The Iroquois Indian Tribal History

When the French first explored the St. Lawrence River, they found both its banks, in the vicinity where the cities of Montreal and Quebec now stand, peopled by the Iroquois. This tribe also occupied all the area of New York state (except the valley of the lower Hudson), where it was known as the Five Nations. West of these were the Hurons and Neutral Nation in Canada, and the Eries south of Lake Erie, while to the south of the Five Nations, in the valley of the Susquehanna and pushing their outposts along the western shore of Chesapeake Bay to the Potomac, was the Andastes and Conestogas, called also Susquehannocks. Still further south, about the head-waters of the Roanoke River, dwelt the Tuscaroras, who afterward returned north and formed the sixth nation in the league. West of the Appalachians, on the upper waters of the Tennessee River, lived the Cherokees who, by their tradition, had moved down from upper Ohio, and who, if they were not a branch of the same family, were affiliated to it by many ancient ties of blood and language. The latest investigations of the Bureau of Ethnology result in favor of considering them a branch, though a distant one, of the Iroquois line.

The stock was wholly an inland one, at no point reaching the ocean. According to its most ancient traditions we are justified in locating its priscan home in the district between the lower St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay. If we may judge from its cranial forms, its purest representatives were toward the east. The skulls of the Five Nations, as well as those of the Tuscaroras and Cherokees, are distinctl
y dolichocephalic, and much alike in other respects, while those of the Hurons are brachycephalic. Physically the stock is most superior, unsurpassed by any other on the continent, and I may even say by any other people in the world; for it stands on record that the five companies (500 men) recruited from the Iroquois of New York and Canada during our civil war stood first on the list among all the recruits of our army for height, vigor and corporeal symmetry.

In intelligence also their position must be placed among the highest. It was manifested less in their culture than in their system of government. About the middle of the fifteenth century the Onondaga chief, Hiawatha, succeeded in completing the famous league which bound together his nation with the Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas, and Cayugas into one federation of offense and defense. “The system he devised was to be not a loose and transitory league, but a permanent government. While each nation was to retain its own council and management of local affairs, the general control was to be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representatives to be elected by each nation, holding office during good behavior and acknowledged as ruling chiefs throughout the whole confederacy. Still further, and more remarkably, the federation was not to be a limited one. It was to be indefinitely expansible. The avowed design of its proposer was to abolish war
 altogether.”

Certainly this scheme was one of the most far-sighted, and in its aim beneficent, which any statesman has ever designed for man. With the Iroquois it worked well. They included in the league portions of the Neutral Nation and the Tuscaroras, and for centuries it gave them the supremacy among all their neighbors. The league was primarily based upon or at least drew much of its strength from the system of gentes; this prevailed both among the Iroquois and Cherokees, descent being traced in the female line. Indeed, it was from a study of the Iroquois system that the late Mr. Morgan formed his theory that ancient society everywhere passed through a similar stage in attaining civilization.

It is consonant with their advanced sentiments that among the Iroquois women had more than ordinary respect. They were represented by a special speaker in the councils of the tribe, and were authorized to conduct negotiations looking towards making peace with an enemy. Among the Conestogas we have the instance of a woman being the recognized “Queen” of the tribe. With the Wyandots, the council of each gens was composed exclusively of women. They alone elected the chief of the gens, who represented its interests in the council of the tribe.

In sundry other respects they displayed an intelligent activity. In many localities they were agricultural, cultivating maize, beans and tobacco, building large communal houses of logs, fortifying their villages with palisades, and making excellent large canoes of birch bark. According to traditions, which are supported by recent archæological researches, the Cherokees when they were upon the Kanawha and Ohio had large fields under cultivation, and erected mounds as sites for their houses and for burial purposes. When first encountered in East Tennessee they constructed long communal houses like the Five Nations, had large fields of corn, built excellent canoes and manufactured pottery of superior style and finish. Although no method of recording thought had acquired any development among the Iroquois, they had many legends, myths and formal harangues which they handed down with great minuteness from generation to generation. In remembering them they were aided by the wampum belts and strings, which served by the arrangement and design of the beads to fix certain facts and expressions in their minds. One of the most remarkable of these ancient chants has been edited with a translation and copious notes by Horatio Hale. The Cherokees had a similar national song which was repeated solemnly each year at the period of the green corn dance. Fragments of it have been obtained quite recently.

The Iroquois myths refer to the struggle of the first two brothers, the dark twin and the white, a familiar symbolism in which we see the personification of the light and darkness, and the struggle of day and
 night.

IROQUOIS LINGUISTIC STOCK.

• Andastes, see Conestogas.
• Cayugas, south of Lake Ontario.
• Cherokees, on upper Tennessee river.
• Conestogas, on lower Susquehanna.
• Eries, south of Lake Erie.
• Hurons, see Wyandots.
• Mohawks, on Lakes George and Champlain.
• Neutral Nation, west of the Niagara River.
• Oneidas, south of Lake Ontario.
• Onondagas, south of Lake Ontario.
• Senecas, south of Lake Ontario.
• Susquehannocks, on lower Susquehanna.
• Tuscaroras, in Virginia.
• Wyandots, between Lakes Ontario and Huron.

Tribes of the Huron-Iroquois Language

THE HURON-IROQUOIS NATIONS.

Iroquois photographed in 1918

At the outset of the sixteenth century, when the five tribes or "nations" of the Iroquois confederacy first became known to European explorers, they were found occupying the valleys and uplands of northern New York, in that picturesque and fruitful region which stretches westward from the head-waters of the Hudson to the Genesee. The Mohawks, or Caniengas—as they should properly be called—possessed the Mohawk River, and covered Lake George and Lake Champlain with their flotillas of large canoes, managed with the boldness and skill which, hereditary in their descendants, make them still the best boatmen of the North American rivers. West of the Caniengas the Oneidas held the small river and lake which bear their name, the first in that series of beautiful lakes, united by interlacing streams, which seemed to prefigure in the features of nature the political constitution of the tribes who possessed them. West of the Oneidas, the imperious Onondagas, the central and, in some respects, the ruling nation of the League, possessed the two lakes of Onondaga and Skeneateles, together with the common outlet of this inland lake system, the Oswego River, to its issue into Lake Ontario. Still proceeding westward, the lines of trail and river led to the long and winding stretch of Lake Cayuga, about which were clustered the towns of the people who gave their name to the lake; and beyond them, over the wide expanse of hills and dales surrounding Lakes Seneca and Canandaigua, were scattered the populous villages of the Senecas, more correctly styled Sonontowanas or Mountaineers. Such were the names and abodes of the allied nations, members of the far-famed Kanonsionni, or League of United Households, who were destined to become for a time the most notable and powerful community among the native tribes of North America. [Footnote: See Appendix, note A, for the origin and meaning of the names commonly given to the Iroquois nations.]

The region which has been described was not, however, the original seat of those nations. They belonged to that linguistic family which is known to ethnologists as the Huron-Iroquois stock. This stock comprised the Hurons or Wyandots, the Attiwandaronks or Neutral Nation, the Iroquois, the Eries, the Andastes or Conestogas, the Tuscaroras, and some smaller bands. The tribes of this family occupied a long, irregular area of inland territory, stretching from Canada to North Carolina. The northern nations were all clustered about the great lakes; the southern bands held the fertile valleys bordering the head-waters of the rivers which flowed from the Allegheny mountains. The languages of all these tribes showed a close affinity. There can be no doubt that their ancestors formed one body, and, indeed, dwelt at one time (as has been well said of the ancestors of the Indo-European populations), under one roof. There was a Huron-Iroquois "family-pair," from which all these tribes were descended. In what part of the world this ancestral household resided is a question which admits of no reply, except from the merest conjecture. But the evidence of language, so far as it has yet been examined, seems to show that the Huron clans were the older members of the group; and the clear and positive traditions of all the surviving tribes, Hurons, Iroquois and Tuscaroras, point to the lower St. Lawrence as the earliest known abode of their stock. [Footnote: See Cusick, History of the Six Nations, p. 16; Colden, Hist, of the Five Nations, p. 23; Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 5; J.V.H. Clark, Onondaga, vol. I, p. 34; Peter D. Clarke, Hist. of the Wyandots. p. I.]