the laws of the League, and so only futile and clumsy substitutes were 

 unwittingly put forward, and the process of disintegration was not 

 checked. The people murmured, and among them dissentions grew 

 apace, and bitter factional struggles became frequent, often resulting 

 in violence. As a result the Canadian Government found it necessary 

 to end this intolerable condition by abrogating the institutions of the 

 League of the Iroquois in 1924. The discipline and authority of the 

 ohwachira and the clan have become quite forgotten and so today do 

 not maintain any effective guidance in social and political affairs 

 on any Iroquois reservation. 



Before the institution of the League of the Iroquois by Deganawida 

 and his co-workers, blood feuds, maintained and governed by the 

 grim law of requital in kind, commonly called the lex talionis, were 

 causing untold grief and haunting fears among the people by the 

 multiplying deaths of blood kindred, which checked any rapid in- 

 crease of population. Deganawida and his astute advisers, realizing 

 that no community or organized society can prosper and be contented 

 living under such ill-omened conditions, enacted the law of atonement 



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