IO NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



by reason and urged to come into the Great Peace. If the Five Nations 

 fail . . . after a third council . . . the war captain of the 

 Five Nations shall address the head chief of the rebellious nation and 

 request him three times to accept the Great Peace. If refusal steadfastly 

 follows the war captain shall let a bunch of white lake shells fall from 

 his outstretched hand and shall bound quickly forward and club the 

 offending chief to death. War shall thereby be declared and the war 

 captain shall have his men at his back to support him in any emergency. 

 War shall continue until won by the Five Nations. . . . Then shall 

 the Five Nations seek to establish the Great Peace by a conquest of the 

 rebellious nation. 



When peace shall have been established by the termination of the 

 war . . . then the war captain shall cause all weapons of war to be 

 taken from the nation. Then shall the Great Peace be established and 

 the nation shall observe all the rules of the Great Peace for all time to 

 come. 



Whenever a foreign nation is conquered or has by their own free will 

 accepted the Great Peace, their own system of internal government may 

 continue so far as is consistent but they must cease all strife with other 

 nations. 



In this manner and under these provisions and others every 

 rebellious tribe or nation, almost without exception, was either 

 exterminated or absorbed. The Erie, the Neutral, the Huron, the 

 Andaste and other cognate tribes of the Iroquoian stock were broken 

 up and the scattered bands or survivors settled in the numerous 

 Iroquois towns to forget in time their birth nation and to be known 

 forever after only as Iroquois. The law read, " Henceforth let no 

 one so adopted mention the name of his birth nation. To do so 

 will hasten the end of the Great Peace." The Lenni Lenape or 

 Delaware, the Nanticoke, the broken bands of the Minsi and the 

 Shawne, the Brothertown and other Algonquian tribes yielded to 

 the armed persuasions to accept the Great Peace ; likewise did the 

 Tutelo and Catawba of the eastern Siouan stock, and the Choctaw 

 of the Muskoghean yield, and to that action is due the fact that 

 they have descendants today. 



The Iroquois policy of adopting captives led to the mixture of 

 widely scattered stocks. The Iroquois therefore became an ethnic 

 group of composite elements. Thus from the ideas of universal 

 peace and brotherhood grew universal intermarriage, modified of 

 course by clan laws. 



According to the great immutable law the Iroquois confederate 

 council was to consist of fifty rodiyaner (civil chiefs) and was to 

 be divided into three bodies, namely, the older brothers, the Mohawk 

 and the Seneca ; the younger brothers, the Cayuga and the Oneida ; 

 and the fire keepers, the Onondaga. Each brotherhood debated a 

 question separately and reported to the fire keepers, who referred 

 the matter back and ordered a unanimous report. If the two 

 brotherhoods still disagreed the fire keepers had the casting vote. 



