Tahiawagi. The confusion between this name and that of Hiawatha (which, in another form, is pronounced Tayonwatha) seems to have begun more than a century ago; for Pyrlaeus, the Moravian missionary, heard among the Iroquois (according to Heckewelder) that the person who first proposed the league was an ancient Mohawk, named Thannawege. Mr. J. V. H. Clark, in his interesting History of Onondaga, makes the name to have been originally Ta-oun-ya-wat-ha, and describes the bearer as "the deity who presides over fisheries and hunting-grounds." He came down from heaven in a white canoe and after sundry adventures, which remind one of the labors of Hercules, assumed the name of Hiawatha (signifying, we are told, "a very wise man"), and dwelt for a time as an ordinary mortal among men, occupied in works of benevolence. Finally, after founding the confederacy and bestowing many prudent counsels upon the people, he returned to the skies by the same conveyance in which he had descended. This legend was communicated by Clark to Schoolcraft, when the latter was compiling his "Notes on the Iroquois." Mr. Schoolcraft, pleased with the poetical cast of the story and the euphonious name, made confusion worse confounded by transferring the hero to a distant region and identifying him with Manabozho, a fantastic divinity of the Ojibways. Schoolcraft's volume, absurdly entitled "The Hiawatha Legends," has not in it a single fact or fiction relating either to Hiawatha himself or to the Iroquois deity Aronhiawagon. Wild Ojibway stories concerning Manabozho and his comrades form the staple of its contents. But it is to this collection that we owe the charming poem of Longfellow; and thus, by an extraordinary fortune, a grave Iroquois lawgiver of the fifteenth century has become, in modern literature, an Ojibway demigod, son of the West Wind, and companion of the tricksy Paupukkeewis, the boastful Iagoo, and the strong Kwasind. If a Chinese traveller, during the middle ages, inquiring into the history and religion of the western nations, had confounded King Alfred with King Arthur, and both with Odin, he would not have made a more preposterous confusion of names and characters than that which has hitherto disguised the genuine personality of the great Onondaga reformer.

About the main events of his history, and about his character and purposes, there can be no reasonable doubt. We have the wampum belts which he handled, and whose simple hieroglyphics preserve the memory of the public acts in which he took part. We have, also, in the Iroquois "Book of Rites," a still more clear and convincing testimony to the character both of the legislator and of the people for whom his institutions were designed. This book, sometimes called the "Book of the Condoling Council," might properly enough be styled an Iroquois Veda. It comprises the speeches, songs and other ceremonies, which, from the earliest period of the confederacy, have composed the proceedings of their council when a deceased chief is lamented and his successor is installed in office. The fundamental laws of the league, a list of their ancient towns, and the names of the chiefs who constituted their first council, chanted in a kind of litany, are also comprised in the collection. The contents, after being preserved in memory, like the Vedas, for many generations, were written down by desire of the chiefs, when their language was first reduced to writing; and the book is therefore more than a century old. Its language, archaic when written, is now partly obsolete, and is fully understood by only a few of the oldest chiefs. It is a genuine Indian composition, and must be accepted as disclosing the true character of its authors. The result is remarkable enough. Instead of a race of rude and ferocious warriors, we find in this book a kindly and affectionate people, full of sympathy for their friends in distress, considerate to their women, tender to their children, anxious for peace, and imbued with a profound reverence for their constitution and its authors. We become conscious of the fact that the aspect in which these Indians have presented themselves to the outside world has been in a large measure deceptive and factitious. The ferocity, craft, and cruelty, which have been deemed their leading traits, have been merely the natural accompaniments of wars of self-preservation, and no more indicated their genuine character than the war-paint, plume, and tomahawk of the warrior displayed the customary guise in which he appeared among his own people. The cruelties of war, when war is a struggle for national existence, are common to all races. The persistent desire for peace, pursued for centuries in federal unions, and in alliances and treaties with other nations, has been manifested by few as steadily as by the countrymen of Hiawatha. The sentiment of universal brotherhood, which directed their polity, has never been so fully developed in any branch of the Aryan race, unless it may be found incorporated in the religious quietism of Buddha and his followers.

To come back to our first proposition,—it is unquestionable that the Iroquois, when they framed the political system which exhibited this singular force of intellect and elevation of character, were a people of the Stone Age; and there is no good reason for supposing that they were superior in character and capacity to the people of the most primitive times. What we know of them entitles us to affirm that the makers of the earliest flint implements may have been equal, if not superior, in natural powers to the members of any existing race. And as language is the outgrowth and image of the mental faculties, it is not impossible, or even unlikely, that among the languages spoken by the people of those early ages, there may have been some as far superior in construction and power of expression to any tongue of modern Europe, as the languages of the barbarous Greeks and Germans, a thousand years before the Christian era, were superior to the speech of the highly civilized Egyptians.

The conclusions to which these facts and reasonings point are of great scientific importance. As there could be no sound astronomy while the notion prevailed that the earth was the centre of the universe, and no science of history while each nation looked with contempt upon every other people, so we can hope for no complete and satisfying science of man and of human speech until our minds are disabused of those other delusions of self-esteem which would persuade us that superior culture implies superior capacity, and that the particular race and language which we happen to claim as our own are the best of all races and languages.

[Printed at the SALEM PRESS, Nov., 1881.]

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIAWATHA AND THE IROQUOIS CONFEDERATION***

******* This file should be named 22601-8.txt or 22601-8.zip *******

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/6/0/22601

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of