104 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



There are certain Iroquoian traditions that seem to have good 

 foundation, relating that at a certain period all the Iroquois were 

 one people, living together and speaking the same tongue. Indeed 

 so positive were the Iroquois of this that they could point out a 

 certain woman and say that she represented the lineal descendent of 

 the first Iroquoian family. Yet the confederate Iroquois knew that 

 she did not belong in the five tribes. She was a Neuter woman. 

 " When the bands divided/' the tradition runs, " it was found that 

 the family of Djigonsase (Fat Face or Wild Cat) fell to the Neuter 

 Nation." She was called Ye-gowane, The Great Woman, and she 

 was " the mother of the nations." In the Dekanawida-Hiawatha 

 tradition, a woman with this title is represented as being constantly 

 consulted by both Hiawatha and Dekanawida. The latter was a 

 Wyandot (Ouendat) from the Bay of Quinte, at the head of Lake 

 Ontario. This points to an early recognition of blood relationship 

 and a recollection of the time when the Erie, Neuter, Huron, Seneca 

 and Mohawk Onondaga were of one common tribe, a fact that 

 archeology and philology, of course, definitely prove. 



In this original tribe any culture revolution would definitely 

 influence the various subdivisions and be carried by each as it sepa- 

 rated eventually from the parent body. Constant intercourse would 

 serve to preserve the culture until it became fixed. Now, assuming 

 for the sake of argument that there was an " original tribe " and 

 that a revolution did take place in the decorative art of the Huron- 

 Iroquois, whence did that tribe come and when did its arts 

 change? Traditions, again, point to a migration from the "south- 

 west. Ethnologists are familiar with the Delaware Walum Olum, 

 but few are familiar with Iroquois migration myths for the reason 

 that they are few and those brief and difficult to recognize as such. 1 

 So many of the Iroquois (confederated) myths point to the south- 

 west country, however, that we must pause to consider just why 

 they have been handed down. We must ask why the " tree of the 

 long swordlike leaves," is mentioned so often in the Dekanawida 

 epic, and why so learned an Iroquois as Dr Peter Wilson called it a 

 " palm tree." We must consider why so many Iroquois expeditions 

 were directed against enemies down the Ohio and on the Mississippi. 

 We must consider, too, a certain alleged grammatical resemblance 

 between the Caddoan languages and the Iroquoian. Perhaps all 

 these considerations will be termed fanciful and lacking serious 



1 We place no credence in the Ctisick account as embraced in his " Sketches 

 of the Ancient History of the Six Nations." 



