Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/426

86 Charlevoix expresses a much more moderate opinion. In speaking of the right of the Huron women to name counsellors, who were sometimes women, he adds, "The women have the chief authority amongst ail the nations of the Huron language, if we except the Iroquois canton of Oneida, in which it is in both sexes alternately. But if this be their lawful constitution, their practice is seldom agreeable to it. In fact, the men never tell the women anything they would have to be kept secret; and rarely any affair of consequence is communicated to them, though all is done in their name, and the chiefs are no more than their lieutenants." He mentioned an instance to show "that the real authority of the women is very small. I have been assured, however, that they always deliberate first on whatever is proposed in council, and that they afterwards give the result of this to the chiefs, who report it as a matter of form. On some occasions the women have an orator, who speaks in their name, or rather acts as their interpreter."

The story of the peculiar Oneida government was a fable told the French by the Neutrals in 1640. They said, "The men and the women there manage affairs alternately, so that if there is a man who governs them now, after his death it will be a woman who, during her lifetime, will govern them in her turn, except in what pertains to war; and after the death of the woman it will be a man who will take anew the management of affairs."

One woman of rank has been mentioned, and in the Relation for 1656 another several times appears. Teotonharason was an Onondaga woman who went with the ambassadors to Quebec, and was highly esteemed for her nobleness and wealth. She may have been the one mentioned in the Relation for 1671. "It was one of these principal persons who formerly first brought the Iroquois of Onondaga, and then the other nations, to make peace with the French. She descended to Quebec for the purpose, accompanied by some of her slaves." The influence of the Iroquois women was of great use to the missionaries. In the Relation for 1657 we read, "The women having much authority among these people, then virtue produces as much fruit as anything else, and their example finds as many more imitators."

If the women could not or would not always prevent war they often caused it to stop. At a conference at Niagara in 1767, the commissary "was informed that the old women of the Sinecas had stopt their young men from going to war." They are credited with more power of this kind than they probably had, but they always claimed a share in public affairs. At a council in Albany in 1788, Good Peter an Oneida chief, after speaking for the men, delivered the women's message. "You have heard oar voice; we now entreat