XIV FOREWORD 



the latter is being clarified. A chronology appears in Bureau of 

 American Ethnology Bulletin 180 (ibid., p. 259). Fen ton has de- 

 termined the geographical position of the Iroquois League in relation 

 to surrounding Algonquians and other Iroquoian tribes. He has 

 studied the politics and movements of the League members — ^Seneca, 

 Cajruga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora — ^and the effects 

 of the religious reforms by the Seneca prophet. Handsome Lake 

 (Fenton, 1940; Fenton and Gulick, eds., 1961). Other writers have 

 made more special studies of these reforms, as Deardorff (1951, 

 pp. 77-107) and Wallace (1961, pp. 139-151), with comments by 

 Chafe (1961 a, pp. 153-157). 



Coldspring longhouse is close to the home of Handsome Lake on 

 Cornplanter Reservation, and it immediately felt the impact of his 

 revelation. Also, it harbored Quaker missionaries, who influenced 

 the Seneca reforms. Allegany Reservation stretches along the 

 picturesque oxbow of the Allegheny River, on both sides of modern 

 Salamanca and to the Pennsylvania State line southwest of that city. 

 Most of the homes and the longhouse are situated on the highway 

 north of Quaker Bridge. Tourists passing in automobiles and visitors 

 to the Allegany State Park are little aware of the unique proceedings 

 in the longhouse, which has the appearance of a grange hall. Tona- 

 wanda Reservation, in a more secluded location near Akron, N.Y., has 

 been a stronghold of conservative adherents. When delegates from all 

 longhouses hold their fall Six Nations meetings, they always start at 

 Tonawanda and proceed from there. 



The reforms of Handsome Lake made some major adjustments to 

 the encroaching White culture and religion. WhUe the ancient animal 

 medicine rites were temporarily displaced, the four rituals to the 

 Creator formed the ceremonial core. Certain rites had to shift from 

 obsolescent functions, as hunt and war, to cure. Others, notably 

 the agricultural rites, remained. So did mutual aid and singing 

 societies. The longhouse religion has combined such flexibility with 

 preservation of the essence of the ritual. The persistence is at least 

 in part due to the Iroquois organizational genius; . . . "their tendency 

 to systematize the elements of their culture into great institutional 

 showpieces is what has given their culture stability over the years" 

 (Fenton and Gulick, eds., 1961, p. 260). 



The native social organization has remained, but entirely in a ritual 

 capacity. It presents two interlocking dichotomies, an interaction 

 of moiety and sex. Fenton (1936) has discussed the religious organiza- 

 tion of the officials who are keepers of Handsome Lake's Code and 

 their assistants who control the present longhouse centers. He has 

 also analyzed the moiety structure and tabulated the clans that remain 

 active in the moieties (1951 a, p. 50). At Coldspring, Moiety I 



