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The Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee, also known as the League of Peace and Power, Five Nations, or Six Nations) is a group of First Nations/Native Americans. They are also sometimes called the people of the Long House. The Confederacy was based, at the time of the arrival of the Europeans, in what is now upstate New York, as well as parts of Pennsylvania, Ontario, and Before 1500.

History

Prehistoric and protohistoric period

This union of nations was established prior to major European contact, complete with a constitution known as the Gayanashagowa (or "Great Law of Peace") recorded with the help of a memory device in the form of special beads called wampum that have inherent spiritual value (wampum has been inaccurately compared to money in other cultures). Most Western anthropologists have traditionally speculated that this constitution was created between the middle 1400s and early 1600s. However, recent archeological studies have suggested the accuracy of the account found in oral tradition, which argues that the federation was formed around August 31, 1142 based on a coinciding solar eclipse (see Fields and Mann, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, vol. 21, #2). Some Westerners have also suggested that the Great Law of Peace was written with European help, although most dismiss this notion as racist.

By 1677, the Iroquois formed an alliance with the English through an agreement known as the Covenant Chain. Together, they battled the French, who were allied with the Huron, a (pre)-historic foe of the Iroquois.

The two prophets, Hiawatha and "The Great Peacemaker", brought a message of peace to squabbling tribes. The tribes who joined the League were the Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga and Mohawks. Once they ceased most infighting, they rapidly became one of the strongest forces in 17th and 18th century northeastern North America.

According to legend, an evil Onondaga chieftan named Tadadaho was the last to be converted to the ways of peace by The Great Peacemaker and Hiawatha, and became the spiritual leader of the Haudenosaunee. This event is said to have occurred at Onondaga Lake near Syracuse, New York. The title Tadadaho is still used for the league's spiritual leader, the fiftieth chief, who sits with the Onondaga in council, but is the only one of the fifty chosen by the entire Haudenosaunee people. The current Tadadaho is Sid Hill of the Onondaga Nation.

The League engaged in a series of wars against the French and their Iroquoian-speaking Wyandot ("Huron") allies. They also put great pressure on the Algonquian peoples of the Atlantic coast and what is now subarctic Canada and not infrequently fought the English colonies as well. During the 17th Century, they are also credited with having destroyed the Neutral Indians and Erie Tribe as a way of controlling the fur trade, even though other reasons are often given for these wars. Some survivors of these tribes were absorbed into the Iroquois tribes.

According to Francis Parkman, the Iroquois were at the height of their power in the 17th century with a population of around 12,000 people. League traditions allowed for the dead to be symbolically replaced through the "Mourning War", raids intended to seize captives to replace lost compatriots and take vengeance on non-members. This tradition was common to native people of the northeast and was quite different from European settlers' notions of combat.

The 18th century

In 1720, the Tuscarora fled north from the European colonization of North Carolina and petitioned to become the Sixth Nation. This is a non-voting position, but places them under the protection of the Confederacy.

During the French and Indian War, the Iroquois sided with the British against the French and their Algonquin allies, both traditional enemies of the Iroquois. The Iroquois hoped that aiding the British would also bring favors after the war. Practically, few Iroquois joined the fighting and the Battle of Lake George found a group of Mohawk and French ambush a Mohawk-led British column. The British government issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 after the war, which restricted white settlement beyond the Appalachians, but this was mainly ignored by the settlers and local governments.

During the American Revolution, many Tuscarora and the Oneida sided with the Americans, while the Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga and Cayuga remained loyal to Great Britain. This marked the first major split among the Six Nations. After a series of successful operations against frontier settlements, led by the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant and his British allies, the United States reacted with vengeance. In 1779, George Washington ordered Col. Daniel Brodhead and General John Sullivan to lead expeditions against the Iroquois nations to "not merely overun, but destroy," the British-Indian alliance. The campaign successfully ended the ability of the British and Iroquois to mount any further significant attacks on American settlements.

In 1794, the Confederacy entered into the Treaty of Canandaigua with the United States. After the American Revolutionary War, Captain Joseph Brant and a group of Iroquois left New York to settle in Canada. As a reward for their loyalty to the English Crown, they were given a large land grant on the Grand River. Brant's crossing of the river gave the original name to the area: Brant's ford. By 1847, European settlers began to settle nearby and named the village Brantford, Ontario. The original Mohawk settlement was on the south edge of the present-day city at a location favourable for landing canoes.

Beliefs

These tribes, mostly members of the Iroquois nation, lived in the Northeastern territories of what is now the U.S. and Canada, from the St. Lawrence River down to the Delaware Bay and inland to the Great Lakes. Their close contact with Europeans makes investigation of their original mythology and religion extremely difficult, but core beliefs included a conception of life as a struggle between the forces of good and evil. The "All-Father," an all-embracing deity, was formless and had little contact with humans. Spirits animated all of nature and controlled the changing of the season. Key festivals coincided with the major events of the agricultural calendar.

Seventh Generation is a precept of the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy), which requires that chiefs consider the impact of their decisions on the seventh generation.

In 1799, Iroquois prophet Handsome Lake, half-brother of Cornplanter, received a vision and introduced the New religion to the Seneca. Handsome Lake's religion fused elements of Christianity, especially Quakerism, with traditional Iroquois beliefs including seasonal festivals. About 5,000 people continue to follow the New religion today.

The Haudenosaunee

The combined leadership of the Nations is known as the Haudenosaunee. It should be noted that "Haudenosaunee" is the term that the people use to refer to themselves. The word "Iroquois" has two potential origins. First, the Haudenosaunee often ended their oratory with the phrase "hiro kone"; "hiro" which translates as "I have spoken", "kone" which can be translated several ways, the most common being "in joy", "in sorrow", or "in truth". "Hiro kone" to the French encountering the Haudenosaunee would sound like "Iroquois". An alternate possible origin of the name Iroquois is reputed to come from a French version of a Huron (Wendat) name—considered an insult—meaning "Black Snakes." The Iroquois were enemies of the Huron and the Algonquin, who were allied with the French, due to their rivalry in the fur trade. Haudenosaunee means "People of the Long House." The term is said to have been introduced by The Great Peacemaker at the time of the formation of the Confederacy. It implies that the Nations of the confederacy should live together as families in the same longhouse. Symbolically, the Seneca were the guardians of the western door of the "tribal long house," and the Mohawk were the guardians of the eastern door.

The Iroquois nations' political union and democratic government has been credited by some as one of the influences on the United States Constitution. However, that theory has fallen into disfavor among many historians, and is regarded by some as mythology. Historian Jack Rakove writes: "The voluminous records we have for the constitutional debates of the late 1780s contain no significant references to the Iroquois." Researcher Brian Cook writes: "The Iroquois probably held some sway over the thinking of the Framers and the development of the U.S. Constitution and the development of American democracy, albeit perhaps indirectly or even subconsciously... However, the opposition is probably also correct.. the Iroquois influence is not as great as historians would like it to be, the framers simply did not revere or even understand much of Iroquois culture, and their influences were European or classical - not wholly New World."

Member nations

English Name Iroquoian Name Meaning Primarily 17th and 18th Century Location
Seneca ¹ Onondowahgah People of the Great Hill Seneca Lake and Genesee River
Cayuga ¹ Guyohkohnyoh People of the Great Swamp Cayuga Lake
Onondaga ¹ Onundagaono People of the Hills Onondaga Lake
Oneida ¹ Onayotekaono ''People of Upright Stone Oneida Lake
Mohawk ¹ Kanien'kéhaka People of the Flint Mohawk River
Tuscarora ² Ska-Ruh-Reh Shirt-Wearing People From North Carolina, settled between Oneidas and Onondagas
Note 1: Member of Original Five Nations (listed from west to east) Note 2: Sixth Nation (Joined in 1720)

Modern population

The total number of Iroquois today is hard to establish. About 45,000 Iroquois lived in Canada in 1995. In the 2000 census, 80,822 people in the United States claimed Iroquois ethnicity, with 45,217 of them claiming only Iroquois background. However, tribal registrations in the United States in 1995 numbered about 30,000 in total.

Haudenosaunee Tribe Populations
Location Seneca Cayuga Onondaga Tuscarora Oneida Mohawk Combined tribes
Ontario         3,970 14,051 17,603¹
Quebec           9,631  
New York 7,581 448 1,596 1,200 1,109 5,632  
Wisconsin         10,309    
Oklahoma             2,200²
Source: Iroquois Population in 1995 by Doug George-Kanentiio*

Note 1: Six Nations of the Grand River Territory
Note 2: Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma

Haudenosaunee clans

Within each of the six nations, people are divided into a number of matrilineal clans. The number of clans varies by nation, currently from three to seven, with a total of nine different clan names.

|| — || —|| —
Current Haudenosaunee Clans
Seneca Cayuga Onondaga Tuscarora Oneida Mohawk
Wolf Wolf Wolf Wolf Wolf Wolf
Bear Bear Bear Bear Bear Bear
Turtle Turtle Turtle Turtle Turtle Turtle
Snipe Snipe — Snipe — —
Deer — Deer Deer — —
Beaver — Beaver Beaver — —
Heron Heron — — — —
Hawk — Hawk
— — Eel Eel — —

Government

The Iroquois have a representative government known as the Grand Council. Each tribe sends chiefs to act as respresentatives and make decisions for the whole nation. The number of chiefs has never changed.
  • Onondaga 14
  • Cayuga 10
  • Oneida 9
  • Mohawk 9
  • Seneca 8
  • Tuscarora 0

Modern tribal communities

References

See also

External links

First Nations in Ontario | First Nations in Quebec | Iroquois | Historical legislatures

Haudenosaunee | Confederació Iroquesa | Irokeserføderationen | Haudenosaunee | Iroqués | Haudenosaunee | Iroquois | Irokezi | Irochesi | Irokezen | イロコイ連邦 | Irokezi | Iroqueses | Ирокезы | Irokezi | Irokes

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Iroquois".

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