SENECA FICTION, LEGENDS, AND MYTHS 



Collected by Jeremiah Curtin and J. N. B. Hewitt; edited by J. N. B. Hewitt 



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INTRODUCTION 



The Seneca 



HE following brief description of the Seneca is taken, with 

 slight alterations, from the article on that tribe in the Hand- 

 book of American Indians : 



The Seneca (=Place of the Stone) are a noted and intiuential tribe of the 

 Iroquois, or the so-called Fire Nations of New York. When first known they 

 occupied a region in central New York, lying between the western watershed 

 of the Genesee r. and tlie lands of the Cayuga about Seneca lake, having their 

 council fire at Tsonontowan, near Naples, in Ontario co. After the political 

 destruction of the Erie and Neuters, about the middle of the 17th cen- 

 tury, the Seneca and other Iroquois people carried their settlements west- 

 ward to L. Erie and southward along the Alleghany into Pennsylvania. They 

 are now settled chiefly on the Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Tonawanda res., N. Y., 

 and some live on Grand River res., Ontario. Various local bands have been 

 known as Buffalo. Tonawanda, and Cornplanter Indians; and the Mingo, for- 

 merly in Ohio, have become officially known as Seneca from the large number 

 of that tribe among them. 



In the third quarter of the 16th century the Seneca was the last but one of 

 the Iroquois tribes to give its suffrage In favor of the abolition of murder and 

 war, the suppression of cannibalism, and the establishment of the principles 

 upon which the League of the Iroquois was founded. However, a large division 

 of the tribe did not adopt at once the course of the main body, but, on obtain- 

 ing coveted privileges and prerogatives, the recalcitrant body was admitted as a 

 constituent member in the structure of the League. The two chiefships last 

 added to the quota of the Seneca were admitted on condition of their exercising 

 functions belonging to a sergeant-at-arms of a modern legislative body as well 

 as those belonging to a modern secretary of state for foreign affairs, in addition 

 to their duties as federal chieftains; indeed, they became the warders of the 

 famous " Great Black Doorway " of the League of the Iroquois, called 

 Kfi'nho'hwddji'gn'nd' by the Onondaga. 



In historical times the Seneca have been by far the most populous of the five 

 tribes originally compo.sing the League of the Iroquois. The Seneca belong in 

 the federal organization to the tribal phratry known by the political name 

 H(>n<Jonn'is"lu"'. meaning, ' they are clansmen of the fathers,' of which the 

 Mohawk are the other member, when the tribes are organized as a federal 

 council ; but when ceremonially organized the Onondaga also belong to this 

 phratry. In the federal council the Seneca are represented by eight 

 federal chiefs, but two of these were added to the original six present 



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