The Iroquois Confederacy consisted of five, later six, tribes,
speaking the Iroquois language. In addition to these tribes there were
others belonging to the same linguistic stock, such as the Hurons,
the Cherokee, and others. The Confederacy or League of the Iroquois
was formed towards the end of the sixteenth century and embraced, at
that time, the following tribes: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and
Seneca. In the beginning of the eighteenth century they were joined by
the Tuscarora.
The original area occupied by these tribes embraced the following
district: nearly the entire valley of the St. Lawrence, the basins of
Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, the southeast shores of Lake Huron and
Georgian Bay, all of the present New York State except the lower Hudson
valley, all of central Pennsylvania, and the shores of Chesapeake Bay
in Maryland, as far as Choptank and Patuxent Rivers.
According to some computations, the number of Iroquois villages about
1657 was about twenty-four; towards 1750 their number may have grown
to about fifty. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the total
number of confederated Iroquois may have reached 16,000, which is also
the approximate number of the present Iroquois, including numerous
mixed breeds, who occupy a number of reservations in northwest New York
and southeastern Canada.
The tribes of the League are usually classed in the so-called Woodlands
culture area. They have, however, developed a civilization which is
greatly specialized when compared with other tribes of that area,
especially in social and political organization. The Iroquois exerted
a powerful influence on some of their neighbors, notably on some of
the eastern Algonkian tribes, whose socio-political organization bears
unmistakable traces of Iroquois influence. The Iroquois of the League
greatly developed a consciousness of what to-day might be designated
as a historic mission. Their leaders believed that the Great Peace,
for which the League stood, was fated to spread over all of the
Indian tribes. In their attempts to induce other tribes to accept the
principles of the League, they carried on an almost unceasing warfare
against such tribes as the Neutrals, the Algonkians and the Sioux, and
their combined forces proved irresistible to their less efficiently
organized neighbors. Ultimately, they were checked in the south by
their own relatives, the Cherokee.