Newhouse followed the Longhouse Religion as an adult and managed a farm near the Grand River that his father had owned. By the 1870s he had become a prominent member of the Iroquois confederacy and was a member of the tribe's council in 1875 and 1883-1883. Newhouse primarily focused on learning and preserving the traditional knowledge of the Iroquois. In the mid-1870s he was involved in petitioning David Laird for the confederacy to be recognized as a legal entity. In the two decades that followed, Newhouse was involved in disputes over land along the Grand River, known as the Haldimand Tract. He also participated in the Six Nations Union Association in the early 1880s, and continued to advocate that the Six Nations should be allowed to govern themselves, being involved with numerous petitions, though he was not a chief of the people after 1884.[2] In 1885 he arranged a manuscript version of the Great Law of Peace, which has been analyzed since, particularly for its faithfulness to the original. Despite Newhouse's efforts, it was never formally endorsed by the Grand River Council.[1]
Some information preserved by Newhouse and others was published in 1916 in the New York State Museum bulletin.
He died on 11 June 1921.[2][3]
