United States or Macao ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the house the members of the Council were seated in the usual array, on opposite sides of the house. On one side were the three elder nations, the Caniengas, Onondagas, and Senecas, and on the other the younger, who were deemed, and styled in Council, the offspring of the former.
How or why the distinction is kept up I did not learn. We are naturally led to ask how it happens that only three clans are found among the Caniengas and Oneidas, while the other nations have eight. Mr. All the towns of the united nations were distributed among the three primary clans of the Wolf, the Tortoise and the Bear.
First in order was the necessity of appeasing a threatened quarrel between two of the leading nations, the Senecas and the Caniengas, caused by a misadventure in which a Seneca "captain" had been killed by some warriors of the eastern nation.
In due time, as he is careful to record, the same result happened as had occurred with the Caniengas. The language of each canton "was altered;" yet not so much, he might have added, but that all the tribes could still hold intercourse, and comprehend one another's speech. A wider isolation and, consequently, a somewhat greater change of language, befell the "sixth family."
Before the confederacy was formed, some of its members, particularly the Caniengas and Oneidas, had suffered greatly from wars with the wilder tribes about them. The new strength derived from the League enabled them to turn the tables upon their adversaries. But they made a magnanimous use of their superiority. An enemy who submitted was at once spared.
The other conquered nations had doubtless some peculiar clans; for these brotherhoods, as has been shown, were constantly in process of formation and change among the Indian tribes. Almost all the captives were incorporated with the three western nations of the League, to whom the conquered tribes were mostly nearer than to the Caniengas and Oneidas.
The Wolf clansman of the Caniengas was deemed a brother of the Wolf clansman of the Senecas, though originally there may have been no special connection between them. It was a tie apparently artificial in its origin, as much so as the tie which binds a freemason of Berlin to a freemason of New Orleans. But it came to have all the strength of a tie of kindred. Mr.
When by the events of the Revolutionary war the original confederacy was broken up, the larger portion of the people followed Brant to Canada. The refugees comprised nearly the whole of the Caniengas, and the greater part of the Onondagas and Cayugas, with many members of the other nations.
On their heels glided the Seneca warriors, warriors of the Cayugas, Onondagas, Caniengas, Esauroras, and here and there a traitorous Oneida, and even a few Hurons. Pell-mell this mob of fighting men came surging through the fire-circle, and straight into Catharines-town, while I and my Indians crouched there, appalled and astounded.
Word Of The Day