Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations | Page 2

I had neither room nor inclination for even a glance at war and its
dark records.
THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.
To animate a kinder feeling between the white people and the Indians,
established by a truer knowledge of our civil and domestic life, and of
our capabilities for future elevation, is the motive for which this work
is founded.
The present Tuscarora Indians, the once powerful and gifted nation,
after their expulsion from the South, came North, and were initiated in
the confederacy of the Iroquois, and who formerly held under their
jurisdiction the largest portion of the Eastern States, now dwell within
your bounds, as dependent nations, subject to the guardianship and
supervision of a people who displaced their forefathers. Our numbers,
the circumstances of our past history and present condition, and more
especially the relation in which we stand to the people of the State,
suggest many important questions concerning our future destiny.
Being born to an inauspicious fate, which makes us the inheritors of
many wrongs, we have been unable, of ourselves, to escape from the
complicated difficulties which accelerate our decline. To make worse
these adverse influences, the public estimation of the Indian, resting, as
it does, upon the imperfect knowledge of their character, and infused,
as it ever has been, with the prejudice, is universally unjust.
The time has come in which it is no more than right to cast away all
ancient antipathies, all inherited opinions, and to take a nearer view of
our social life, condition and wants, and to learn anew your duty
concerning the Indians. Nevertheless, the embarrassments that have
obstructed our progress, in the obscurity which we have lived, and the
prevailing indifference to our welfare, we have gradually overcame
many of the evils inherent in our social system, and raised ourselves to
a degree of prosperity. Our present condition, if considered in
connection with the ordeal through which we have passed, shows that
there is the presence of an element in our character which must
eventually lead to important results.
As I do not profess that this work is based upon authorities, a question
might arise in the breast of some reader, where these materials were
derived, or what reliance is to be placed upon its contents. The
credibility of a witness is known to depend chiefly upon his means of
knowledge. For this reason, I deem it important to state, that I was born

and brought up by Tuscarora Indian parents on their Reservation in the
Town of Lewiston, N.Y. From my childhood up was naturally
inquisitive and delighted in thrilling stories, which led me to frequent
the old people of my childhood's days, and solicited them to relate the
old Legends and their Traditions, which they always delighted to do. I
have sat by their fireside and heard them, and thus they were instilled
upon my young mind. I also owe much of my information to our Chief,
JOHN MT. PLEASANT. I have also read much of Indian history, and
compared them with our LEGENDS and TRADITIONS.
THE AUTHOR.

THE IROQUOIS.
NATIONAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER.
In all the early histories of the American Colonies, in the stories of
Indian life and the delineations of Indian character, these children of
nature are represented as savages and barbarians, and in the mind of a
large portion of the community the sentiment still prevails that they
were blood-thirsty, revengeful, and merciless, justly a terror to both
friends and foes. Children are impressed with the idea that an Indian is
scarcely human, and as much to be feared as the most ferocious animal
of the forest.
Novelists have now and then clothed a few with a garb which excites
your imagination, but seldom has one been invested with qualities
which you would love, unless it were also said that through some
captive taken in distant war, he inherited a whiter skin and a paler
blood.
But I am inclined to think that Indians are not alone in being
savage--not alone barbarous, heartless, and merciless.
It is said they were exterminating each other by aggressive and
devastating wars, before the white people came among them. But wars,
aggressive and exterminating wars, certainly, are not proofs of
barbarity. The bravest warrior was the most honored, and this has been
ever true of Christian nations, and those who call themselves christians
have not yet ceased to look upon him who could plan most successfully
the wholesale slaughter of human beings, as the most deserving his
king's or his country's laurels. How long since the pean died away in
praise of the Duke of Wellington? What have been the wars in which

all Europe, or of America, has been engaged, That there has been no
records of her history? For what are civilized and christian nations
drenching their