Handsome Lake (c. 1735-1815) was a Seneca religious leader and half-brother of the Seneca chief Cornplanter, who in the early 19th century founded a religious and moral revitalization movement among the Haudenosaunee known as the Longhouse Religion or the Code of Handsome Lake. After a period of personal crisis and illness, he reported a series of visions beginning in 1799 that called for abandoning alcohol and witchcraft accusations while blending traditional Haudenosaunee ceremony with elements adapted from Quaker teaching, including settled agriculture and monogamous nuclear family structure. His teachings, preserved and transmitted orally by successive 'keepers' of his code, remain practiced today among some Haudenosaunee communities and are credited with helping the Seneca and other Iroquois nations adapt culturally in the aftermath of colonial dispossession.
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