﻿114 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 78 



ETHNOLOGICAL RESEARCHES AMONG THE IROQUOIS AND 



CHIPPEWA 



Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, ethnologist. Bureau of A.merican Ethnology, 

 left Washington in ]^Iay, 1925, for field duty and resumed his 

 studies among the Six Iroquois Nations or Tribes, namely, the 

 Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and the Tuscarora, 

 all dwelling on the Ilaldimand Crant on the Grand River in Ontario, 

 Canada. 



In previous years ]\Ir. Hewitt had recorded with great care from 

 the dictation of the most intelligent living statesmen, ritualists, and 

 counsellors, voluminous texts relating to the complex institutions 

 of the League. Because the war of the American Revolution had 

 badly disrupted the tribes of the League and the League itself, 

 Mv. Hewitt inevitably encountered variant versions of many por- 

 tions of the traditions, rituals, chants, and addresses relating to the 

 organization, constitution, ordinances, and regulations of the League, 

 and recorded these variant versions. In the furtherance of this 

 task, yir. Hewitt again took up the literary study, interpretation, 

 and translation of the texts embodying the laws, ordinances, and 

 the regulations, the chants and the rituals of condolence for the 

 dead rotiyoncr and koriti\aiicr (the native name of the federal coun- 

 sellors), and the installation of the rotiyancr and the kontiyancr 

 (elect) (who constituted the councils of the tribe and of the League, 

 in addition to the chiefs). The first is the masculine, and the second 

 the feminine, form of the nouiL 



The organic institutions of the League of the Iroquois for over 

 one hundred and fifty years have been subject to the action of 

 various destructive external and internal forces, and so it is that 

 many of the most distinctive institutions of the League have long 

 been inoperative through the failure of the leaders to execute them. 



The Governor General in Council by an Order in Council on 

 September 17. 1924, abrogated the organic institutions of the Cana- 

 dian part of the League. This crisis in the afl:'airs of these tribes 

 arose because the government of the League of the Iroquois had 

 become such a travesty of the complex institution established by 

 the great prophet-statesman, Deganawida, and his astute collabora- 

 tors, that it failed to function organically. 



By the aid of Mohaw^k informants, Mr. Hewitt was enabled to 

 resolve the lexical and the grammatic difficulties of the Mohawk 

 texts of certain important rituals of the Council of Condolence 

 for deceased rotiyancr and the installation of the rotiyancr elect 



