102 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



The writer at one time showed some of the Lafitau drawings of 

 Iroquoian villages to Edward Cornplanter, a Seneca Indian, who was 

 a tribal authority on the modern religious ceremonies of his tribe. 

 " Our people never lived that way," he said. In this it is seen that 

 the Iroquois of today have totally forgotten their early fortifications 

 and architecture, though Cusick in 1825 wrote of '* forts." Of 

 another native authority the writer asked the date when the Iroquois 

 confederacy originated; "With the teachings of our great ancestor, 

 Handsome Lake, I think," he said. Then he added after hesitation, 

 " No, it was before that, I ren^'ember now it was in the time of 

 Dekanawida." 



In these answers, incorrect or uncertain as they are, may be 

 found material for serious consideration. They point out two men 

 with whose names are linked two distinct periods of cultural revolu- 

 tion. Each blotted out the memory of a former period. The people 

 of each period systematically forgot the history of the precediiig 

 periods. Today the Iroquois of New York base nearly all of their 

 tribal ceremonies on the doctrines of Handsome Lake, who flour- 

 ished between 1800 and 181 6. So great was the influence of his 

 teaching that he practically created and crystallized a new system of 

 tribal thought and a new plan of action. His earlier predecessor was 

 Dekanawida to whom, with the aid of Hiawatha, is ascribed the 

 origin of the Iroquois confederacy. Dekanawida so crystallized 

 the things of the older period with his own devices, teachings and 

 admonitions that the methods, beliefs and thought-ways of the pre- 

 ceding period lost their identity in the minds of the Iroquois peoi)le. 

 All civic and much of the religious thought centered in Dekanawida. 

 That which preceded was either blotted out or swallowed up. The 

 Iroquois took on a new mantle. Now it does not seem impossible 

 that before the time of Dekanawida and Hiawatha, other seers 

 had risen to change or revolutionize the thought-ways of this stock. 



The inquiry comes quite naturally, therefore, as to whether a like 

 revolution could not come in the material culture of a people, flight 

 not the older systems of decorative art have been gradually aban- 

 doned and new ones taken on? Preceding the period beginning 

 about 600 or 650 years ago, might not Iroquois art and artifacts have 

 been different? Or if there were no Iroquois in this region then 

 might not they have had differently decorated pottery, for example, 

 when they came than that later developed and now known as Iro- 

 quoian? This is a question archeology may some day answer. Our 

 present knowledge gives us onlv tlie Iroquois potsherd and does not 

 tell us why it is as it is. 



