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time, if the child was a boy, the father took charge and taught his son to hunt and to fight. The Iroquois religion, as shall be seen, did not unaided transcend Iroquois social conditions. Because much of an Iroquois's life was bound up with his economic and his protective activities, his gods were those of war, of the chase and of agriculture. Finally, his morals were those of a group that was small and was bound by kin ties. His ethics had a division. One line of conduct was to be pursued with regard to those within the group, and another was to be pursued with regard to those without the group.

CHAPTER II

IROQUOIS RELIGION.

(CHIEFLY IN AND BEFORE THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AND UNAFFECTED BY CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES.)

DEFINITION AND REMARKS.

SOME phenomena the Iroquois thought he understood, for he had what were to him rational explanations of them.1 But other phenomena were far from being matter of fact. He was thrilled by them and imbued with a sense of the presence of the mysterious; he was impelled to get into right relations with the uncanny power that was making itself manifest.2 Not only did his religion involve the emotional reactions, the beliefs and the practices that were connected with the mysterious and the uncanny but, by its very nature, the religious attitude emphasized the importance of things religious and of all that became associated therewith. Religion was an evaluating agency superior to any other possessed by the Iroquois, and as such it can not be divorced from their morals.

Knowledge of the religious beliefs and practices of the Iroquois in and before the eighteenth century is largely inferential. They themselves kept no record of their society, its composition, constitution and history, other than in such stories, fables, myths, oral traditions and conduct as have survived time. Many of these, so long preserved in the memory, have been recorded since the middle of the nineteenth century, after having been subjected for more than two centuries to White influences. Having passed by word of mouth through so many minds and so many years, they not infrequently have become contradictory, inconsistent and confused. There is very little in the documentary sources that did not 1 Cf. Converse, 118–124.

2 Cf. the Handbook, II, 365. Paul Radin's notable article on the Religion of the North American Indians," in Jour. Am. F.-L., XXVII (1914), 335-373.

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pass through the mind of a white man in being recorded. Many records are not only not over a century old, but many of them were put together in a haphazard manner, being more like diaries of interesting things than records of scientific investigations and therefore lacking a much desired completeness. Moreover, the Iroquois did not wish lightly to present his sacred, precious beliefs and practices, the things of his very self in his sublimest moments, to the view of outsiders who might scoff and make sport. It was given to few to learn of the inner Iroquois life. One is compelled to believe, therefore, that changes now unknown have taken place in Iroquois religion before the nineteenth century, and that a satisfying determination of their religious worship before that century is impossible because it can not be complete.

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3

IROQUOIS VIEW OF THE WORLD.

The study of these traditions, practices and other records impresses upon the modern investigator how wide apart are his outlook upon life and the cultural outlook of the Iroquois. This difference is exhibited strikingly by the Iroquois notions concerning the earth and nature. From the myths one gathers that to the Iroquois the earth was merely several days' journey in extent from his home as center. It was flat and was covered by the sky and its contents which touched the earth in east and west. In this very circumscribed cosmos nearly all phenomena had life and were interpreted usually in terms of personality rather than in terms of mere physical causes. Life was a property not alone of animate objects but of inanimate objects and other phenomena such as rocks, plants, water, tides, stars, the dawn, thunder storms, and so on. Possessing life, they had desires and wishes and effectuated them by means of their subtle power. In this connection Hewitt has asserted that Iroquois speculation upon such emotion-stirring phenomena as storm and tempest, life and death, crisis and risk. led to the vague notion of a mystic potency in things, a potency

3 Cf. Converse, 10. Canfield: Legends, 20, tells how Cornplanter respected and venerated the hoary legends of his great ancestors. 4 Cf. Schoolcraft: Myth of Hiawatha, 251-261, 278–292.

Hewitt: "Raising and Falling of the Sky in Iroquois Leg

Anthr., V, 344.

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IROQUOIS RELIGION.

not understood but which could be recognized when it manifested itself in some strange way. This impersonal power was called orenda. The exercise of orenda, called otgon if evil resulted to man, was a distinguishing characteristic of the world of spirits. Trained investigators have reconstructed the conception of orenda by linguistic analysis. Hewitt perhaps has done most in analyzing this concept which is not peculiar to the Iroquois but is similar to those found under different names among other savage peoples in America and elsewhere. Among the Iroquois known to history the notion always has been vague and elusive. In analyzing it as mirrored in their language the constant danger has been that meanings unthought of by the people may be attributed to them. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that some notion of orenda was held by the Iroquois when history first recorded contact with them, and that the manifestation of orenda was common in the large world of spirits.

THE SPIRIT WORLD.

What spirits or deities received worship in some manner from the Iroquois before the European occupation of America is not completely determinable. It is certain that before the Whites came the Iroquois had a host of deities and other spirits and had associated religious beliefs and practices with them. Some of these spirits were more powerful than others, some were more important than others, none was all important or all powerful, all were distinguished by the exercise of power in ways more efficacious than man could exercise it and all were potentially harmful or helpful to man. Some of the deities were distinctly supernatural in our sense of the term, but most of them were partly supernatural and partly nonnatural or non-human personalities like the pygmies or the "little people."

A relatively late creation myth introduces many of the greater deities known to the Iroquois before the seventeenth century. To Iroquois thought the creation out of nothing of

5 Hewitt in Handbook, II, 147-148; also his more thorough article, “Orenda and a Definition of Religion," in Am. Anthr., n. s., IV, 33–46. u. s., takes marked exception to the acceptance of the Cf. Goldenweiser's comment upon Radin in Jour. Phil., Methods, XII, no. 23, (Nov. 11, 1915), 634-636.

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the earth and all that is therein was unknown. Beings existed in the sky before the earth was made. A sea with aquatic animals and with an earthy bottom lay below. The beings at that time lived in villages under head men as later did the Indians on earth. The earth itself, according to the numerous and varying creation legends, was formed at a time when some trouble, brewing in a chief's household in the sky, resulted in the forcible exile of his wife. He became jealous. Wrongfully accusing her of wilful faithlessness he cunningly deceived her and pushed or kicked her through a hole made in the sky. Luckily the animals in the sea below saw the fall of the unfortunate woman-being and prepared to catch her. Earth was fetched from the bottom of the sea and was placed upon the turtle's broad and sturdy back, after a council-this is characteristically Indian-had determined upon that line of action. To this spot she was lowered gently by birds, and here she gave birth to two sons, some say to a daughter who bore the two sons. Meanwhile the earth on the turtle's back expanded and grew and became the Earth. The two lads grew and made the things on Earth, but they did not make all things for beings such as the gods of winds and of storms already existed."

• It is significant that, with one exception, the Iroquois tales and myths speak only of headmen and villages. The Deganawida Myth is the only one that refers to the League and to intricate political and social organization.

7 There are many versions of the Creation Myth. The best accounts are the Onondaga, Seneca and Mohawk versions given in translation by Hewitt in Bur. Ethn. Rep., XXI, 133-339. His translation is accompanied by the original and an interlinear translation of it. Other accounts may be found in

Charlevoix: Voyage, II, 108, 109.

Sagard: Histoire du Canada, I, 451–452.

X Jes. Rel. (1636), 127–139, giving the Huron version.

Hewitt: "Cosmogonic Gods of the Iroquois,” Amer. Ass. Adv. Sci., Proc., XLIV, 241–250, giving an analysis of the beings named in the myth and of their relation to natural phenomena.

Schoolcraft: Notes on the Iroquois, 36-37.

Hale: 66

Creation Myth," Jour. Am. F.-L., I, 177-183. Cusick, in Beauchamp's Iroquois Trail, 1–5.

Converse, 31-38.

Cf. C. M. Barbeau: Huron and Wyandot Mythology, Canada Geol. Survey, Memoir 80 (Ottawa, 1915). Very suggestive. For creation myths similar to those of the Iroquois, v. 37 sq.

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