Iroquois Indians were among the most numerous and powerful Native Americans in North America. They include all those people who spoke one of the languages of “Iroquoian,” a major language family spread over the Northeast. The term Iroquois is generally used to refer to the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy of central New York, including the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk, more specifically identified as “Five Nations Iroquois.” In approximately 1722, these confederated peoples defeated the Tuscarora of North Carolina and relocated most of the survivors to New York as a “sixth Iroquois nation.” The Wendat (Huron) peoples in Canada, the Susquehannock of Pennsylvania, and a number of other tribes such as the Petun and Neutral also spoke Iroquoian languages.
Iroquois oral tradition places the origins of the Five Nations confederacy prior to European contact, but more likely it developed early in the 16th century as a nonaggression pact enabling the member nations to trade pelts from the interior tribes to Europeans along the coast. During the same period, the Wendat peoples developed a parallel trading network from the Saint Lawrence River valley through the northern parts of the Great Lakes. The confederated Susquehannock of central Pennsylvania created a third network, extending to the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers and out into the Great Plains. All three confederacies established these networks by 1580, gaining significant
This historical map shows the locations of the tribes that formed the Iroquois Confederacy. (Hulton/Archive)
Wealth and power through their access to European goods. The essentially egalitarian systems of these peoples, as distinct from the true chiefdoms operating immediately to the south of the Susquehannock, shaped developments in patterns of warfare and raiding that became endemic in the region.
By the 1580s raiding parties from among the Five Nations Iroquois, and perhaps others, displaced the Iroquoian peoples once living along the St. Lawrence River. This dispersal allowed the Five Nations Iroquois direct access to French explorer-traders while putting them at odds with the Wendat. These conflicts continued for more than a century, during which time the Five Nations Iroquois disrupted or exterminated a number of their neighbors. The first of these well-documented campaigns took place in the 1620s, when Mohawk raiders forced the Mahican out of their traditional homeland along the Hudson River. This effort opened an unimpeded route to Dutch traders along the North (Hudson) River. This also led to an increase in Five Nations Iroquois influence on the peoples of central and southern New England. The 1620s witnessed the explosive development in the use of a new commodity called wampwmpeag (wAMPUM), the marine shell beads of small and uniform size that rapidly became a major item of commerce. Wampum was produced primarily within the Dutch trading sphere, but it quickly became an essential aspect of political dealings among the three great Iroquoian-speaking confederacies.
In a 1649 campaign, Seneca and Mohawk raiders destroyed a number of Wendat towns, thereby ending their power as a confederacy. Nevertheless, Five Nations’ raiding into Wendat, Petun, and Neutral territory continued throughout the 17th century as part of the Beaver Wars, traditionally believed to be a conflict over control of the pelt trade. Raiding for the sake of glory and to replenish numbers lost during these hostilities played a significant role in the fighting. In 1653 raids to the west destroyed the Erie peoples, after which the Five Nations turned their efforts toward the Susquehannock Confederacy. The dispersal of the Susquehannock peoples during the winter of 1674-75 left most of central and western PENNSYLVANIA open to use by other tribes, providing employment and hunting territory to several eastern coastal peoples. During the 1670s the powerful Five Nations Iroquois signed treaties of peace with the colonial governments of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia. As allies of these colonies, they profited greatly from raiding while acting as a frontier police force for the colonists. Even after the French brokered the Grand Treaty of 1701, which significantly reduced conflict in this region, the Five Nations continued to send out raiding parties far beyond areas relating to their involvement in the pelt trade. Targets included the Cherokee and other Native peoples far from New York.
Despite their relative isolation from the expanding New York colony, a number of external influences increased the pace of cultural change among the Five Nations Iroquois. Due to the extremely rapid changes in material culture provided by the pelt trade, fundamental social and cultural patterns among these people went largely undisrupted into the 18th century. One of the two major factors of transformation derived from the persistent efforts at conversion of Catholic missionaries. Their activities might have had little effect were it not for the changing structure of Five Nations society. The raids that brought large numbers of prisoners and refugees into and around the heartland of the confederacy altered internal dynamics among people once completely organized around kinship. When many prisoners were “adopted,” their status remained low and their foreign origins rarely forgotten. These people were the most susceptible to Catholic or other conversion, leading to internal divisions that increased through time.
The egalitarian Five Nations Iroquois pledged not to attack each other, but they rarely acted as a single military entity. Raids were conducted by individuals as well as groups of any size or any mix of cultural affiliations. Decisions regarding alliances were based on strict realities of economics, politics, or military concerns. As war in Europe during the 1750s increasingly influenced politics in North America, Native peoples in general avoided participation except when it best suited their interests. After the
Seven Years’ War, political as well as economic power was lost when Canada was ceded to the British in 1763, leaving the Five Nations without the ability to maneuver diplomatically and militarily between the French and the British.
The Iroquois called their confederation the League of the Ho-dee-nau-sau-nee or People of the Long House. The Seneca acted as the “keepers” of the western door, while the Mohawk occupied this role in the east. The centrally located Onondaga served as Keepers of the Fire, guardians of the collection of diplomatic wampum belts, and they often hosted meetings of the confederacy. A group of 50 sachems represented these tribal units at these meetings. While seeking consensus at these gatherings, individuals as well as groups were free to follow their own goals in activities conducted beyond the borders of the confederated group. This egalitarian social organization reflected the importance of the individual as a forager and provider for the immediate family. The Five Nations Iroquois were predominantly maize horticulturalists for whom foraging was essential to their economies. The importance of their maize crop was reflected in their matrilineal descent system, with kinship and rights to property, such as long-houses and fields, passing through the female line. Women elders spoke at meetings and exercised considerable political power, including the selection of representatives to the council meetings and helping to decide questions relating to war or peace.
Further reading: William N. Fenton, The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998); Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984); Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).
—Thomas R. Wessel and Marshall Joseph Becker
World History
