Iroquois

“ To the institutions, traditions, rites, usages, and festivals of the league the Iroquois was inseparably wedded. He clung to them with Indian tenacity; and he clings to them still. His political fabric was one of ancient ideas and practices, crystallized into regular and enduring forms. In its component parts it has nothing peculiar to itself. All its elements are found in other tribes: most of them belong to the whole Indian race. ”

“ One of the chief characteristics of the Iroquois was their tremendous energy. They were so energetic that they pursued their enemies with an implacable relentlessness similar to the restless eagerness with which the people of the region from New York to Chicago now pursue their business enterprises. This led the Iroquois to torture their prisoners with the utmost ingenuity and cruelty. Not only did the savages burn and mutilate their captives, but they sometimes added the last refinement of torture by compelling the suffering wretches to eat pieces of flesh cut from their own bodies. ”

“ CHAPTER IX. THE IROQUOIS POLICY. Few popular notions, it may be affirmed, are so far from the truth as that which makes the Iroquois a band of treacherous and ferocious ravagers, whose career was marked everywhere by cruelty and devastation. The clear and positive evidence of historical facts leads to a widely different conclusion. It is not going too far to assert that among all uncivilized races the Iroquois have shown themselves to be the most faithful of allies, the most placable of enemies, and the most clement of conquerors. ”

“ The Iroquois reverenced long-standing customs, social position, and the voice of age. War was their trade, but the highest dignities attached to the civil chieftain more than to the successful warrior. They dealt out shameless violence to all beyond their pale, but within the ranks of their own people they recognized much more than mere physical strength or skill in butchery. ”

“ The Iroquois have long since disappeared from the face of the earth, but even to-day the Georgian Bay Indians are subject to periodical spasms of terror. Some wild-eyed and imaginative youth sees at sunset a canoe far down the horizon. Immediately the villages are abandoned in haste, and the entire community moves up to the head-waters of streams, there to lurk until convinced that all danger is past. It does no good to tell these benighted savages that they are safe from vengeance, at least in this world. The dreaded name of Iroquois is potent, even across the centuries. ”

“ Among all the barbarous nations of the continent, the Iroquois of New York stand paramount. Elements which among other tribes were crude, confused, and embryotic, were among them systematized and concreted into an established polity. The Iroquois was the Indian of Indians. A thorough savage, yet a finished and developed savage, he is perhaps an example of the highest elevation which man can reach without emerging from his primitive condition of the hunter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It organized the chaotic past, and gave concrete forms to Indian nature itself. The people have dwindled and decayed; but, banded by its ties of clan and kin, the league, in feeble miniature, still subsists, and the degenerate Iroquois looks back with a mournful pride to the glory of the past.
Would the Iroquois, left undisturbed to work out their own destiny, ever have emerged from the savage state? Advanced as they were beyond most other American tribes, there is no indication whatever of a tendency to overpass the confines of a wild hunter and warrior life. ”

“ The fireside stories of every primitive people are faithful reflections of the form and coloring of the national mind; and it is no proof of sound philosophy to turn with contempt from the study of a fairy tale. The legendary lore of the Iroquois, black as the midnight forests, awful in its gloomy strength, is but another manifestation of that spirit of mastery which uprooted whole tribes from the earth, and deluged the wilderness with blood. ”

“ The craftiest, most daring, and most intelligent of Red Indians, yet still in the savage hunter state, the Iroquois were the terror of every native band east of the Mississippi, and eventually pitted themselves against their white neighbors. ”

“ When we come to draw the minds of the sages and chroniclers of the Iroquois cantons, to the facts of their early history and origin, they treat us with legendary fables, and myths of gods and men, and changes and freaks in elementary matter, which indicate that such ideas, were common to their progenitors, whatever part of the world they occupied. ”

“ The Iroquois, in their best days, were the noblest and most interesting of all Indians who have lived on this continent north of Mexico. They were truly the men whom a name they bore described, a word signifying men who surpassed all others. They alone founded political institutions and gained political supremacy. With European civilization unknown to them, they had given birth to self-government in America. ”

“ The language of the Iroquois is even held to be susceptible of an Attic elegance, which few can attain so fully as to escape all criticism. It is figurative in the highest degree, every notion being expressed by images addressed to the senses. ”

“ The Iroquois have their full share in the fabulous and allegoric periods, and an examination of their tales and traditions will be found, I apprehend, to give ample scope to poetry and imagination. In their fabulous age, as recorded by Cusick, they have their war, with flying Heads, the Stone Giants, the Great Serpent, the Gigantic Musquito, the Spirit of Witchcraft, and several other eras, which afford curious evidences of the way-farings and wanderings of the human intellect, unaided by letters, or the spirit of truth. ”

“ Though it be true that the Iroquois are subtle, adroit and great cheats, I nevertheless cannot persuade myself that they possess so much intelligence, so much tact, and that they are such great politicians as to have had recourse to the ruses and intrigues imputed to them to destroy the French, the Hurons, the Algonquins, and their allies. ”

“ On the other hand, in A Concise Account of North America, by Major Robert Rogers (London, 1765) , p. 206, it is stated that 'when the English first settled in America they (the Iroquois) could raise 15,000 fighting men.'
13 Charlevoix, as above, pp. 184-5.
A strong race the Iroquois were. In cruelty and endurance, in bold conception and swift execution, they had few, if any, rivals among the natives of North America, and in their grasp of something like state policy they had no equals. As savages, pure and simple, they reached the highest level ”

“ Iroquois tradition tells us that the sun and moon existed before the creation of the earth, but the stars had all been mortals or favored animals and birds.
Seven little Indian boys were once accustomed to bring at eve their corn and beans to a little mound, upon the top of which, after their feast, the sweetest of their singers would sit and sing for his mates who danced around the mound. On one occasion they resolved on a more sumptuous feast, and each was to contribute towards a savory soup. But the parents refused them the needed supplies, and they met for a feastless dance. ”

“ The Iroquois, however, believe that they “came out of the ground,” which is identical with the Greek notion of their being “autochthones” (vide Colden, ii. 103) , where one of their chiefs speaks thus—“For we must tell you that long before one hundred years our ancestors came out of this very ground.... You came out of the ground in a country that lies beyond the seas.” ”

“ A single instance of a wheelwright and fancy wagon maker occurs.
4 The Iroquois, in adopting our costume, have transferred their ancient love of silver amulets, frontlets, and other barbaric ornaments, to their guns and tomahawks, which are frequently richly inlaid with the shining metal, worked with great skill into the richest devices. They also fashion beautiful ear rings of silver for their women.
Viewed in its extremes, society, in the Iroquois cantons, still exhibits no unequivocal vestiges of the tie which bound them to the hunter state ”

“ Their food was the flesh of wild animals, and the corn and vegetables which were raised by the women, and the labor of the lodge was all performed by them. The conquests of the Iroquois had extended far to the south and west, and the name of the Ho-de-no-son-ne was a terror among all the surrounding nations.
“They roamed from river to river, and from valley to plain in pursuit of the buffalo, the bear, and the elk, and darted across lakes and rivers in their light canoes to find the beaver and otter, in order to take their furs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the picture which I have given, I have confined myself principally to the Iroquois, or Six Nations, a people who no more deserve the term savage, than the whites do that of heathen, because they have still lingering among them heathen superstitions, and many opinions and practices which deserves no better name. ”

“ Ancient Iroquois tradition, as preserved by Colden, represents this section of Canada, extending quite to Three Rivers, as occupied by the Adirondacks; a numerous, fierce, and warlike race, who carried on a determined war against the Iroquois. The same race, who were marked as speaking a different type of languages, were, at an early day, called by the French by the general term of Algonquins. They had three chief residences on the Utawas and its sources, and retired northwestwardly, by that route, on the increase of the Iroquois power. ”

“ The more so that their ancient and inveterate foes, the Iroquois, were extremely jealous of the intrusive white men. With the help of the French they gained many bloody and decisive battles over the Iroquois, and considerably extended their territories. The history of the nation from this time is not very interesting. From the ravages of war and disease the tribe, as may be perceived from a comparison with many others, has escaped with more than ordinary success ”

“ The traditions of this canton affirm, that they are descendants of the original family of Iroquois, who began their existence, or their nationality, at least at or near the falls of the Oswego. After the migration of the parent tribe towards the sea, and their return west and separation into tribes, this band went on west till they reached Lake Erie. From hence they travelled southwest till they reached the Mississippi. ”

“ Yes, sir, it is vital to the existence of the Iroquois as a federated people who shall remain harmless after we have subdued them, that Amochol and his acolytes die in the very ashes they have so horribly profaned. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have thus brought to a close, so far as relates to their population and industrial efforts, the inquiry committed to me respecting this nation. It would perhaps have gratified statistical curiosity and philosophical theory, to have exhibited fuller data on the subject of their longevity and vital statistics generally, but it may be considered in the light of an achievement to have accomplished thus much. The general result indicates five, with a large fraction, as the average number of the Iroquois family. Throughout each canton, the number of females predominates over the males. ”

“ IV. Whether the Iroquois have advanced in population since they have laid aside the character of warriors and hunters, and adopted agriculture as their only means of support, we have no accurate data for determining. That their ancient population was overrated, and very much overrated, at all periods of our history, there can be little question. ”

“ From that time the Iroquois have been the dominant nation. A work recording their history, explaining their governmental polity, and discussing their manners and customs would throw great light on the whole Indian race, and prove invaluable to the student ”