COUNCILS AND CEREMONIES OF ADOPTION OF NEW YORK INDIANS 399 



Fort and Albert Cusick translated these speeches for Mr Hale. 

 The latter also made some extracts from Onondaga manuscripts 

 relating to the same subject, part of which are quoted here. 



In the report of the Bureau of Ethnology on linguistic fieldwork 

 for 1884-85, are notes on some Mohawk and Onondaga manuscripts 

 copied or secured by Mrs Erminnie A. Smith : 



The Mohawk manuscript was copied about the year 1830 by Chief 

 John " Smoke " Johnson from an earlier original or perhaps copy. 

 The orthography of this copy is quite regular and is that of the 

 early English missionaries, being similar in many respects to the 

 well known Pickering alphabet. One of the Onondaga manuscripts 

 was found in the possession of Mr Daniel La Fort and the other in 

 that of Mrs John A. Jones, both of the Onondaga Reserve, New 

 York. These two copies differ from each other in orthography and 

 substance, the Jones manuscript being probably a full detail of a 

 part of the other. 



The orthography of the La Fort manuscript is very irregular and 

 difficult to read, but that of the Jones manuscript is regular and 

 legible. The Mohawk manuscript contains a detailed account of 

 the rites and ceremonies, speeches and songs, of the condoling and 

 inducting council of the Iroquoian League in the form in which 

 that council was conducted by the elder brothers or members of the 

 Onondagas, Mohawk and Seneca divisions . . . The La Fort Onon- 

 daga manuscript comprises a similar ritual of the same council as 

 carried out by the younger brothers, viz : the Cayuga, Oneida and 

 Tuscarora members . . . The Jones Onondaga manuscript is the 

 charge of the principal shaman to the newly elected or inducted 

 chief or chiefs. Bur. of Eth. 6: xxxi 



The latter is elsewhere said to contain " a number of questions 

 put to the candidate, his replies to the same, a resume of duties of 

 the new chief to his colleagues and to his people, and their duty to 

 him. It contains, also, quotations from a jcondoling speech by a 

 large tree man (Oneida), and forms of repentance of wrong deeds 

 done by the chiefs. To a certain extent Oneida idioms occur to the 

 exclusion of those of other Indian dialects." Pilling, p. 132. It 

 is now in the library of Wellesley College. 



In 1902 the writer borrowed a fine copy of the Mohawk condoling 

 songs from Chief Orris Farmer of the Onondaga Reservation in 

 New York. It had been written very distinctly by Chief Kahyno- 

 doe, or George Key, of the Grand River Reservation, Canada. 

 It has about a page more than is found in Hale's version, part of 



