Iroquois

The Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee, also known as the League of Peace and Power) is a group of First Nations/Native Americans. The Confederacy was based, at the time of the arrival of the Europeans, in what is now upstate New York. Now they also occupy territory in Ontario and Quebec.

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Prehistoric and Protohistoric period

This union of nations was established prior to major European contact, replete with a constitution recorded with special beads called wampum that served the same purpose as money in other cultures. Most Western anthropologists speculate that this Constitution was created between the middle 1400s and early 1600s, but other scholars who account for Iroquois oral tradition argue that the event took place as early as 1100, with many arguing for 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 Constitution was written with European help, although most dismiss this notion as racism. The United States Constitution was partly modelled on the Iroquois League Constitution.

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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.

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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.

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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 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.

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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.

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During the American Revolution the Oneida and many Tuscarora and Onondaga sided with the Americans while the Mohawk, Seneca, and Cayuga remained loyal to Great Britain. This marked the first 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.

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In 1794, the Confederacy entered into the Treaty of Canandaigua with the United States.

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First Nations: First Nations is a term of ethnicity used in Canada that has widely replaced the use of the word "Indian". It refers to the Indigenous peoples of North America located in what is now Canada, and their descendants, who are not Inuit or M?tis. The proper terms to refer to the First Nations, Inuit, an...

Native Americans: Native Americans is a term which has several different common meanings and scope, according to regional use and context. See the below articles, which describe various indigenous peoples in the following contexts:...

Ontario: :This article describes the Canadian province. For other usages, see Ontario (disambiguation)....

Iroquois related Images and Photos (experimental)

Iroquois Wampum Belts

Iroquois Man Inhabitant of Canada

Samuel de Champlain's Defeat of the Iroquois at Lake Champlain c.1600