Enough perhaps has already appeared respecting the Five Nations to justify the observation of an eminent writer, that they were no less celebrated for eloquence than for military skill and political wisdom. [FN-1] The same obvious circumstances prompted them to excellence in all these departments; but in the former, their relations with each other and with other tribes, together with the great influence which their reputation and power attached to the efforts of their orators abroad, gave them peculiar inducements, facilities and almost faculties for success. Among the Confederates, as among the Indians of all the East and South, a high respect was cherished for the warrior's virtues; but eloquence was a certain road to popular favour. Its services were daily required in consultations at home and communications abroad. The council-room was frequented like the Roman forum and the senate-house of the Greeks. Old and young went there together; the one for discipline and distinction, and the other "to observe the passing scenes, and to receive the lessons of wisdom." [FN-2] * * * * * [FN-1] Governor Clinton. [FN-2] Ibid. The _kind_ of oratory for which Garangula and other public speakers of his Confederacy were distinguished, it cannot be expected of us to analyse with much precision. Indian oratory is generally pointed, direct, undisguised, unpolished; but forcible in expression and delivery, brilliant in flashes of imagery, and naturally animated with graphic touches of humor, pathos, or sententious declaration of high-toned principle,--according in some measure to the occasion, but more immediately to the momentary impulse of the speaker as supported by his prevalent talent. If the orators of the Five Nations differed much from this description, it was in qualities which they owed, independently of genius, to their extraordinary opportunities of practice, and to the interest taken in their efforts by the people who heard, employed and obeyed them. "The speakers whom I have heard," says Mr. Colden, "had all a great _fluency of words,_ and much more _grace in their manner,_ than any man could expect, among a people entirely ignorant of the liberal arts and sciences." He adds, that he had understood them to be--(not knowing their language himself)--very nice in the turn of their expressions; though it seems but few of them were such masters of the art as never to offend their Indian auditories by an unpolite expression. Their greatest speakers attained to a sort of _urbanitas_ or _atticism._ [FN] * * * * * [FN] History of the Five Nations.