The religion of these six nations or tribes of the Iroquois like that of all other peoples of this linguistic stock consisted in the recog nition and the worship of unseen forces and beings whose expressions were embodied in all the environing objects and powers and phe nomena and in many fictions of mythopoetic fancy, which, directly or remotely affecting their welfare or causing their illfare, were re garded as anthropic personages, in fact, as man beings, endowed with human life, volition and peculiar orenda (or magic power, which is the only impersonal concept of their philosophy). Form is the logos or expression of creative spirit. This makes it clear that the people of these tribes were not at all idolators m the usual sense of this much-abused term. This religion, however, placed emphasis on the punctilious performance of the rituals and the strict observance of the customs and ceremo nies upon which these rest, rather than on the ories of morals or ethics as such. Neverthe less, many of their ethical standards express ideals not yet attained by modern culture and civilization. Some have been formulated into law. The orphan and the poor were not known as such in their polity. The food-supply — even the best of it —typified by a beaver's tail contained in a bark-bowl (the most delicious morsel known to them) — was made free to every person. The most desirable flesh was of the absolute right of every person who was a citizen of their commonwealth, their state.
In the pantheon of the Iroquois the status and the personal relations of the deities and personages thereof were naturally governed by regulations and customs, derived directly from those prevailing in the social and political or ganizations of the people, and so there is among the chief gods and goddesses of their faith a kinship system identical with the fabric of interrelated duties, obligations and immu nities of the prototype — the kinship system of the people themselves. This is the psychology
of the divine institutions of Iroquois faith.
Bibliography.— Cartier, Jacques,
J. N. B. HEwn'T, Ethnologist, Smithsonian Institution.