Jesuit _Relation_ for 1660, p. 6.] The Delawares were not conquered
and reduced to subjection without a long and sanguinary struggle. In a
Condoling Council we might expect that the tone of feeling would be
lugubrious; but the sense of loss and of danger is too marked in all the
speeches of the Canienga Book to be merely a formal utterance. It does
not appear in those of the Onondaga Book, which is seemingly of later
composition.

The "karenna," or chant of the Condoling Council, may be styled the
National Hymn of the Iroquois. A comparison between it and other
national hymns, whose chief characteristics are self-glorification and
defiance, might afford room for some instructive inferences. This hymn,
it should be remarked, brief as it is, is regarded by the Indians as a
collection of songs. Each line, in fact, is, in their view, a song by
itself, and is brought to mind by its own special wampum string. In
singing, each line is twice repeated, and is introduced and followed by
many long-drawn repetitions of the exclamation _aihaigh_ (or rather
_haihaih_) which is rendered "hail!" and from which the hymn
derives its designation. In the first line the speaker salutes the
"Peace," or the league, whose blessings they enjoy. In the next he
greets the kindred of the deceased chief, who are the special objects of
the public sympathy. Then he salutes the _oyenkondonh_, a term
which has been rendered "warriors." This rendering, however, may have a
misleading effect. The word has nothing to do with war, unless in the
sense that every grown man in an Indian community is supposed to be a
soldier. Except in this hymn, the word in question is now disused. An
elderly chief assured me that he had sung it for years without knowing
its precise meaning. Some of his fellow-councillors were better
informed. The word is apparently derived from _ankwe_, man, which
in the Onondaga dialect becomes _yenkwe_. It comprises all the men