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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 78 



Alexander G. Smith, a Alohawk speaker and informant, Mr. Hewitt 

 obtained a fine Mohawk version and literal translation of the remark- 

 able Requickening Address of this famous Council. 



The psychological insight of the framers of this wonderful ritu- 

 alistic address is without question unsurpassed in any other composi- 

 tion of its kind in any other literature of the world. Its primary pur- 

 pose is to thwart the ultimate aim of Death — the ultimate destruction 



Fig. 233. — Mr. Joshua Buck, (obiit 1923), Onondaga-Tutelo, 

 Iroquoian stock, ritualist and native physician. 



of all living — and to restore the mental equipoise of one who has been 

 stricken with inconsolable grief through the loss of a kinsman or kins- 

 woman, or a beloved ruler, a chief, by the ruthless hand of Death. 

 One so stricken gives vent to extravagant expressions of grief and 

 sorrow, lasting weeks, and months and even years, by self-torture and 

 self-humiliation, by foregoing food and drink to the verge of starva- 

 tion, by denying himself the ordinary comforts and needs of life, and 

 even by sitting among the ashes of the hearth and casting" the ashes 

 and coals over his head and person, thus filling in time the eyes, the 



