ADMINISTRATIVE EEPORT. 15 



200 numbered explanatory notes and read also 632 pages of 

 the first and second revises for this same report, of which 

 100 pages are in native text with interlinear translations. 



During May and June, 1918, Mr. Hewitt was engaged in 

 field work in Ontario, Canada, among the Indians of the Six 

 Nations of Iroquois. He took up the work in textual and 

 literary criticism of the many texts he has recorded relating 

 directly to the institution of the federation or league of 

 the five tribes or nations in earlier field operations. 



By far the largest, and also the most trustworthy, part of 

 these texts was recorded from the dictation of one of the 

 best-informed ritualists and expounders of the league, but 

 much additional and supplementary matter in the form of 

 texts was recorded from the dictation of other informants 

 who had the reputation in the community of being authori- 

 ties in regard to the motives and plans of the founders of 

 the federation or league and the decrees and ordinances pro- 

 mulgated by them; but as these texts were given from 

 memory it was inevitable that some of the most important 

 details of the structure and working apparatus of the league 

 have not been remembered with the same fidelity by different 

 persons, and so various views and statements concerning 

 the same subject matter are found. The problem for the 

 student, then, is to ascertain by an adequate investigation 

 upon what facts these conflicting views and statements were 

 originally based. The vocabulary of the national terms 

 employed is that of statecraft and ritualism — the utterances 

 of the statesmen and stateswomen of that earlier time, who 

 had clear visions of institutions which are to-day being for- 

 mulated and written into the statutes of our great republic. 

 Among these may l^e mentioned the recall, the initiative, 

 the referendum, a full-fledged colonial poUcy, and woman 

 suffrage (limited to mothers), men having no voice in the 

 body which nominates their chiefs. 



It is well-nigh impossible to find an interpreter among the 

 Iroquois who is such a master of both the English and the 

 native Iroquoian languages as to be able to translate cor- 

 rectly a large number of the most important native terms into 



