TY - JOUR
AU - Dickason, Olive Patricia
AB - Book Reviews 219 mill in the following manner, the English one As Fenton describes it, Iroquois oral annal­ half, and the Indians the other half" ists periodize their history through the achieve­ The collection also provides valuable ments of three prophets. The first is Sapling, the culture bearer, who gave the earth its char­ glimpses into the hopes, fears, and ambitions of an eighteenth-century Mohegan Christian. acter; the second is Deganawidah, the peace­ of Five Na­ The letters reveal the ambivalence of the Na­ maker, who founded the League tive convert, who incorporated settlers' deni­ tions, which became the Iroquois Confederacy; the third is Handsome Lake, the Seneca gratory language about Indians in letters to patrons-while simultaneously struggling to prophet who brought the Good Message, the restore what Johnson termed "the Prosperity Law of the Longhouse. Each period has its of my sinking Nation." They also depict a own body of myths that profoundly influ­ young man whose grasp of diction, rhetorical enced the character of Iroquois society and was a major factor in its survival in the face of devices, and Scripture is impressive for some­ one with only eight years of schooling. Regret­ colonial challenges. It was 
TI - The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy. By William N. Fenton. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. xxii, 786 pp. $70.00, ISBN 0-8061-3003-2.)
JO - The Journal of American History
DO - 10.2307/2567441
DA - 1999-06-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-great-law-and-the-longhouse-a-political-history-of-the-iroquois-Sfcwgi077p
SP - 219
EP - 220
VL - 86
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -