The Powerful Iroquois Confederacy of the Northeast
The Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the Haudenosaunee, stands as a testament to the sophisticated political and social structures developed by Native American tribes in the northeastern part of North America. For millennia, this powerful confederation has shaped the history and culture of the region, leaving an indelible mark that continues to resonate today.
Origins and Identity
The term "Iroquois" is often used to refer to a group of Native American tribes primarily located in what is now Ontario, Canada, and upstate New York. However, it’s crucial to understand that "Iroquois" technically denotes a language family rather than a single tribe. Over time, it evolved to represent a "nation" of Indians comprised of five distinct tribes: the Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Mohawk.
Beyond these core members, numerous other tribes shared Iroquoian linguistic roots but remained outside the Confederacy. These included the Huron, Tionontati, and Neutral Nation of Ontario; the Erie and Conestoga of Ohio and Pennsylvania; and the Meherrin, Nottoway, Tuscarora, and Cherokee of Virginia and the Carolinas.
The name "Iroquois" itself is a French adaptation, its origins debated but potentially derived from the Algonquin word "Irinakhow," meaning "real snakes." This unflattering label reflected the Algonquin tribes’ perception of the Iroquois as hostile adversaries. In contrast, the Iroquois referred to themselves as Haudenosaunee, which translates to "people of the longhouse," a reference to their traditional dwelling and communal way of life.
Formation of the Confederacy
The exact date of the Iroquois League’s establishment remains a topic of scholarly debate. Some historians suggest it emerged as early as 1142, while others place its formation around 1450. Regardless of the precise timing, oral histories recount a compelling narrative of how the tribes, once embroiled in constant conflict and raiding, were united through the efforts of three remarkable figures: Dekanawida, often called the Great Peacemaker; Hiawatha; and Jigonhsasee, the Mother of Nations.
These individuals played pivotal roles in forging a highly egalitarian society and uniting the tribes into a powerful nation. They devised an elaborate political system featuring a two-house legislature. Chiefs from the Seneca and Mohawk tribes convened in one house, while the Oneida and Cayuga met in the other. The Onondaga held the unique position of breaking ties and possessing the power to veto decisions made by the other houses. This complex political arrangement, codified in an unwritten constitution, was remarkably advanced for its time, predating similar systems in Europe. In fact, the Iroquois model was even recommended as a potential framework during the outbreak of the American Revolution.
Life in the Longhouse
The Iroquois lived in longhouses, impressive structures that could stretch the length of a football field, though most ranged from 50 to 100 feet long and 15 to 20 feet wide. The interior was divided into compartments of equal size, each opening onto a central passageway. Each compartment housed a single family, allowing as many as 20 families to reside under one roof. At the ends of the longhouse, separate rooms were designated for storage and guest accommodations. The occupants of a longhouse were typically closely related through clan kinship. The main towns featured houses arranged in a compact, orderly manner and enclosed within strong palisades.
The Iroquois were skilled agriculturalists, cultivating extensive cornfields and orchards around their villages. In addition to corn, they grew squash, beans, and tobacco. Women played a crucial role in gathering wild roots, greens, berries, and nuts. Men engaged in hunting game and fishing to supplement their diet. Their early weapons included bows, knives, stone and wooden clubs, and stone-headed lances. They also used shields made of rawhide or wickerwork for protection.
The Role of Women
Women held a unique and influential position within Iroquois society, believed to be connected to the earth’s power to create life. The tribes followed a matrilineal system, with families moving into the mother’s longhouse and tracing their lineage through her.
Each tribe had a women’s council that played a proactive role in all matters of public importance, including nominating members of the chief’s council. The council comprised hereditary chiefs and additional members chosen for their abilities. The league council, consisting of fifty hereditary chiefs from all five tribes, ratified the nominations made by the women’s council.
No outsider could become a member of the tribe without formal adoption into a clan, a decision made by the women of the clan. Women also determined the fate of captives, deciding whether they would live or die. As the cultivators of the land, women controlled the distribution of food and held jurisdiction over the territorial domain. As mothers of the warriors, they held sway over questions of war and peace.
Culture and Customs
In the summer, the Iroquois people typically wore minimal clothing, with men donning decorated breechcloths with belts around their waists, and women wearing skirts. In the winter, they donned fringed buckskins, leggings, moccasins, and robes or blankets for warmth. Clothing was often adorned with moose-hair embroidery, and decorated pouches were used to carry personal items. Men meticulously removed all facial hair and styled their hair in a Mohawk fashion. Tattoos were common for both sexes.
Unlike many other eastern Indian tribes, the Iroquois practiced monogamy, although divorce was easily obtained and frequent. In cases of divorce, the children always remained with the mother.
Warfare and Captivity
The Iroquois were renowned for their constant warfare, their merciless treatment of prisoners of war, and their rigorous training of males to withstand pain. They frequently engaged in "Mourning War" raids to avenge warriors killed in previous battles. These raids served as an outlet for grief and mourning, with the primary goal of abducting members of rival tribes as compensation for their losses.
Upon returning to camp, captives faced a harrowing ordeal. They were stripped, bound, and forced to run a gauntlet of tribe members who struck them repeatedly with clubs, torches, and knives. In some cases, the clan’s matriarch would demand the immediate execution of captives as an act of vengeance, though this was not always the outcome.
The tribal council then assigned each prisoner to a family that had lost relatives. Women, children, and skilled or attractive men were often adopted into the family, although they were never considered equal members of the Confederacy. Other captives, particularly warriors, were condemned to death through ritual sacrifice. These men were subjected to lengthy, highly ritualized torture ceremonies until they died. According to accounts from other tribes, the Iroquois sometimes concluded these ceremonies by cooking and consuming the remains of their victims.
Contact with Europeans
The Iroquois first encountered Europeans in 1535 when French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River. However, it wasn’t until over 50 years later that the French established a more permanent presence in Canada and had further interactions with the Iroquois. During this period, the Iroquois acquired European trade goods through raids on other Indian tribes, quickly recognizing the superiority of metal tools over their traditional implements made of stone, bone, shell, and wood. Woven cloth also began to replace animal skins as the preferred material for clothing.
These recurring raids prompted the French to support their Indian allies in attacks against the Iroquois in 1609. Samuel de Champlain, a French trader and explorer, sought to foster better relations with local native tribes, including the Huron and Algonquin, who inhabited the St. Lawrence River region. These tribes requested Champlain’s assistance in their war against the Iroquois, who lived further south. In the summer of 1609, Champlain set out with nine French soldiers and 300 natives to explore the Richelieu River. After failing to encounter the Iroquois, many men returned, leaving Champlain with only two Frenchmen and 60 natives.
On July 29, near the southern shores of Lake Champlain in New York, they encountered a group of Iroquois, and a battle ensued the following day. When 200 warriors advanced on Champlain’s position, he fired his long gun, killing two of them with a single shot. One of his men killed a third warrior. The Iroquois, never having witnessed the power of firearms, hastily retreated. Champlain and his men pursued them, killing 13 more warriors. This event set a hostile tone for French-Iroquois relations for centuries to come. In response, the Iroquois aggressively sought to acquire guns from Dutch traders.
The Beaver Wars
As more Europeans arrived in the region, the Iroquois Confederacy found itself situated in a strategic location spanning parts of Ontario, Quebec, Canada, New York, and Pennsylvania. While the Europeans introduced improved tools, their presence also brought devastating diseases like smallpox, measles, influenza, and lung infections, against which the indigenous population had no immunity or cure.
In 1610, the Dutch established seasonal trading posts along the Hudson and Delaware Rivers, including one on Castle Island near present-day Albany, at the eastern edge of Mohawk territory. This eliminated the Iroquois’ need to rely on the French and their allied tribes to access European traders. It also provided them with the opportunity to trade valuable goods, such as firearms, iron tools, and blankets, in exchange for animal pelts. This spurred the tribes to engage in large-scale fur hunting.
This quickly led to intense competition between the Iroquois and other neighboring tribes who supported the French, including many of their traditional enemies like the Huron and Neutral Confederacies, Tionontati, Erie, and Susquehannock.
By the 1630s, the Iroquois had become well-equipped with European weaponry through their trade with the Dutch. Many of their warriors became skilled gunmen, embarking on a campaign of conquest that instilled fear across a vast territory.
By 1640, the beaver population had significantly declined in the Hudson Valley. The Iroquois, now dependent on the goods they received in exchange for furs, launched a series of conflicts known as the Beaver Wars. In these wars, they fought other tribes to expand their control over lands and gain access to more fur-bearing animals.
Between 1648 and 1680, the Iroquois Confederacy drove out the Huron in 1649, the Shawnee and Tionontati in 1650, the Neutral Nation in 1651, the Erie Tribe in 1657, the Conestoga in 1675, and the Susquehannock in 1680. The survivors were often incorporated into the Iroquois tribes. These conflicts, considered among the bloodiest in North America, pushed the other tribes westward to the Mississippi River or southward into the Carolinas.
Alliance and Conflict with European Powers
The conflict slowed when the Iroquois lost their Dutch allies after the English took control of New York in 1664.
Throughout the 17th century, the Iroquois gained a fearsome reputation among Europeans. The Six Nations skillfully leveraged this reputation to play the French against the British, extracting maximum material benefits. In 1689, the English Crown provided the Six Nations with goods worth £100 in exchange for their assistance against the French. In 1693, the Iroquois received goods worth £600 from the English.
During King William’s War from 1689 to 1697, they allied with the English and fought alongside them again during Queen Anne’s War from 1702 to 1713. During this war, arrangements were made for three Mohawk chiefs and a Mahican chief to travel to London in 1710 to meet with Queen Anne, solidifying an alliance with the British. Queen Anne was so impressed by her visitors that she commissioned their portraits from a court painter. These portraits are believed to be the earliest surviving oil portraits of Aboriginal peoples taken from life.
Expansion and Influence
At its peak in 1700, the Iroquois Confederacy had a population of approximately 12,000. By this time, they had subjugated all the major Indian nations in the territory encompassing present-day New York, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, as well as parts of Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Northern Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New England, and southeastern Canada.
After the 1701 peace treaty with the French, the Iroquois primarily remained neutral. However, in the same year, they received £800 worth of goods from the British.
During this time, the French, Dutch, and British colonists in New France (Canada) and what would become the Thirteen Colonies recognized the importance of gaining favor with the Iroquois.
In 1714, the Tuscarora of North Carolina, defeated by the colonists, joined the Iroquois Confederacy, which then became known as the Six Nations. However, the Tuscarora did not achieve full political equality until after many years of serving as "infants," "boys," and "observers."
The American Revolution and its Aftermath
The Iroquois chose to ally with the English, a decision that proved crucial during the French and Indian War, which began in 1754. The British and Iroquois fought against the French and their Algonquin allies. The Iroquois hoped that aiding the British would lead to favorable outcomes after the war. When the war ended in 1763, the British government used the Iroquois conquests as a basis for claiming the old Northwest Territory. They issued a proclamation restricting white settlement beyond the Appalachians, but this was largely ignored by settlers and local governments.
When the American Revolution began in 1775, the tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy found themselves divided. The Oneida and Tuscarora sided with the Americans, while the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca remained loyal to Great Britain. This marked the first significant split among the Six Nations.
After successful operations against frontier settlements led by Mohawk leader Joseph Brant and his British allies, the United States retaliated forcefully. In 1779, George Washington ordered Colonel Daniel Brodhead and General John Sullivan to lead expeditions against the Iroquois nations with the goal of "not merely overrun, but destroy" the British-Indian alliance. The campaign successfully ended the ability of the British and Iroquois to launch any further major attacks on American settlements.
With the British defeated, the war concluded in 1783. They ceded Iroquois territory without consulting with the tribes, forcing them to relocate. At that time, most of the Iroquois moved to Canada, where the British provided them with land.
Those who remained in New York were required to live primarily on reservations.
By 1800, the Iroquois population had dwindled to just 4,000 due to wars and diseases.
The Iroquois Today
By 1910, the Iroquois population had rebounded to approximately 8,000 in the United States, residing in New York, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania. An even greater number lived in Canada.
Today, approximately 28,000 people live in the United States, and another 30,000 live in Canada. The Cayuga, Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca, and Tuscarora Nations are federally recognized in New York. The Oneida are also recognized in Wisconsin, and the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe is recognized in Oklahoma.
The Iroquois Confederacy stands as a remarkable example of Native American ingenuity, resilience, and political sophistication. Their legacy continues to shape the cultural landscape of the Northeast and serves as a reminder of the rich history and enduring contributions of indigenous peoples.