Handsome Lake

Handsome Lake (Cayuga language: Sganyadái:yoˀ, Seneca language: Sganyodaiyoˀ) (Θkanyatararí•yau• in Tuscarora) (1735 – 10 August 1815) was a Seneca religious leader of the Iroquois people. He was a half-brother to Cornplanter, a Seneca war chief.

Handsome Lake, a great leader and prophet, played a major role in reviving traditional religion among the Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse), or Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. He preached a message that combined traditional Haudenosaunee religious beliefs with a revised code meant to revive traditional consciousness to the Haudenosaunee after a long period of cultural disintegration following colonization. This message was eventually published as the "Code of Handsome Lake" and is still practiced today.

Read more about Handsome Lake:  Early Life, Brings A Message of Gaiwiio ("Good Word")

Famous quotes containing the words handsome and/or lake:

    “Must a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully.
    “Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: “my name means the shape I am—and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.”
    Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)

    They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)