The Great Law and the Longhouse

Download or read book The Great Law and the Longhouse written by William Nelson Fenton and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Law, a living tradition among the conservative Iroquois, is sustained by celebrating the condolence ceremony when they mourn a dead chief and install his successor for life on good behavior. This ritual act, reaching back to the dawn of history, maintains the League of the Iroquois, the legendary form of government that gave way over time to the Iroquois Confederacy. Fenton verifies historical accounts from his own long experience of Iroquois society, so that his political ethnography extends into the twentieth century as he considers in detail the relationship between customs and events. His main argument is the remarkable continuity of Iroquois political tradition in the face of military defeat, depopulation, territorial loss, and acculturation to European technology.