THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FIVE NATIONS 12/ 



It would be incompatible with the present purpose to describe all 

 the interesting men who there assembled, among whom were Cap- 

 tain Frost, Messrs Le Fort, Hill, John Jacket, Doctor Wilson and 

 others. We spent most of Tuesday, and indeed much of the time 

 during the other days of the week in conversation with the chiefs 

 and most intelligent Indians of the different nations, and gleaned 

 from them much information of the highest interest in relation to 

 the organization, government and laws, religion, customs of the 

 people, and characteristics of the great men, of the old and once 

 powerful confederacy. It is a singular fact, that the peculiar gov- 

 ernment and national characteristics of the Iroquois is a most inter- 

 esting field for research and inquiry, which has never been very 

 thoroughly, if at all, investigated, although the historic events which 

 marked the proud career of the confederacy, have been persever- 

 ingly sought and treasured up in the writings of Stone, Schoolcraft, 

 Hosmer, Yates and others. 



Many of the Indians speak English readily; but with the aid 

 and interpretations of Mr Ely S. Parker, a young Seneca of no 

 ordinary degree of attainment, in both scholarship and general in- 

 telligence, and who with Le Fort, the Onondaga, is well versed in 

 old Iroquois matters, we had no difificulty in conversing with any 

 and all we chose to. 



About midday on Wednesday, the council commenced. The 

 ceremonies with which it was opened and conducted were certainly 

 unique, almost indescribable; and as its proceedings were in the 

 Seneca tongue, they were in a great measure unintelligible, and in 

 fact profoundly mysterious to the pale faces. One of the chief 

 objects for which the council had been convoked, as has been 

 heretofore editorially stated in the American, was to fill two vacant 

 sachemships of the Senecas, which had been made by the death of 

 the former incumbents ; and preceding the installation of the can- 

 didates for the succession, there was a general and dolorous lament 

 for the deceased sachems, the utterance of which, together with 

 the repetition of the laws of the confederacy — the installation of 

 the new sachems — the impeachment and deposition of three un- 

 faithful sachems — the elevation of others in their stead, and the 

 performance of the various ceremonies attended upon these pro- 

 ceedings, consumed the principal part of the afternoon. 



At the setting of the sun, a beautiful repast, consisting of an 

 innumerable number of rather formidable looking chunks of boiled 

 fresh beef, and an abundance of bread and succotash, was brought 

 into the council house. The manner of saying grace on this 



