16
THE CHEMAWA AMERICAN
AN AMERICAN INDIAN PARLIAMENT
PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF A STAY AMONG
THE IROQUOIS OF CANADA
TjEO J. FRACIITENBER(, Bureau of American Ethnology.
N the south-eastern corner of Ontario, Canada, be
tween the towns of Brantford and Caledonia, there
lies a beautiful stretch of land called the "Grand
River Reservation." This reservation was allotted
some seventy years ago by the Canadian Govern
ment to the Indian tribes known as the "Six Nations
of the Iroquois Indians." Here live, forty-five hun
dred in number, the decendants of the "Romans of North America."
They have long ago ceased to be a terror to the neighboring tribes
and to the white settlers. Their chiefs no more assemble for the pur
pose of discussing war plans, and their warriors have long ago buried
their hatchets and tomahawks. They live peaceably, devoted like
their white neighbors, to farming and to the manufacture of lacrosse
sticks, in which industry they have attained a perfection that can be
hardly surpassed.
But in spite of their long intercourse with the white settler, and in
spite of all the changes brought about by the advent of the white man,
they still cling tenaciously to their old traditions, and the Confederacy
which was instituted among them by their traditional legislator, Hia
watha, as early as the sixteenth century, still exists today as their rul
ing Government. As a matter of fact, the Iroquois Indians of Canada
have changed only as far as external appearances and forms of material
life are concerned. Otherwise their institutions and customs are the
same as they were centuries ago. By far a larger number of them are
pagans, who still assemble periodically in their places of worship called
"Long-houses" for the purpose of paying homage to their Spirits and
Ancestors. These religious gatherings, lasting usually a whole day,
are attended even by the most professed Christian members of a tribe,
so strong is in the Indian his loyalty to the past. Their ancient clan
system is still in a high flourish, and even the long sedentary life,
which they have been leading for the last ninety years, could not make
them abandon their Secret Societies and their implicit faith in the pow
er of the "medicine man." Above all, their form of Government,
whereby all their affairs are arranged and settled by a council of chiefs,
still exhists with the same definiteness, as in the days when their an
cestors dwelt around the Great Lakes. It is especially this highly or
ganized Council of chiefs that makes the Iroquois Indians so prominent