462 IROQtTOIAN COSMOLOGT (eth. ann.43 



brought five small cannon. For the use of this mission the French 

 Governor Lauson, April 12, 1656, granted to the Jesuit Fathers "10 

 leagues of space in every direction, to wit, 10 leagues of front and 10 

 leagues in depth, and in the place where they shall choose to establish 

 themselves in the country of the Upper Iroquois called Onondagero- 

 nons, be it in the town or near the town of Onondage, or at Gan- 

 nentae . . . the said place to the extent of 10 leagues square is to be 

 possessed by the said reverend Jesuit Fathers, their successors and 

 assigns, in freehold forever." This grant was made evidently without 

 the knowledge or the consent of the Onondaga and without any com- 

 pensation or emolument to them, a course of procedure quite in con- 

 trast with that of the Dutch and the English colonists in New York, 

 but, on the other hand, in close accord with the policy of Governor 

 Winthrop, of Massachusetts, tersely expressed in the formula that 

 "If we leave them sufficient for their use we may lawfully take the 

 rest, there being more than enough for them and us." This doctrine 

 was embodied into law by the General Court of Massachusetts in 

 1633, justifying its action by Biblical citations. 



From the Jesuit Relations it is learned that under the operation 

 of the principle of conferring citizenship by adoption into some 

 definite stream of kinship common to the Iroquois state, there were 

 colonized at Onondaga in 1658 persons and families from at least 

 seven different alien tribes. 



According to the same authority (Thwaites ed., lxvi, 203, 1900) 

 the Jesuit missions to the Onondaga and the Seneca were abandoned 

 in 1709, and in 1711 a French expedition built a blockhouse at 

 Onondaga 24 J/^ feet long and 18 feet wide, which Peter Schuyler 

 ordered destroyed along with other building material, as "there was 

 other wood ready to build a chappell." (In N. Y. Doc. Col. Hist., 

 V, 249, 1855.) Father Jean de Lamberville (Jes. Rel., Thwaites ed., 

 LXii, 1900) wrote of the Onondaga village of 1682 the following 

 interesting facts: "I found on my arrival the Iroquois of this town 

 occupied in transporting their corn, their effects, and their lodges to 

 a situation 2 leagues from their former dwelling place, where they 

 have been for 19 years. They made this change in order to have 

 nearer to them the convenience of firewood and fields more fertile 

 than those they abandoned." This was probably the town visited 

 by Greenhalgh in 1677. 



The League of the Iroquois had no chief magistrate or so-called 

 head chief. Each tribal council was composed of both Federal and 

 tribal chiefs, one of whom, usually a Federal chief, was the Fire- 

 keeper, like a speaker of a modern assembly, among whose duties it 

 was to open and close the sessions of the Council by an appropriate 

 and largely prescribed address. There were in each tribal council 

 chiefs whose office was not hereditary, but who through merit had 



