12/11/2012
Haudenosaunee (The Iroquois)
CIVILIZATIONS AT CONTACT
from Ronald Wright, Stolen Continents
IT ALL STARTED WITH …
“THREE SISTERS” of
American agriculture
Corn,
Corn
Beans,
Beans Squash
Spread from Mexico to the
North-East
C. 800 A.D. – planted in
area of Lake Onhatariyo
(Mohawk for “Handsome
Lake”)
1
12/11/2012
A FARMING CULTURE
Farming meant
prosperity, population
growth, and power
Power meant clashes
of various ‘Iroquoian’
people
END OF FRICTIONS
Five related peoples decided to end warfare
Iroquois Confederacy, c. 900 CE:
Mohawk
Oneida
Onondaga
Cayuga
Seneca
Tuscarores
(1720) – becomes Six Nations
Known as Five Nations:
Nations oldest democracy
2
12/11/2012
POWER OF CONFEDERACY
Height of influence in 17th and 18th centuries
From Quebec to Kentucky; from Pennsylvania
to Illinois
HAUDENOSAUNEE: PEOPLE OF THE LONGHOUSE
Longhouse a symbol of the Iroquois
Home of a senior woman – a “clan mother”
Matrilinear:
Matrilinear men joined the homes of wives
Clans had totemic animal carved above door
3
12/11/2012
INSIDE THE LONGHOUSE
Partitions, sleeping platforms, hearths,
storage areas
SYMBOL of the Iroquois Union: a great
longhouse with five partitions
Onondagas
tended the central fire
Senecas in west and Mohawks in east kept
the doors
Smaller Oneida and Cayuga nations were
“younger brothers”
CONTACT
Cartier: earliest
account, 1534
Sailed up St.
Lawrence and
encountered
Mohawk towns of
Stadacona and
Hochelaga
4
12/11/2012
DISEASE
Cartier, and other early explorers, would introduce
devastating diseases to North America
When Samuel de Champlain came in 1603,
1603
Hochelaga and Stadacona were gone
Hundreds of thousands of Iroquois were reduced
to 75,000 in one century
WAR AGAINST HURON
Huron, like Cherokee, also
Iroquian (language family),
but not Iroquois
(like English are Germanic
but not German)
Iroquois wanted to recover
their strength by
incorporating Huron people
Attacked Huron villages and
merged the people with the
Five Nations in 1649
5
12/11/2012
ETHNIC FLUIDITY
The Iroquois Confederacy formed because
strength in numbers
By 1660s, many Iroquois citizens were Huron,
Huron
Algonquins,
Algonquins and conquered whites
“When white persons of either sex have been taken
prisoners young by the Indians, in a short time
they become disgusted with our manner of life, and
… there is no reclaiming them.”
Benjamin Franklin
SURVIVAL
Five Nations would survive and
become a ‘buffer state’
state between
colonies of FRANCE and BRITAIN
6
12/11/2012
IROQUOIS INSPIRATION
1744 – Iroquois leader, Canasatego,
Canasatego
gave speech to leaders from
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland
Essentially called them losers for
their bickering
Told story of Five Nations
Confederacy
Ben Franklin took notice, inspired
the Union of the 13 Colonies
7