William H. C. Hosmer

“ It is an assemblage of warriors, but the labor to be pursued is exclusively of an intellectual character. The plumes with which you aim to pledge your literary arrows, are to be plucked from the wings of science. It is a council of clans, not to consult on the best means of advancing historical research; of promoting antiquarian knowledge; and of cultivating polite literature. The field of inquiry is broad, and it is to be trodden in various ways. You seek to advance in the paths of useful knowledge, but neglect not the flowers that bedeck the way. ”

“ I have merely alluded to the importance of the Iroquois decision at the critical period, 1776. The erroneous policy they adopted, with some exceptions, is among the events of past times, which wiser and more learned and resplendent nations, than they professed to be, have committed. We regret the error of the decision, but we hold fellowship with the man. He is our brother; and we meet this day to consecrate a literary institution in the land, more enduring, we trust, than deeds of strife and battle, and better suited to elicit studies to exalt the heart and dignify the understanding. ”

“ We descry, as we plough the plain, the well chipped darts which pointed their arrows, and the elongated pestles, that crushed their maize. We exhume from their obliterated and simple graves, the pipe of steatite, in which they smoked, and offered incense to these deities, and the fragments of the culinary vases, around which, the lodge circle gathered to their forest meal. [7] Mounds and trenches and ditches, speak of the movement of tribe against tribe, and dimly shadow forth the overthrow of nations. There are no plated columns of marble ”

“ They hold before you the lamp of science so clearly, that you cannot mistake your way. While you essay, with modesty and diligence to tread in this path, and render justice to a proud and noble branch of the aboriginal race, your ultimate ends are moral improvement, the accumulation of useful facts, and the general advancement of historical letters.
You have selected, out of a wide field of aboriginal nations, the history and ethnography of the Iroquois, as the theme of your particular inquiries. To us, at least, these Tribes, stand in the most interesting relations. ”

“ With the name, you have taken the general system of organization of society, within a society, held together by one bond. That bond, as existing in the TOTEMIC tie, reaches, with a peculiar force, each [5] individual, in such society. It is an idea noble in itself, and worthy of the thought and care, by which it has been nurtured and moulded into its present auspicious form.—The union you thus form, is a union of minds. It is a band of brotherhood, but a brotherhood of letters. It is a confederacy of tribes, but a literary confederacy. ”

“ Your weapons are not spears and clubs, but letters. Your means are the quiet and peaceful paths of inquiry. If these paths are often obscured by the foot of time and tangled by the interlacings of history and antiquity, be it yours to put the branches aside, and lead the right way. Truth is your aim, and justice and benevolence your guides. ”

“ Each clan having the same right to one chief, a perpetual, yet constantly changing body of sachems, was kept up, which must necessarily change the body entirely in one generation. Yet, like the classes in our senatorial organization, the change was effected so slowly and gradually, that the body of chiefs constituted a political perpetuity.
In contemplating this system, there is more than one point to admire. History gives us no example of a confederacy in which the principle of political and domestic union, were so intimately bound together. ”

“ The history of such a people must be full of deep tragic and poetic incidents; and their antiquities, cannot fail to illustrate it.—The tomb that holds a man, derives all its moral interest from the man, and would be destitute of it, without him. America is the tomb of the Red man.
A single objection, to the plan of the institution, remains to be answered. It may be deemed too intricate and complex to secure unity in action. ”

“ Each clan is entitled to a chief. Each chief has a seat in council. The chiefs are hereditary, counting by the female line. By this law of descent, no chief could beget an immediate successor. And herein consisted one of the marked points of political wisdom in their system. It is this law of descent which best distinguishes it from the system of government of other nations on this continent, and in Asia. No such rule is known to exist, but may exist, among the Mongol race, or other Asiatic stocks, to whom these people have usually been traced. ”

“ In Indian mythology may be found the richest poetic materials. An American Author is unworthy of the land that gave him birth if he passes by with indifference this well-spring of inspiration, sending liberally forth a thousand enchanted streams. It has given spiritual inhabitants to our valleys, rivers, hills and inland seas; it has peopled the dim and awful depths of our forests with spectres, and, by the power of association, given our scenery a charm that will make it attractive forever. ”

“ Honored by your notice, as an honorary member, in your young institution, I may speak of it, as if I were myself a fellow laborer, in your circle: and, at least, as one, understanding somewhat of its plan, who feels a deep interest in its success.
Adopting one of the seats of the aboriginal powers, which once cast the spell of its simple, yet complicated, government, over the territory, a central point has been established HERE. To this central point, symbolizing the whole scheme of the Iroquois system, other points of subcentralization tend, as so many converging lines. ”

“ Shall philosophical ardor expend itself, in searching after the buried sites of Nineveh, and Babylon and Troy, while we have not attempted, with decent research, to collect, arrange and determine, the leading data of our aboriginal history and antiquities?—These are inquiries, which you, at least, may aim to answer.
No branch of the human family is an object unworthy of high philosophic inquiry. Their food, their language, their arts, their physical peculiarities, and their mental traits, are each topics of deep interest, and susceptible of being converted into evidences of high importance. ”

“ Few nations have ever existed, who have evinced more indomitable courage or hardihood, or shown more devotion to the spirit of independence than the Iroquois.
But all their efforts would have ended in disappointment, had it not been for that principle of confederation, which, at an early day, pervaded their councils, and converted them into a phalanx, which no other tribe could successfully penetrate, or resist. It is this trait, by which they are most distinguished from the other hunter nations of North America ”

“ The Iroquois have their full share in the fabulous and allegoric periods, and an examination of their tales and traditions will be found, I apprehend, to give ample scope to poetry and imagination. In their fabulous age, as recorded by Cusick, they have their war, with flying Heads, the Stone Giants, the Great Serpent, the Gigantic Musquito, the Spirit of Witchcraft, and several other eras, which afford curious evidences of the way-farings and wanderings of the human intellect, unaided by letters, or the spirit of truth. ”

“ Wrenched was the granite from its ancient bed,
And pines were broken in their leafy pride,
When throes of mortal pain the monster's coil untied.
XXVI.
Down the steep hill outstretched and dead he rolled
Disgorging human heads in his descent ”

“ It is evident, in viewing this scheme of a native federative government, that its tendencies were always in favor of the power of the separate tribes. No people ever existed, who watched more narrowly the existence of power, and its innate tendency to centralize, and usurp. Suspicious to a fault, their eyes and ears were ever open to the least tone or gesture of alarm. They had only confided, to the Central Council, the power to make war or peace, and to regulate public policy. This Central Council, received embassies, not only from the numerous nations with whom they warred ”

“ If our greatest elevations, are humble compared to these, they are clothed with verdure, and break into countless valleys, which afford a habitation to man. No country on the globe abounds with so many beautiful lakes of every size, and our rivers display a succession of cataracts and falls, alike attractive to the eye of taste and art. ”

“ And where! when we survey the length and breadth of the land, can a more suitable element, for the work be found, than is furnished by the history and antiquities and institutions and love, of the free, bold, wild, independent, native hunter race? They are, relatively to us, what the ancient Pict and Celt were to Britain, or the Teuton, Goth and Magyar to Continental Europe. Looking around, over the wide forests, and transcendent lakes of New York, the founders of this association, have beheld the footprints of the ancient race. ”

“ Is civilized man alone the only object, wanting in the consideration of its former history? We answer, no. Centuries on centuries have passed away, since first the Red man planted his foot on this continent. The very paucity of his knowledge and simplicity of his arts, tell a story of great antiquity. ”

“ But so much as we know of them—so much of their career as has passed while we have been their neighbors, proves that they had well established claims to antiquity—that they were a free, bold and valorous stock of the human race—that they had thought to plan, language to express, and energy to execute.—Compared to other races north of the tropics, there were two principles, apparent in their history, which give them the palm, as statesmen and warriors, although in some other departments of intellectual attainment, they were probably excelled by certain of the Algonquins. ”

“ There is little to be had from books.
If we look at the political theory of this government it had traits both peculiar and prescient. Their councils were not constituted, primarily, by elective representation. Yet they secured the chief benefits of it. The chiefs, had a life office, and were incapable of transmitting it to their descendants. The organic council was a representation of tribes, not of members. This aristocratic feature, was balanced and its tendency to absorb authority prevented, by permitting the warriors to sit in these primary councils. ”

“ The institution of the totem, or inter-fraternity of clans, existed, and is also found, with well marked features, among the Iroquois. It had, however, one characteristic, which was peculiar, to these nations.—It was employed to mark the descent of the chiefs, which ran exclusively by the female. The law of marriage, interdicting connexions within the clan, and limiting them to another, was probably established in ancient times, among the other nations who adhere to this institution, but, if so, it has dropped, or dwindled into mere tradition. ”

“ In building its intellectual edifice, we must have not only suitable decorations, but there must come from the broad and deep quarries of its own mountains, foundation stones, and columns and capitals, which bear the impress of an indigenous mental geognosy. ”

“ The physical type of man, the means of his subsistence, the state of his arts, the language he speaks, the hieroglyphics he carves, the mounds he builds—the fortifications he erects,—his religion, his superstitions, his legendary lore—the very geography of the country he inhabits, are so many direct and palpable means of acquiring historical evidence. It is from the investigation of these, that tribes and nations are grouped and classified, and the original stocks of mankind denoted, and the track of their dispersion over the globe traced. ”

“ Titles and honors were the prerogatives of Kings, who sometimes stooped from their political eminences, to bestow the reward upon the brows of men, who had rendered their names conspicuous in the fields of science and letters. ”

“ Ethnography offers a species of proof, to determine the migrations and divisions in the original family of man, which is to be drawn from geographical considerations—the relative position of islands, seas and continents—the means of subsistence as governed and limited by climate, and soil ”

“ That this ancient Alleghanic empire of the West, so to call it, fell before the combined courage and energy of the Iroquois and Algonquins, and that the defeated tribes either retired down the waters of the Mississippi, or were in part incorporated with themselves, or yet exist in the Far West, under other names, we have various traditions for asserting or believing. ”

“ By organizing it on the basis of the several tribes, and the several clans of each tribe; spreading over so wide an area of territory, and adopting so many of the aboriginal peculiarities, in terms, form of admission, and you have exposed the institution to serious objections, and to the danger of an early decline. But, are not these traits, rather the guarantees of its success and perpetuity? It addresses itself, particularly to the Young. To them, it brings the attractions of novelty. ”

“ From the historical documents recently obtained by the State from France, and deposited in the public offices at the capitol, it is seen that this people are sometimes called the Nine nations of the Iroquois. Algonquin tradition, which I have recently published, denotes that they originally consisted of Eight tribes. (Oneota.) Whatever of truth or error, there may be in these terms, it is certain that, at the period of the Dutch discovery and settlement referred to, they uniformly described themselves as the Five Nations, or United People, under the title of Akonoshioni. ”

“ The cast of our institutions is all the other way, and the tendency of things, as [4] the public mind becomes settled and compacted, is, to take away from men the prestige of names and titles; to award but little, on the score of antiquarian merit, and to weigh every man's powers and abilities, political and literary, in the scale of absolute individual capacity, to be judged of, by the community at large. ”

“ Equally free from the extremes of heat, and humidity, it has been found eminently favorable to human life. Inquiries into the statistics of vitality will abundantly denote this. Many of the civil sachems lived to a great age. And the same may be said of those warriors who escaped the dart and club, until they came to the period, not a very advanced one, when they ceased to follow the war path. ”