HEWITT— REQUICKENING ADDRESS 



and which serves as a divisional line between the father and the 

 mother sides or tribal groups of the League, for the father group of 

 tribes occupies one side of the fire, and the mother group of tribes the 

 other, in both civil and religious public assemblies. 



It is one of the rules or laws of the federal organization that in 

 the case of the death of one or more chiefs in either tribal sisterhood 

 the tribes of this sisterhood become mourners for a year or until the 

 vacant chiefship or chiefships shall have been filled in accordance 

 with strict rules of ritualistic procedure, which govern a large part 

 of the proceedings of the so-called Council of Condolence and Instal- 

 lation of Chiefs. It is then the official duty of the other sisterhood of 

 tribes to perform the rites and ceremonies of this council for the 

 rehabilitation of its cousin sisterhood of tribes; for during the period 

 of its mourning it should not transact any public business. 



The subject of this paper forms one of the essential parts of the 

 ritual of this council. The Requickening Address in the ritual of the 

 Condoling and Installation Council of the League or Confederation 

 of the Iroquois derives its name from its designed or purposed power 

 and function to restore to life — to requicken — the dead chief and 

 lawgiver — in the person of a legally chosen cotribesman, and to heal 

 and to soothe the wounded and bereaved mind of a cousin sisterhood 

 of tribes — a cotribesman who shall live in the official name of the 

 dead lawgiver. In Iroquoian polity the office never dies, only its 

 bearer can die. 



The institution of the ritual of the Condoling and Installation 

 Council of the League of the Iroquois was an important one, and one 

 essential to the maintenance of the integrity and efficiency of their 

 state. The polity of the Iroquois as expressed in the ordinances of 

 the League required that the number of chiefs constituting their fed- 

 eral council should be maintained undiminished in number. So to 

 the orenda, or magic power, believed to be immanent in the words, 

 the chants, and the acts of the ritual of the Condoling and Installation 

 Council, did the statesmen and the ancients of the Iroquois peoples 

 look for the conservation of their political integrity and welfare. So 

 potent and so terrible — so full of orenda or magic power — are the 

 matters comprised in the ritual of this great council that it is regarded 

 as imperative to hold this Council of Condolence and Installation 

 only in the autumn and winter. It is so deeply concerned with the 

 dead and with the powers that requicken and preserve the living from 

 the power of the Destroyer, and so it was thought to be deadly and 

 destructive to growing seeds and plants and fruits were it held during 

 the spring or summer— the period of growth and rebirth. Its purpose 



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