COUNCILS AND CEREMONIES OF ADOPTION OF NEW YORK INDIANS 395 



met and some time after in the Song mention was made of the Per- 

 son or Persons for which he mourned, and their virtue praised. 

 Hazard, 5 :54i 



In Morgan's Ancient Society are what seem ideal accounts of 

 various councils. He describes the mourning council as commonly 

 lasting five days, though everything is now done in one, as it seems 

 to have been in the Mohawk mourning of 1670. In his scheme the 

 dead chief was lamented at sunrise, and the sachems of the afflicted 

 nation marched out with their people to formally receive the visitors 

 who were waiting outside the town. In all accounts extant, they 

 wait outside for the visitors, at the fire at the wood's edge, of which 

 he speaks. In all cases the visitors were greeted and a procession 

 was formed. The lament and responses were chanted on the way to 

 the council fire, as a tribute of respect to the dead. The opening 

 of the council was the business of the first day. 



On the second the installation ceremonies commenced, usually 

 lasting into the fourth. The sachems were seated- in two divisions, 

 as in a civil council, the younger brothers acting for the elder when 

 these were bereaved. A chief raised for the elder nations was in- 

 stalled as a father; if of the younger as a son. The wampum belts 

 [strings?] were produced and explained, one at a time, by a chief 

 who passed to and fro between the lines, reading from these. These 

 proceedings took up the morning of each day, and games and amuse- 

 ments filled the rest. To show that this account is ideal, it is only 

 necessary to quote Mr Morgan's account of the council he attended 

 at Tonawanda, October 1847. Most of the delegates had arrived 

 on Monday, but he said the council had been postponed to Wednes- 

 day, and was followed by a religious council on Thursday. He said : 



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 palefaces. One of the chief ob- 

 jects for which the council had been convoked, as has been hereto- 

 fore editorially stated in the American, was to fill two vacancies in 

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

 of the former incumbents ; and preceding the installation of the 

 candidates 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 



