39§ NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Iroquois ceremonial manuscripts 



The Iroquois Book of Rites contains an interesting account of 

 the finding of the manuscript of the condoling songs by Horatio 

 Hale, its learned author. He had heard of a book used in con- 

 nection with the mournhig councils, and in 1879 two copies were 

 brought to him by two principal chiefs of the Iroquois in Canada. 

 Other books had been printed for the Mohawks early in the 18th 

 century, and many could read and write very well. They sup- 

 posed that the songs and speeches used in the condolence were 

 written down in New York by a Mohawk chief who was a friend 

 of Brant, and were thus faithfully preserved. Chief John " Smoke " 

 Johnson, from whom Hale had his first copy, made it in 183.2 at 

 the request of an old chief. The latter had the original and feared 

 it might be lost, as indeed soon happened in a fire. 



Chief John Buck, the Onondaga wampum keeper, had the other. 

 In this the syllables were separated, and the proper names had 

 Onondaga forms. Mr Hale said : 



The copy was evidently not made from that of Chief Johnson, as 

 it supplies some omissions in that copy. On the other hand, it 

 omits some matters, and, in particular, nearly all the adjurations 

 and descriptive epithets which form the closing litany accompanying 

 the list of hereditary councilors. The copy appears, from a memo- 

 randum written in it, to have been made by one John Green who, it 

 seems, was formerly a pupil of the Mohawk Institute at Brantford. 

 It bears the date of November, 1874. Hole, p. 43 



The translation was made by Chief J. S. Johnson and his son, 

 and revised by the Rev. Isaac Bearfoot. This does not include 

 what Mr Hale called The Book of the Younger Nations, informa- 

 tion of which he obtained at Onondaga, N. Y. in 1875. At that 

 time he had a list of the principal chiefs in the Onondaga dialect 

 from Daniel La Fort, and also a copy of the condoling song in the 

 same language. La Fort read from a small book what Mr Hale 

 thought were personal notes, but which aftenvard seemed to 

 him of more value. To make sure, he went to the Onondaga 

 Reservation again in 1880, and found that this was a valuable 

 addition to the Mohawk book. La Fort had copied this from his 

 father's manuscript, which was peculiar in spelling, but John Buck 

 said the speeches are precisely like those used in Canada, and the 

 writer himself has heard them in condolences in New York. La 



