Iroquois Confederacy

“ Few nations have ever existed, who have evinced more indomitable courage or hardihood, or shown more devotion to the spirit of independence than the Iroquois.
But all their efforts would have ended in disappointment, had it not been for that principle of confederation, which, at an early day, pervaded their councils, and converted them into a phalanx, which no other tribe could successfully penetrate, or resist. It is this trait, by which they are most distinguished from the other hunter nations of North America ”

“ As a war captain and a civil leader, the Red Race of America has produced no superior. He led 1580 tomahawks against the armies of the Revolution—at his war cry 15,000 arrows were launched from their fatal bows. The voice of Kirkland—the voice of Schuyler—the voice of Washington were exerted in vain. Had he hearkened to these friendly voices, the Iroquois confederacy would now have stood in the plenitude of power, and we should not have assembled to-day to light the fires of this Young Institution from its dying embers. ”

“ As the Iroquois raised and stored corn and other vegetable foods, they were able to wage systematic war and go on long campaigns. Thus they excelled and conquered the other savages. When they left the stone age, by obtaining guns from Europeans, their lust of conquest was fired more than ever. 305When the white men of Pennsylvania and Virginia paid the Indians for lands, the avarice of the Iroquois was still further excited. Many tribes, even as far as Canada and the Mississippi Valley, were vassals of the confederacy. In the Iroquois we see the highest type of pagan man. ”

“ The Iroquois gave him most trouble. They were fond of fighting, and when they were not attacking the French, they were waging war on the Illinois and Hurons, and on other tribes whose aid was often found on the side of Frontenac. The Confederacy preferred to sell their peltries to the English and Dutch of Albany, [327] than to the French. They drove with the English better bargains and secured higher prices, and the English encouraged them to bring to them their beaver skins. ”

“ Until men of my own blood and colour had taught them treachery and ferocity and deceit, they had been, as a confederacy, guiltless of these things. Before the advent of the white man, a lie among the Iroquois was punished by death; also, among them, unchastity was scarcely known so rare was it. Even now, that brutal form of violence toward women, white or red, either in time of war or peace, was absolutely non-existent. No captive woman needed to fear that. Only the painted Tories—the blue-eyed Indians—remained to teach the Iroquois that such wickedness existed. ”

“ The entire population of the Iroquois throughout what is now the State of New York probably never numbered more than 20,000 souls. Of these the whole Mohawk nation counted only about 3,000, grouped in small [Pg 18] villages over their wide territory. [10] The avowed object of the Iroquois confederacy was peace. By means of a great political fraternity the purpose was to break up the spirit of perpetual warfare which had wasted the Indian race from age to age. ”

“ In the month of February 1654 a number of Iroquois came down to Quebec ostensibly to negotiate for peace, but secretly nourishing deadly designs against the unfortunate Hurons. What they proposed was that those who were settled on the Island of Orleans should leave their habitations there, go to the Iroquois country, and incorporate themselves, as a portion of their nation had already done, with the Iroquois confederacy. They also asked that a French colony, including a certain number of priests—"black robes," as they called them—should be planted in their territory. ”

“ Had Providence not placed the treacherous Iroquois in the hands of fifty Frenchmen? If these warriors were slain, it would be an easy matter to march to the villages of the Confederacy, kill the old men, and take prisoners the women. New France would be forever free of her most deadly enemy. Like the Indians, the white men were trying to justify a wrong under pretence of good. ”

“ When a neighboring people would neither join the confederacy nor enter into a treaty of alliance with it, the almost inevitable result would be, sooner or later, a deadly war. Among the nomadic or unsettled Indian tribes, especially the Algonkins and Sioux, the young men are expected to display their bravery by taking scalps; and a race of farmers, hunters, and fishermen, like the Iroquois, would be tempting victims. Before the confederacy was formed, some of its members, particularly the Caniengas and Oneidas, had suffered greatly from wars with the wilder tribes about them. ”

“ It is a singular fact, that the peculiar government and national characteristics of the Iroquois is a most interesting field for research and inquiry, which has never been very thoroughly, if at all, investigated, although the historic events which marked the proud career of the confederacy, have been perseveringly sought and treasured up in the writings of Stone, Schoolcraft, Hosmer, Yates and others. ”

“ I have merely alluded to the importance of the Iroquois decision at the critical period, 1776. The erroneous policy they adopted, with some exceptions, is among the events of past times, which wiser and more learned and resplendent nations, than they professed to be, have committed. We regret the error of the decision, but we hold fellowship with the man. He is our brother; and we meet this day to consecrate a literary institution in the land, more enduring, we trust, than deeds of strife and battle, and better suited to elicit studies to exalt the heart and dignify the understanding. ”

“ CHAPTER II. THE LEAGUE AND ITS FOUNDERS. How long the five kindred but independent tribes who were afterwards to compose the Iroquois confederacy remained isolated and apart from one another, is uncertain. That this condition endured for several centuries is a fact which cannot be questioned. Tradition here is confirmed by the evidence of language. We have good dictionaries of two of their dialects, the Canienga (or Mohawk) and the Onondaga, compiled two centuries ago by the Jesuit missionaries ”

“ The union of the tribes into one confederacy was discussed and unanimously adopted. To denote the character and intimacy of the union they employed the figure of a single council-house, or lodge, whose boundaries be co-extensive with their territories. Hence the name of Ako- no-shu-ne, who were called the Iroquois.
The great bird which visited them from heaven brought a precious gift to the warriors in the white plumes which she shed at the visit. Every warrior, as he approached the spot where they fell, picked up a feather of snowy white to adorn his crown ”

“ During the American revolution, which broke out but eleven years after the expedition and estimate of Bouquet, when he had put the Iroquois at 1,550 fighting men, it is estimated that the British government had in their interest and service 1,580 warriors of this confederacy. The highest number noticed of the friendly Oneidas and a few others, who sided with us in that contest, is 230 warriors, raising the number of armed men engaged in the war, to 1,810, and the gross population in 1776 to 9,050 souls. ”

“ The traditional epoch which preceded the auspicious event of the confederacy, though wrapped in clouds and darkness, and defying historic scrutiny, has yet a character and meaning of its own. The gloom is peopled thick with phantoms; with monsters and prodigies, shapes of wild enormity, yet offering, in the Teutonic strength of their conception, the evidence of a robustness of mind unparalleled among tribes of a different lineage. In these evil days, the scattered and divided Iroquois were beset with every form of peril and disaster. ”

“ How did it come to pass that the Iroquois turned to be our enemies? Lifting up the hatchet and scalping knife against us, they left at Cherry Valley, and Wyoming, great blood spots, and along the frontier a line of fire and death. To answer this question, we must go back more than a century and a half. At that time the North American continent was divided between two quite different sorts of Indians, the Five Nations of the Iroquois, who were united in a confederacy, and the much more numerous Algonquins, who lived all around them. ”

“ Of the cities and villages now so thickly scattered over the lost domain of the Iroquois, a single one might boast a more numerous population than all the five united tribes." F. Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac, chapter 1. AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Iroquois Confederacy: A. D. 1608-1700. Their wars with the French. See CANADA (NEW FRANCE) : A. D. 1608-1611; 1611-1616; 1634-1652; 1640-1700; 1696. AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Iroquois Confederacy: A. D. 1648-1649. Their destruction of the Hurons and the Jesuit Missions. See CANADA (NEW FRANCE) : A. D. 1634-1652 ”

“ But the plan was kept in view as one of the cardinal principles of their policy. They were always eager to receive new members into their League. The Tuscaroras, the Nanticokes, the Tuteloes, and a band of the Delawares, were thus successively admitted, and all of them still retain representative in the Council of the Canadian branch of the confederacy.
2. When this complete political union could not be achieved, the Iroquois sought to accomplish the same end, as far as possible, by a treaty of alliance. ”

“ The Iroquois, who found their highest development in their confederacy of the Five Nations of the Long House in central New York (the Massawomecks so dreaded by the Powhattans and Manahoacs of Smith's narratives) were even further advanced. Described by historians as the Romans of America, they led all other Indians of what is now the United States in their powers of organization and extraordinary political development. ”

“ Some of the tribes numbered several thousand warriors, and in more than one instance a number of tribes formed a confederacy. The Iroquois, or Six Nations, whose headquarters were in the present State of New York, was the most powerful union of this kind that ever existed among the American Indians. ”

“ The French sought to undo their own influence of this sort when it became necessary for them to try to win over the Iroquois to their own interest in the fur traffic. The Confederacy which existed among the Five, and afterwards the Six, Nations was roughly tried when there was so sharp a bidding for alliances between one or another of the tribes by their European tempters. ”

“ The Iroquois tribes had acquired the highest reputation in war and diplomacy, of all the Indian tribes of North America. At the time of the discovery, they were in the ascendant, and were rapidly consolidating their power under a system of confederacy, which had some striking traits resembling our own. ”

“ At some early period the Iroquois must have formed an individual nation; for the whole people, irrespective of their separation into tribes, consisted of eight totemic clans; and the members of each clan, to what nation soever they belonged, were mutually bound to one another by those close ties of fraternity which mark this singular institution. Thus the five nations of the confederacy were bound together by an eight-fold band ”

“ The Tuscaroras were probably admitted into the confederacy about 1714. Nine years afterwards the Iroquois received the Nicariages. Under this name the long expatriated Quatoghies, or Hurons, then living at Teiodonderoghie or Michilimackinac, were taken into the confederacy as the Seventh Tribe, or canton. This act was consummated in the reign of George II., at a public council held at Albany on the 30th May, 1723, on their own desire. A delegation of 80 men, who had their families with them, were present. ”

“ The native tribes dwelling around the shores of Lake Michigan entertained a deep and ancient jealousy of the powerful confederacy of the Iroquois or Five Nations, who aspired to universal dominion over the Northern Continent; they, therefore, held themselves equally interested with the French in the destruction of those formidable warriors. ”

“ With these elements existing, the formation of a confederacy became a question of intelligence and skill. Other tribes in large numbers were standing in precisely the same relations in different parts of the continent without confederating. The fact that the Iroquois tribes accomplished the work affords evidence of their superior capacity. Moreover, as the confederacy was the ultimate stage of organization among the American aborigines, its existence would be expected in the most intelligent tribes only. ”

“ He visited the Mohawks in their own villages, {90} organized a board of Indian commissioners at Albany, and sought to cement an alliance with the whole confederacy of the Five Nations. In opposition to this France made the formal claim (1677) that by actual residence in the Iroquois country the Jesuits had brought the Iroquois under French sovereignty. ”

“ The Nahuatl scholars have rendered its meaning as “place of.”
Mr. Hale tells us that, amongst the “Five Nations,” the tradition exists that the confederacy was originally divided into “seven tribes,” each of which was composed of 2×4=8 gentes or clans. Another wampum belt he figures exhibits a heart between 2×2=4 squares, a symbol which would be interpreted by a Mexican or Maya as well as by a Huron or Iroquois, as meaning “four nations, one heart,” the latter being as common a symbol for union of rule or government or for chieftain, as a “head.” ”

“ Had there been no American Revolution, Washington would probably have remained a quiet farmer on his estates, unknown to fame; and had not war been the most glorious occupation in which men could engage, thousands of others would have gone down to the grave unhonored and unsung.
With the Iroquois, war and oratory being the only fields of distinction, it is only the lives of orators and warriors that we have to record, in writing Indian history. ”