The Iroquois were a people rioted
in history and their institutions are not
yet extinct. They had acquired their
country by conquest and gloried in the
achievement.
The Mo-he-ka-news, considered
themselves the original inhabitants of
this part of North America and were
spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Lacking concentration and harmony
they fell an easy prey to the Iroquois,
who planted themselves in the midst of
this widely extended nation. The
Indian population of New York at its
highest, was estimated at 7,000 to
18,000. "That they had some ideas in
advance of their white brothers who
are exterminating birds, beasts and fish,
mav be inferred from the fact that the
Iroquois once made war on the Illinois,
and nearly destroyed them, because
they had violated the game laws of the
hunting nations in not leaving a certain
number of male and female beavers in
each pond."
Their moral and mental endowments
must have been of a high order to call
out such an eulogium as this :
"Nowhere in a long career of dis-
covery, of enterprise and extension of
empire, have Europeans found natives
of the soil with as many of the noblest
attributes of humanity ; moral and
physical elements which, if they could
not have been blended with ours,
could have maintained a separate exist-
ence and been fostered by the proxim-
ity of civilization and the arts. Every-
where, when first approached by our
race, they welcomed it and made dem-
onstrations of friendship and peace.
Savages as they were called and
savage as they may have been in their
assaults and wars upon each other,
there is no act of theirs recorded in our
histories of early colonization, or wrong
or outrage that was not provoked by as-
saults, treachery or deception — breaches
of the hospitalities they had extended
to the strangers. Whatever of the
savage character they may have possess-
ed, so far as our race was concerned, it
was dormant until aroused to action by
assaults or treachery of intruders upon
their soil, whom they had met and
treated as friends." This does not
bear out the theory that the only good
Indian, is a dead one. The long house
of the Iroquois had for its eastern door
the sparkling waters of the Hudson,
while the rolling waves of Lake Erie
formed its Western entrance. This
count omprising as it did the pres-
ent state of New York, was favorably
located for their stronghold, but their
success was due to their inherent energy
wrought to the most effective action
under a political fabric well suited to
the Indian life.
Their highways were trails leading
from different points of vantage, but all
converging at Onondaga Village, the
Onondagas being the fire keepers of the
Six Nations which composed the great
and strong Iroquoian Confederacy.
This confederacy, called by themselves
Ho-de-no-sau-nee, consisted originally
of five nations, Mohawks, Oneidas,
Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas, aug-
mented to six by the adoption of the
Tuscaroras in i7i4or 15, From the
western end of the Territory sallied
forth the warlike Senecas, killing and
making prisoners from the tribes in what
are now known as the Western States,
east of the Mississippi. In fact they laid
all under their tribute. They roamed
like the wolves that infested the forests
through the tribes, adopting those
whom they chose, thus strengthening
their war parties, with every raid by in-
corporating the flower of the tribes
captured.
Possibly they thought " all is fair in
love and war," but not in games, of
which the Indian is very fond, for tra-
dition tells us of a mighty war which
ended in the expulsion of the Eries
from the territory west of the Gene-
see, about the year 1654, because of a
breach of faith or treachery on the part
of the Eries in a ball game to which
they had challenged the Senecas. " As
there is no record, we may never know
as to the umpire present on that occa-
sion, whether he was smitten with a
war club, cleft with a tomahawk, or
merely transfixed with a flight of ar-
rows. The Senecas were fair men, and
it must have been some great prov-
ocation that led them to wreak such
vengeance on the Eries." Upon the
whole they were an extraordinary
people. Had they enjoyed the advan-
tages possessed by the Greeks and
Romans, there is no reason to believe
that they would have been at all inferior
to those celebrated nations. Their
minds seem to have been equal to any
efforts within the reach of man. Their
conquests, if we consider their numbers
and circumstances, were little inferior to
Rome itself In their harmony, the
unity of their operations, the energy of
their character, the vastness, vigor and
success of their enterprises, and the
strength and sublimity of their elo-
quence, they may be fairly contrasted
with the Greeks. Each nation was
divided into three tribes. The Tortoise,
Bear and Wolf, each village a distinct
republic, and its concerns were managed
by its particular chief
Their exterior relations, general in-
terests, and national affairs were super-
intended by a great council, assembled
annually at Onondaga, the central
council composed of the chiefs of each
republic, and eighty sachems were fre-
quently convened at their national as-
sembly.
It took cognizance of the great ques-
tions of war and peace and of the affairs
of the tributary nations.
All their proceedings were conducted
with great deliberation and were distin-
guished for order, decorum and solem-
nity. They esteemed themselves as
sovereigns, accountable to none but
God alone, whom they called the Great
Spirit. No hereditary distinctions were
admitted. The office of Sachem was
the reward of personal merit, great wis-
dom, commanding eloquence or distin-
guished services in the field, their
most prominent characteristic being an
exalted spirit of liberty that spurned
foreign or domestic control. In war
the use of stratagem was never neglect-
ed. While they preferred to take an
enemy off his guard, by leading him
into an ambuscade, yet when necessary
to face him in an open field they fought
with a courage and contempt of death
that has never been surpassed.
One of the early missionaries de-
scribes an Indian who shot at a large
bear and wounded him ; the bear fell
and lay whining and groaning. The
Indian went up to him and said:
" Bear, you are a coward, and no war-
rior. You know that your tribe and
mine are at war, and that your's began
it. If you had wounded me I would
not have uttered a sound ; and yet you
sit here and cry and disgrace vour
tribe."
It is said that the Iroquois had
planned a mighty union, and without
doubt had the coming of Europeans
been delayed a century later the league
would have included all the tribes be-
tween the Great Lakes and the Gulf of
Mexico.
The Iroquoian Confederacy remained
long after the Eastern and Southern
tribes had lost their standing, and to
this day keep intact their confederacy
and tribal organizations. Their orig-
inal congress was composed of fifty
Sachems, and generally met at the On-
ondaga council house.
The business of the congress was
conducted in a grave and dignified man-
ner, the reason and judgment of the
chiefs being appealed to rather than
their passions. It was considered a
breach of decorum for a Sachem to re-
ply to a speech on the day of its de-
livery, and no question could be decided
without the concurrence of every mem-
ber, thus securing unanimity. The
Sachems served without badge of office,
their sole reward being the veneration
of their people in whose interests they
were meeting. Public opinion exercised
a powerful influence among the Iro-
quois, the ablest among them having a
common dread of the people. Subor-
dinate to these Sachems was an order
of chiefs, among whom were Red
Jacket, Corn Planter and Big Kettle,
who by their oratory and eloquence
moved the councils or turned the braves
on the warpath. A noticeable trait of
the Iroquois was the regard paid to the
opinions of women ; the sex were rep-
resented in council by chiefs known as
squaw men. Thus might the women
oppose a war or aid in bringing about a
bond of peace. They claimed a special
right to interfere in the sale of land,
their argument being that the land
belonged to the warriors who defended
and the squaws by whom it was tilled.
taking up the government of
the Iroquois the position which
it occupies seemed to be be-
tween the extremes of Monarchy on
one hand and Democracy on the other.
They had passed out of the first stages
or earhest forms of government, that of
chief and mentor. It will be readily
recognized that a monarchial govern-
ment is incompatible with hunter life.
Several tribes first united into one
nation, the people mingled by inter-mar-
riages, and the power of the chiefs ceased
to be single and became joint. This
brought out an Oligarchial form of gov-
ernment ; several nations were united
into a confederacy or league. Morgan
says that in its construction it was more
perfect, systematic and liberal than those
of antiquity; there was in the Indian
fabric more of fixedness, more of de-
pendence upon the people, more of
vigor. It would be difficult to find a
fairer specimen of the government of
the few than the Iroquois, the happy
constitution of its ruling bodv, and in
the effective security of the people from
misgovernment it stands unrivalled.
The spirit prevailing in the confederacy
was that of freedom. The people had
secured to themselves all the liberty
necessary for the united state, and fully
appreciated its value ; the red man was
always free from political bondage.
"His free limbs were never shackled."
The Iroquois were entirely convinced
that man was born free, that no person
on earth had any right to make any at-
tempt against his liberty, and that noth-
ing could make amends for its loss.
The power of the desire for gain, that
great passion of civilized man in its use
and abuse, his blessing and his curse,
never roused the Indian mind; un-
doubtedly it was the reason for his re-
maining in the hunter state. The de-
sire for gain is one of the earliest man-
ifestations of the progessive mind, and
one of the most powerful incentives to
which the mind is susceptible ; it clears
the forest, rears the city, builds the
merchantmen, in a word it has civilized
the race.
The creation of the class of chiefs
furnishes the clearest evidence ot the
development of the popular element.
Under this simple but beautiful fabric
of Indian construction arose the power
of the Iroquois, reaching at its full me-
ridian, over a large portion of our re-
public. It is perhaps the only league
of nations ever instituted among men,
which can point to three centuries of
uninterrupted domestic unity and peace.
Their political system was necessarily
simple. Their limited wants, absence
of property in a comparative sense, and
the infrequency of crime, dispensed
with a vast amount of legislation and
machinery incident to the protection of
civilized society. From a speculative
point of view the institutions of the
Iroquois assumed an interesting aspect.
Would they naturally have emancipated
the people from their strange infatuation
for a hunter Hfe ? It cannot be de-
nied that there are some grounds for
beHef that their institutions would have
eventually improved into civilization.
The Iroquois at all times have mani-
fested sufficient intelligence to promise a
high degree of improvement if it had
once become awakened and directed
into right pursuits, though centuries
might have been required to effisct the
change.
But their institutions have a present
value irrespective of what they might
have become. The Iroquois were our
predecessors, this country was once
theirs. We should do justice to their
memory by preserving their name,
deeds, customs and institutions. We
should not tread Ignorantly upon those
extinguished council fires, whose light
in the days of aboriginal occupation was
visible over half the continent.
