ABORIGINAL USE OF WOOD IN NEW YORK IO7 



In his curious history David Cusick gave the name as Goo-nea- 

 seah-ne, i. e. a long house. Charlevoix called the Iroquois Agonnon- 

 sionni, or cabin-makers. The Moravian writers persistently defined 

 Acquanushioony as confederates or covenant people, and De Schwein- 

 itz fell into a curious error on this point. He said: 



Aquanoschioni was one of their original names, and Hodeno- 

 saunee, or " People of the Long House," another. It has been 

 maintained that Aquanoschioni is a corruption of Hodenosaunee, and 

 that they did not themselves make use of it. But the latter asser- 

 tion is disproved by facts. In all the many negotiations which Zeis- 

 berger carried on with their Grand Council they invariably employed 

 the name Aquanoschioni when speaking of themselves, as his jour- 

 nals abundantly show. Lafitau and Charlevoix, two Jesuit mission- 

 aries, translate it " House-Makers." De Schweinitz, p.32 



The names are one, and the differences those of dialect. Mr 

 Horatio Hale alone said of this word : " The people of the confed- 

 eracy were known as Rotinonsionni, ' They of the extended house.' 

 In the Seneca dialect this was altered and abridged, to Hotinon- 

 sonni, the n having the French nasal sound. This word is written 

 by Mr Morgan, Hodenosaunee/' Hale, p.76 



Mr Morgan's name and definition have a wide use, though vary- 

 ing from earlier authorities. He said : 



After the formation of the League, the Iroquois called themselves 

 the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, which signifies " the people of the long 

 house." It grew out of the circumstance that they likened their 

 confederacy to a long house, having partitions and separate fires, 

 after their ancient method of building houses, within which the sev- 

 eral nations were sheltered under a common roof. Among them- 

 selves they never had any other name. Morgan, 1 148 



For building or repairing these bark houses, bark was taken from 

 the trees at the best time, and kept in water till needed. The pieces 

 were thus preserved from warping and cracking. Butternut creek, 

 near the Onondaga fort of 1696, had its name from this, ka-soon'-tah 

 meaning bark, or more largely, bark in the water. For a temporary 

 shelter bark was commonly used. John Bartram gives an account 

 of this in describing his Onondaga journey in 1743: 



They cut the tree round through the bark near the root, and make 

 the like incision above 7 feet above it, these horizontal ones are 

 joined by a perpendicular cut, on each side of which they after 



