THE IROQUOIS AND THE HURONS.
“Stripped to the waist, his copper-colored skin
Red from the smouldering heat of hate within,
Lean as a wolf in winter, fierce of mood—
As all wild things that hunt for foes, or food—
War paint adorning breast and thigh and face,
Armed with the ancient weapons of his race,
A slender ashen bow, deer sinew string,
And flint-tipped arrow each with poisoned tongue,—
Thus does the Red man stalk to death his foe,
And sighting him strings silently his bow,
Takes his unerring aim, and straight and true
The arrow cuts in flight the forest through,
A flint which never made for mark and missed,
And finds the heart of his antagonist.
Thus has he warred and won since time began,
Thus does the Indian bring to earth his man.”
From the poem, “The Archer,” by the late Pauline
Johnson, of the Mohawk tribe of the Iroquois.
THE IROQUOIS AND THE HURONS.
When Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence nearly four hundred years ago the
Indians whom he met were of the Algonquin nation, one of the four great
divisions of Indians east of the Rocky Mountains in North America. The
others were the Iroquois, the Maskoki or Southern, and the Siouan of the
West.
The Algonquin country extended from Tennessee to Hudsons Bay and from
the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and included the Delawares, Miamis,
Ojibways, Ottawas, Sacs, Foxes, Pottawatomies, and Illinois. They
lived in wigwams covered with bark or skins and were a warlike nation,
subsisting on hunting and fishing. There were probably 100,000 in number
when at the height of their prosperity.
The Iroquois occupied the territory now known as Pennsylvania, New York,
the south shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and on the Upper St.
Lawrence. They were known as the Five Nations, the Mohawks, Oneidas,
Ononadagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, to which were added in 1715 the
Tuscaroras, who came north from Carolina and whose speech even to this
day differs much from the other Iroquois tongue. These made up what we
know so well as the Six Nations. They never numbered more than 40,000,
but they were mobile and made forays from their towns in New York,
sweeping over the country like a scourge and returning to their villages
for feasting. A Jesuit, describing the raids of the Iroquois, said “They
approach like foxes, they attack like tigers, disappear like birds.”
Algonquin was the general name for the tribes enumerated, but there was
no bond of union except a likeness of language, while, on the other hand,
the tribes of the Iroquois were in a real confederacy, which enabled them
to join together against a common enemy. It was this power of organized
and sustained warfare that made them so formidable. Even as early as the
time of the coming of the white man they had reached a comparatively
high stage of social development and government, so that they lived in
villages, and the Long House or community dwelling in which many families
lived under one roof, indeed in one room, was being displaced by the
separate hut. In the centre of the village was the Council House, the
place of meeting, of ceremonials and of trade, just as the Town Hall and
Market are to-day in many a town.
We are given an interesting picture of the Council in a Mohawk village in
New York:
“Sixty old men sat on a circle of mats smoking around the central fire.
Before them stood the captives.... After passing the Council pipe from
hand to hand in solemn silence, the Sachems prepared to give their views.
One arose, and offering the smoke of incense to the four winds of
heaven, to invoke witness to the justice of the trial, gave his opinion
on the matter of life and death. Each of the chiefs in succession spoke.
Without any warning whatever one chief rose and tomahawked three of the
captives. That had been the sentence. The rest were driven to lifelong
slavery.”
When the palisaded or stockaded village life was abandoned for the freer,
more independent life of the great village, the location was generally
upon the banks of a stream so that there might be a plentiful supply of
water, and in many cases easier transportation. While not an agricultural
people they had always enough women and captives to provide the means of
living, for the warriors and the hunters returning with game. Fields of
corn, pumpkins, and squashes, orchards of plum and apple, and small herds
of hogs and cattle were to be found in these villages; for the handling
of the fruit and water, baskets and pots were made with great skill by
the women.
The Iroquois were great travellers, and a thousand mile journey was
little to them if the object to be attained seemed worth while. They were
intelligent in the making of trails so as to get the shortest and easiest
route, an illustration of which may be seen to-day in the fact that the
New York Central Railway from Lake Erie to the Hudson River follows an
Iroquois trail.
Their principal ceremonies were in honour of the season, the Maple Sugar
Festival at the going of the snows of winter, and the Green Corn Dance,
and the Harvest Home Festival of the autumn.
The legend of Hiawatha, the most popular of all poems relating to Indian
life, was told by Longfellow as if Hiawatha were an Ojibway, whereas it
is likely that the story in its original form was from the Ononadaga
nation of the Iroquois, and Hiawatha is the very wise man who formed a
plan of universal peace among the nations of the Iroquois. However, it
may have been because the Iroquois and the Ojibways were very friendly up
to the middle of the seventeenth century, when the Ojibways sympathized
with the Hurons whom the Iroquois had driven from Huronia on the Georgian
Bay. They afterwards made peace and became as brothers. So much so
indeed that when many, many years afterward the Mississagas, a band of
the Ojibways, were forced to give up their reserved lands on the River
Credit, near Toronto, the Iroquois on the Grand River Reservation took
them in and gave them a tract of valuable land. Longfellow took many
phases of the legend and grouped them so as to give the atmosphere of
Indian life and interpret the meaning of its ceremonies. The leading
thought in all the legends is:
“How he prayed and how he fasted,
How he lived, and toiled, and suffered.
That the tribes of men might prosper,
That he might advance his people!”
This is the great legend of the Indians of New France told in every
winter lodge, and told in a somewhat different form among different
tribes. It gets local colour from the traditions of the particular tribe.
How they became the unrelenting enemy of the French we are told in the
story of Champlain, who joined the Hurons and Algonquins in 1609, when
they were on an expedition against the Iroquois, who lived near Lake
Champlain. It was in that battle the Iroquois first saw and experienced
the effect of the death dealing musket of the white man, and they never
forgot that it was used against them by the French.
Each nation was divided into tribes or clans with names such as Wolf,
Bear, or Turtle, and as the same tribes were in all the nations, the
section in each nation was related to the corresponding section in all
the other nations. So the Seneca Turtle was a brother to the Mohawk
Turtle. The families belonging to the Turtles were the most respected and
were accorded the highest honours.
Each of the nations had its own government for local affairs and elected
sachems to sit in the Great Council of all the Nations, where fifty
sachems dealt with national affairs. It is not too much to say that the
Iroquois were the most intelligent of the Indians of New France, for
they were always ready, well organized, and watchful, and knew how to
take defeat. When pressed back by the French and village after village
destroyed by a great expedition organized to severely punish them, they
retired in good order, and when things had calmed down they returned,
rebuilt their villages, replanted their fields and planned revenge.
The Hurons are said to have been relatives of the Iroquois, but if so
they must in some earlier time have ceased to be even friendly, for we
find them allied with the Algonquin, and from the time of Champlain on
the side of the French in the great international conflict. They lived
on the shores of the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, in what is called now
the County of Simcoe. This district was known as Huronia, and at the
height of their power there were about 30,000 inhabitants, almost as
many as live in the corresponding district to-day. They traded with the
French at Quebec by sending each year a fleet of canoes up the Bay and
by the French River, Lake Nipissing and the Ottawa River to the St.
Lawrence. This was the route by which Le Caron and Champlain entered this
great northern country in 1615, and were the first white men to see the
Great Lake, afterwards called Huron, the first of the Great Lakes to be
discovered by the French. The route by the Great Lakes was unknown, and
indeed all that southern country was dangerous because of the presence of
the dreaded Iroquois.
They were more of an agricultural nation than were the Iroquois. Possibly
they were not better farmers, but they were poorer warriors and so
remained on the land more than their fighting relations. They raised
pumpkins, sunflowers and rye. The corn they planted in hills higher,
larger, and much further apart than we do to-day.
They lived in villages in the Long Houses or community dwellings which
were to be found among the Iroquois in their early days. These were built
by bending saplings and tying them together to form the frame, which they
sheathed with bark. Down the centre were the fires, each of which was
shared generally by two families. The smoke was supposed to go out by a
hole in the roof. On either side of the fire and stretching from end to
end were platforms on which the families slept, while underneath were the
stores of clothing and provisions. No wonder the dogs, dirt and disease
impressed the missionaries to these people, and made them plan for huts
rather than a share in these dwellings.
Some of the greater villages were palisaded for protection, but the
smaller ones were not permanent, being moved about at the will of the
people or because of the unsanitary condition of the land that had been
occupied. The villages became large when the necessity for protection
became greater and some had as many as 2,000 inhabitants. The favourite
site for a village was on high ground near springs or an inland lake,
so that there would be a good water supply. There was a village Council
or Assembly, which dealt with local matters and a tribal assembly for
matters of general importance but there was no union for offence and
defence well organized and ready for action, as among the Iroquois.
The Hurons were smaller in stature than the Iroquois, the largest men
being about five feet eight inches in height. They had their feast
days, which resembled those of other nations in being associated with
the seasons, but their custom of burying the dead has a somewhat marked
character. The body was wrapped and placed on a platform away from
marauding animals and every ten years or thereabouts there was a great
Feast and Dance for the Dead, when, after preparing a great pit, the
bodies were placed in it sometimes in rows, sometimes in circles and
sometimes in parcels of bones of those who had been long dead.
Into the pit were cast pottery, implements of warfare and kettles which
were first rendered useless so that the graves might not be desecrated.
This is in contrast to some other nations of Indians who bury with the
deceased the things which they think will be useful to him in the “happy
hunting ground” to which he has gone. This pit is called an Ossuary, and
to the excavation of these we owe much of our knowledge of this nation.
This communal burial with the Hurons corresponded to the communal life
which preceded the era of the individual burial and the individual wigwam.
This Huronia county enjoyed great prosperity during the first half of
the seventeenth century with constantly increasing immigration, growing
villages, better implements for increased comfort in living, great
production and skill in handicraft owing to the influence and example of
the Jesuit mission. Into this peaceful country, unprepared for war, there
came in the last decade of this first half of the century the Iroquois
much as the Assyrian, “like the wolf on the fold.” In a series of well
planned, vigorous attacks the Hurons were massacred or driven out of the
country, the villages burned, the Jesuit missionaries slaughtered in the
fight, or reserved for a death by torture.
First on one of the Christian Islands off the shore they built a fort,
but soon realized that the important question of food supply could not
be met as long as the Iroquois remained on the mainland and intercepted
all messengers. Part of the nation then set off for Quebec, and there
threw themselves upon the kindness of their friends, the French, who
gave them a grant of land and their protection. Others went north
to Michillimackinac, and in their fear went even well up into Lake
Superior, where they were ministered unto by Father Marquette. But they
were not long there until the warlike Sioux became so great a menace
that with their protector, the great Marquette, they went back again
to Michillimackinac. Afterwards many of them went still further south
and under the name of Wyandottes they settled near Sarnia and Windsor,
opposite the present city of Detroit.
[Illustration: TYPICAL IROQUOIS INDUSTRIES
This group depicts a company of Oneida Indians gathered in a sheltered
spot in their capital village on Nicols pond, township of Fenner, Madison
county. This was the fort unsuccessfully stormed by Champlain in 1615.
The arrow maker is telling an amusing tale while he chips his flints. To
his right are a basket maker and a belt weaver. To his left are a wood
carver, a moccasin maker and a potter, all engaged at their trades as
they listen to the arrow maker’s tale.
In aboriginal times among the Iroquois each person had an occupation and
was by necessity industrious. Both men and women had their special forms
of labor, which with the men was often arduous.
The figures are casts of Oneida Indians made upon the New York and
Canadian reservations.
The purpose of this group is to show six typical Iroquois industries and
to indicate the social nature of the workers. The Iroquois at home among
his own folk is social in habits and full of humor. To the stranger he
appears taciturn and diffident and oftentimes indolent.]
These are typical nations of Indians of the days of New France, the
crafty, strong, nomadic, warlike and well organized Iroquois on whom
the missionaries could make little or no impression, the allies of the
English and the most feared of all the nations; and the less intelligent
and more domesticated, the traders and the canoemen, the hunter and
fisher, the unorganized Hurons, who suffered the missionaries to settle
among them and pretended to be converted because it did not interfere but
rather increased their comfort, the allies of the French, with little
initiative and no cohesion.