Stone's _Life of Sir William Johnson_, p. 434.]

An outburst of lamentation follows. The speaker has recited the names of
the heroes and statesmen to whom the united nations were indebted for
the Great Peace which had so long prevailed among them. He has recalled
the wise laws which they established; and he is about to chant the
closing litany, commemorating the fifty chiefs who composed the first
federal council, and whose names have remained as the official titles of
their successors. In recalling these memories of departed greatness his
mind is filled with grief and humiliation at the contrast presented by
the degeneracy of his own days. It is a common complaint of all
countries and all times; but the sentiment was always, according to the
missionaries, especially strong among the Indians, who are a
conservative race. The orator appeals to the shades of their ancestors,
in words which, in the baldest of literal versions, are full of
eloquence and pathos. The "great law" has become old, and has lost its
force. Its authors have passed away, and have carried it with them into
their graves. They have placed it as a pillow under their heads. Their
degenerate successors have inherited their names, but not their mighty
intellects; and in the flourishing region which they left, naught but a
desert remains. A trace, and not a slight one, of the mournful sublimity
which we admire in the Hebrew prophets, with a similar cadence of
"parallelism" in the style, will be noticed in this forest lament.

The same characteristics mark the chanted litany which closes the
address. There is not merely parallelism and cadence, but occasionally
rhyme, in the stanzas which are interspersed among the names, as is seen
in the oft-repeated chorus which follows the names composing each clan
or "class":--