14 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



PRESENT EFFECTS OF HANDSOME LAKE'S TEACHING 



There is no record of Handsome Lake's visiting Tuscarora, 

 Oneida or St Regis. The result is that these reservations contain 

 only Indians who are nominally Christian. The Oneida are virtually 

 citizens, the Tuscarora as capable of being so as any community of 

 whites, and the St Regis progressive enough not only to use all 

 their own lands but to rent from the whites. Their " Indianess " 

 is largely gone. They have no Indian customs though they are 

 affected by Indian folk-thought and exist as Indian communities, 

 governing themselves and receiving annuities. Their material 

 culture is now largely that of the whites about them and they are 

 Indians only because they dwell in an Indian reservation, possess 

 Indian blood and speak an Iroquois dialect. 



In contrast to these reservations where the Indian has become 

 " whitemanized " stand out the reservations of the Seneca and 

 Onondaga. On the latter the folk-ways and the " Indian way of 

 thinking " struggle with the white man's civilization for supremacy. 

 The Indian of the old way is arrayed against the Indian of the 

 new way. The conservative Indian calls his Christian brother a 

 traitor to his race, a man ashamed of his ancestors, a man who 

 condones all the wrongs the white man has done his people, and a 

 man who is at best an imitator and a poor one. On the other 

 hand the Christain Indian calls his " feather wearing " (Adistowae') 

 brother, " a blind man in the wilderness," a nonprogressive, behind 

 the times, a man hopelessly struggling against fate, a heathen and 

 a pagan. Even so, the followers of Handsome Lake constitute an 

 influential element and the other Indians are affected by their be- 

 liefs whether they are willing or not. As was remarked in the 

 beginning. Handsome Lake crystallized as a social unit the people 

 whom he taught and those who follow him today constitute a unit 

 that holds itself at variance with the social and accepted economic 

 systems of the white communities about them. They assert that 

 they have a perfect right to use their own system. They argue that 

 the white man's teachings are not consistent with his practice and 

 thus only one of their schemes for deceiving them. They assert 

 that they wish to remain Indians and have a right to be so and to 

 believe their own prophet. They are largely instrumental in con- 

 serving the systems peculiarly Indian and though they are a 

 minority they control a majority of the offices in the nations to 

 which they belong. Among the Onondaga and Tonawanda Seneca 



