l60 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



by the wandering enemy or concealed by captives. We are thus 

 compelled to believe, since the preponderance of evidence supports 

 it, that the Iroquois held their material culture a crystallized thing, a 

 possession that must not be adulterated or violated. They must have 

 deliberately stripped their captives of everything distinctively non- 

 Iroquoian and prevented them from making distinctive objects of 

 other tribes. Historically we know that the Iroquois removed the 

 moccasins of their captives and placed upon their feet those of the 

 Iroquois pattern. In all this there is an interesting suggestion for 

 the study of American Indian folk belief. 



With the coming of the European many of these older beliefs 

 began to crumble. The white man's goods were desirable to a 

 degree that broke down all resistance. They were filled with the 

 potent magic of the white man and gave power and speed to those 

 who used them. Thus on all Iroquois sites that were occupied when 

 the European traders tracked their way through the forests, Euro- 

 pean articles may be found. The number of implements of the 

 white man's manufacture found on sites increases as time goes on» 

 unV\ in midcolonial times the sites of Iroquois towms, as at Bough- 

 ton Hill and Rochester Junction, are strewn with scraps of bras? 

 and bits of iron. Even the graves contain guns, scissors, copper and 

 brass kettles, and glass beads are shoveled up by the quart. In late 

 colonial sites European articles predominate and as the nineteenth 

 century advanced, distinctively Indian things all but disappear. 



Only in a few places today do the Iroquois tribes make any dur- 

 able thing that is similar to their old manufactures, though they do 

 have a few ceremonial articles of bark, wood, husk and skin. They 

 make nothing more of stone, clay or flint. They still make — at 

 least some non-Christian Iroquois do — turtle shell rattles. Their 

 early belief told how the earth rested on the back of a turtle. It was 

 the first permanent thing: likewise the shell of the turtle, empty save 

 for a few kernels of corn or small pebbles, is the last characteristic 

 thing of their culture that when buried in the earth will survive the 

 action of the elements. The white man's goods and the white man's 

 way of living have all but obliterated the Iroquois. The so-called 

 " pagans " have a few ceremonies, make a few ceremonial and use- 

 ful articles and remember a few legends yet, but outwardly the 

 bronze-skinned Iroquois is dressed as a white man who gains bis 

 livelihood as white men do, by working as a section hand, upon the 

 farm or in the shop, or perchance by writing treatises upon arche- 

 ology. There are few things be can not now do that other races 



