Onondaga

• Hanni Woodbury (elicitor, editor and translator), Concerning the League: The Iroquois League Tradition as Dictated in Onondaga by John Arthur Gibson. In collaboration with Reg Henry and Harry Webster on the basis of A. A. Goldenweiser's Manuscript. Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, Memoir 9, 1992. 755 pp. $80 (US or Can). --- This complete version of the text documenting the structure of the League of the Iroquois was originally dictated in 1912 by a revered ritualist to the anthropologist Alexander Goldenweiser. The text consists of two parts: the first (pp. 1-537) recounts the founding of the League; the second (pp. 537-701) describes the rituals of the Condolence Council, where the death of a Confederacy chief is mourned and a successor "raised up." The entire text has been re-elicied, analyzed, edited and translated by Hanni Woodbury with the assistance of four speakers of Onondaga. Beside the Onondaga text itself (with interlinear morpheme-by-morpheme analysis and glosses) and a free translation into English, there is a long introduction placing the document in the larger context of Iroquois oral tradition, copious footnotes, and a detailed phonological appendix. --- Order in Canada from: Linguistics Department, Univ. of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2 (make cheques payable to "Voices of Rupert's Land Fund"). Order in the U.S. from: Syracuse University Press, 1600 Jamesville Ave., Syracuse, NY 13244-5160 (tel: 1-800-365-8929; fax: 315/443-5545). [Jan. 1993]