When the French first explored the St. Lawrence River, they found both
its banks, in the vicinity where the cities of Montreal and Quebec now
stand, peopled by the _Iroquois_. This tribe also occupied all the area
of New York state (except the valley of the lower Hudson), where it was
known as the Five Nations. West of these were the Hurons and Neutral
Nation in Canada, and the Eries south of Lake Erie, while to the south
of the Five Nations, in the valley of the Susquehanna and pushing their
outposts along the western shore of Chesapeake Bay to the Potomac, were
the Andastes and Conestogas, called also Susquehannocks. Still further
south, about the head-waters of the Roanoke River, dwelt the Tuscaroras,
who afterwards returned north and formed the sixth nation in the league.
West of the Apalachians, on the upper waters of the Tennessee River,
lived the Cherokees who, by their tradition, had moved down from the
upper Ohio, and who, if they were not a branch of the same family, were
affiliated to it by many ancient ties of blood and language. The latest
investigations of the Bureau of Ethnology result in favor of considering
them a branch, though a distant one, of the Iroquois line.
The stock was wholly an inland one, at no point reaching the ocean.
According to its most ancient traditions we are justified in locating its
priscan home in the district between the lower St. Lawrence and Hudson
Bay. If we may judge from its cranial forms, its purest representatives
were toward the east. The skulls of the Five Nations, as well as
those of the Tuscaroras and Cherokees, are distinctly dolichocephalic,
and much alike in other respects, while those of the Hurons are
brachycephalic.[95] Physically the stock is most superior, unsurpassed
by any other on the continent, and I may even say by any other people
in the world; for it stands on record that the five companies (500 men)
recruited from the Iroquois of New York and Canada during our civil war
stood first on the list among all the recruits of our army for height,
vigor and corporeal symmetry.
In intelligence also their position must be placed among the highest. It
was manifested less in their culture than in their system of government.
About the middle of the fifteenth century the Onondaga chief, Hiawatha,
succeeded in completing the famous league which bound together his nation
with the Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas, and Cayugas into one federation of
offence and defence. “The system he devised was to be not a loose and
transitory league, but a permanent government. While each nation was
to retain its own council and management of local affairs, the general
control was to be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representatives
to be elected by each nation, holding office during good behavior and
acknowledged as ruling chiefs throughout the whole confederacy. Still
further, and more remarkably, the federation was not to be a limited one.
It was to be indefinitely expansible. The avowed design of its proposer
was _to abolish war altogether_.”[96]
Certainly this scheme was one of the most far-sighted, and in its aim
beneficent, which any statesman has ever designed for man. With the
Iroquois it worked well. They included in the league portions of the
Neutral Nation and the Tuscaroras, and for centuries it gave them the
supremacy among all their neighbors. The league was primarily based upon
or at least drew much of its strength from the system of gentes; this
prevailed both among the Iroquois and Cherokees, descent being traced in
the female line. Indeed, it was from a study of the Iroquois system that
the late Mr. Morgan formed his theory that ancient society everywhere
passed through a similar stage in attaining civilization.
It is consonant with their advanced sentiments that among the Iroquois
women had more than ordinary respect. They were represented by a special
speaker in the councils of the tribe, and were authorized to conduct
negotiations looking towards making peace with an enemy. Among the
Conestogas we have the instance of a woman being the recognized “Queen”
of the tribe. With the Wyandots, the council of each gens was composed
exclusively of women. They alone elected the chief of the gens, who
represented its interests in the council of the tribe.[97]
In sundry other respects they displayed an intelligent activity. In many
localities they were agricultural, cultivating maize, beans and tobacco,
building large communal houses of logs, fortifying their villages with
palisades, and making excellent large canoes of birch bark. According to
traditions, which are supported by recent archæological researches, the
Cherokees when they were upon the Kanawha and Ohio had large fields under
cultivation, and erected mounds as sites for their houses and for burial
purposes. When first encountered in East Tennessee they constructed
long communal houses like the Five Nations, had large fields of corn,
built excellent canoes and manufactured pottery of superior style
and finish. Although no method of recording thought had acquired any
development among the Iroquois, they had many legends, myths and formal
harangues which they handed down with great minuteness from generation to
generation. In remembering them they were aided by the wampum belts and
strings, which served by the arrangement and design of the beads to fix
certain facts and expressions in their minds. One of the most remarkable
of these ancient chants has been edited with a translation and copious
notes by Horatio Hale.[98] The Cherokees had a similar national song
which was repeated solemnly each year at the period of the green corn
dance. Fragments of it have been obtained quite recently.
The Iroquois myths refer to the struggle of the first two brothers,
the dark twin and the white, a familiar symbolism in which we see the
personification of the light and darkness, and the struggle of day and
night.