Iroquois: Difference between revisions

The Haudenosaunee engaged in tactics that the French, the British, and the Americans all considered to be cowardly, until the Americans adopted similar guerrilla tactics. The Haudenosaunee preferred ambushes and surprise attacks, would almost never attack a fortified place or attack frontally, and would retreat if outnumbered. If Kanienkeh was invaded, the Haudenosaunee would attempt to ambush the enemy, or alternatively they would retreat behind the wooden walls of their villages to endure a siege. If the enemy appeared too powerful, as when the French invaded Kanienkeh in 1693, the Haudenosaunee burned their villages and their crops, and the entire population retreated into the woods to wait for the French to depart.{{sfn|Richter|1983|p=536}} The main weapons for the Iroquois were bows and arrows with flint tips and quivers made from corn husks.{{sfn|Johnson|2003|p=35}} Shields and war clubs were made from wood.{{sfn|Johnson|2003|p=36}} After contact was established with Europeans, the Native Americans adopted such tools as metal knives and hatchets, and made their tomahawks with iron or steel blades.{{sfn|Johnson|2003|p=36}} It has been posited that the tomahawk was not used extensively in battle, but instead became associated with the Haudenosaunee through European depictions that sought to portray natives as savage and threatening.<ref>{{cite journal|author-last=Stevens |author-first=Scott Manning |date=2018 |title=Tomahawk: Materiality and Depictions of the Haudenosaunee |journal=Early American Literature |volume=53 |issue=2 |pages=475–511 |doi=10.1353/eal.2018.0046 |s2cid=165993798}}</ref> Before taking to the field, war chiefs would lead ritual purification ceremonies in which the warriors would dance around a pole painted red.{{sfn|Johnson|2003|p=36}}

 

 

Despite taking thousands of captives, the Five Nations populations continued to fall, as diseases continued to take their toll. French Jesuits, whom the Haudenosaunee were forced to accept after making peace with the French in 1667, encouraged Catholic converts to move to mission villages in the St. Lawrence river valley near Montreal and Quebec.{{sfn|Richter|1983|pp=542–543}} In the 1640s, the Mohawk could field about 800 warriors. By the 1670s, they could field only 300 warriors, indicating population decline.{{sfn|Richter|1983|p=542}}

 

This process not only allowed the Iroquois to maintain their own numbers, but also to disperse and assimilate their enemies. The adoption of conquered peoples, especially during the period of the [[Beaver Wars]] (1609–1701), meant that the Iroquois League was composed largely of naturalized members of other tribes. [[Cadwallader Colden]] wrote,

 

 

 

===Settlement===

{{See also|Iroquois settlement of the north shore of Lake Ontario}}

 

 

 

{{blockquote|Their houses are mostly of one and the same shape, without any special embellishment or remarkable design. When building a house, large or small,—for sometimes they build them as long as some hundred feet, though never more than twenty feet wide—they stick long, thin, peeled hickory poles in the ground, as wide apart and as long as the house is to be. The poles are then bent over and fastened one to another, so that it looks like a wagon or arbor as are put in gardens. Next, strips like split laths are laid across these poles from one end to the other. ... This is then well covered all over with very tough bark. ... From one end of the house to the other along the center they kindle fires, and the area left open, which is also in the middle, serves as a chimney to release the smoke. Often there are sixteen or eighteen families in a house ... This means that often a hundred or a hundred and fifty or more lodge in one house.}}

Usually, between 2 and 20 families lived in a single longhouse with sleeping platforms being 2 feet above the ground and food left to dry on the rafters.{{sfn|Johnson|2003|p=33}} A castle might contain twenty or thirty longhouses. In addition to the castles the Iroquois also had smaller settlements which might be occupied seasonally by smaller groups, for example for fishing or hunting.<ref name="MohawkCountry" /> Living in the smoke-filled longhouses often caused conjunctivitis.{{sfn|Johnson|2003|p=35}}

 

 

By the late 1700s The Iroquois were building smaller log cabins resembling those of the colonists, but retaining some native features, such as bark roofs with smoke holes and a central fireplace.<ref>{{cite book |author-first=Kurt A. |author-last=Jordan |chapter=An Eighteenth-Century Seneca Iroquois Short Longhouse from the Townley-Read Site, ca. A.D. 1715–1754 |editor-last=Kerber |editor-first=Jordan E. |title=Archaeology of the Iroquois: Selected Readings and Research Sources |date=2007 |publisher=[[Syracuse University Press]] |isbn=9780815631392 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=-Jb8MF-Ib6oC&pg=PA247 247]}}</ref> The main woods used by the Iroquois to make their utensils were oak, birch, hickory and elm.{{sfn|Johnson|2003|p=33}} Bones and antlers were used to make hunting and fishing equipment.{{sfn|Johnson|2003|p=34}}

By the 1900s most Iroquois were wearing the same clothing as their non-Iroquois neighbors. Today most nations only wear their traditional clothing to ceremonies or special events.<ref>{{cite web|title=Traditional Appearance |url=http://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/appearance.html |website=Haudenosaunee Confederacy |access-date=20 May 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160730071324/http://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/appearance.html |archive-date=30 July 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref>

 

Men wore a cap with a single long feather rotating in a socket called a ''gustoweh''. Later, feathers in the gustoweh denote the wearer's tribe by their number and positioning. The Mohawk wear three upright feathers, the Oneida two upright and one down. The Onondaga wear one feather pointing upward and another pointing down. The Cayuga have a single feather at a forty-five degree angle. The Seneca wear a single feather pointing up, and the Tuscarora have no distinguishing feathers.{{citation needed|date=July 2016}}

 

[[File:Society of Mystic Animals.png|thumb|right|Meeting of the Society of Mystic Animals {{circa}}1900]]

 

 

It is believed that "most of the societies are of ancient origin and that their rituals have been transmitted with little change for many years." "Each society has a legend by which its origin and peculiar rites are explained."<ref name=MedSoc /> As part of his religious revolution, Handsome Lake "sought to destroy the societies and orders that conserved the older religious rites"<ref name=MedSoc /> A council of chiefs proclaimed{{when|date=July 2022}} that all animal and mystery societies should immediately dissolve, but through a defect in the form of the order the societies decided it was not legally binding and "went underground" becoming secret societies. Reviled by the "New Religion" of Handsome Lake, they were also rejected by the Christian Iroquois as holding pagan beliefs. Gradually, however, the societies came more into the open as hostility lessened.<ref name=MedSoc />

 

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