THE " LEAGUE OF NATIONS " OF THE IROQUOIS 

 INDIANS IN CANADA 



By J. N. B. HEWITT, 

 Ethnologist, Bureau of Atiicrica): Etiinoknjy 



The Indians of the Six Nations of the Iroquois dwelHng in Ontario, 

 Canada, and in the State of New York formed the subject of my field 

 researches during the summer of 1929. My first and longest stop was 

 in the city of Brantford, Ontario. Canada, situated several miles 

 westward from the Grant of land to the Six Nations. Assisted by 

 an Onondaga and a Cayuga informant my first work was a critical 

 revision of the Onondaga texts of nine myths relating to the Air or 

 Wind Gods. This study yielded satisfactory results, not only in the 

 matter of translation and interpretation, but as well in the recovery 

 of the personage of the Echo God, dc'liofda, and also that of the 

 Whistling God, Djinaga"iJia, as other members of the aerial hierarchy 

 of Iroquoian mythic thought. From a capalile informant, Chief John 

 Buck, Jr., an Onondaga-Tutelo mixed blood, I recorded in Onondaga 

 text a most interesting historical tradition detailing the northward mi- 

 gration of the Tutelo (Siouan) tril)e from its southern habitat in 

 Virginia and North Carolina to the country of the Cayuga in what is 

 now the State of New York and the negotiations preceding it. This 

 tradition is of unusual interest because it embodies references to a 

 number of customs and especially intertribal amenities at an early day 

 and customary precautions taken for such a journey of a tribal people 

 through the lands of other hostile peoples. Among the Iroquois simi- 

 lar historical traditions are conspicuous by their very paucity. The 

 only other tradition of this character recorded in native text is the 

 one I obtained detailing the life of the great Iroquois statesman. 

 Deganawida, and his part in the founding of the League of the 

 Iroquois. 



In 1898 Mr. Seth Newhouse, then a Mohawk Chief, had completed 

 the collection of a considerable amount of imdigested material relat- 

 ing to the laws and structure of the League of the Iroquois, upon 

 which he had earnestly worked without compensation more than 20 

 years. He had undertaken this arduous task, however, at the sugges- 

 tion of the Council of the Six Nations of Ohsweken, Canada. In this 

 undertaking Chief Newhouse, preeminently a master of his mother 

 tongue, the Mohawk, made a most serious mistake by recording the 



