The text of this post (downloadable Word document above) is from the following book:
League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, Iroquois
by Lewis Henry Morgan
Sage & Brother Publishers, Rochester, NY, 1851
The text is from a reprint of the complete original edition.
Posted here is a major portion of the text of Book III, Chapter II — on the Iroquois language — of Morgan’s classic work. It was of great interest to me when I first read it. I purchased a newly published edition (a reprint of the original work in its entirety) at the Museum of Natural History some time ago and have read the chapter on the Iroquois language many times. It is of great interest to me as a student of language.
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Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) was an American anthropologist and social theorist. Morgan, who also worked as a railroad lawyer, was a Republican member of the New York State Assembly in 1861, and of the New York State Senate in 1868 and 1869.
In the 1840s, Morgan had befriended the young Ely S. Parker of the Seneca tribe and the Tonawanda Reservation. With a classical missionary education, Parker went on to study law. With his help, Morgan studied the culture and the structure of Iroquois society. Based on his extensive research, Morgan wrote and published The League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee or Iroquois (1851). He dedicated the book to Parker (who was then 23) and “our joint researches” This work presented the complexity of Iroquois society in a path-breaking ethnography that was a model for future anthropologists. (Wikipedia)
— posted by Roger W. Smith
January 2021
Lewis Henry Morgan
We are in debt to Henry Luis Morgan for his documenting his scholarly research. Thanks to Roger for sharing work on the American Iroquois.