before the "senate," or council of the old men, as well as before the
grand confederate council of the sachems.

The government of this unique republic resided wholly in councils.
By councils all questions were settled, all regulations established,--
social, political, military, and religious. The war-path, the chase,
the council-fire,--in these was the life of the Iroquois; and it is hard
to say to which of the three he was most devoted.

The great council of the fifty sachems formed, as we have seen, the
government of the league. Whenever a subject arose before any of the
nations, of importance enough to demand its assembling, the sachems of
that nation might summon their colleagues by means of runners, bearing
messages and belts of wampum. The usual place of meeting was the valley
of Onondaga, the political as well as geographical centre of the
confederacy. Thither, if the matter were one of deep and general
interest, not the sachems alone, but the greater part of the population,
gathered from east and west, swarming in the hospitable lodges of the
town, or bivouacked by thousands in the surrounding fields and forests.
While the sachems deliberated in the council-house, the chiefs and old
men, the warriors, and often the women, were holding their respective
councils apart; and their opinions, laid by their deputies before the
council of sachems, were never without influence on its decisions.

The utmost order and deliberation reigned in the council, with rigorous
adherence to the Indian notions of parliamentary propriety. The
conference opened with an address to the spirits, or the chief of all the
spirits. There was no heat in debate. No speaker interrupted another.
Each gave his opinion in turn, supporting it with what reason or rhetoric
he could command,--but not until he had stated the subject of discussion