Dan Budin's List: Iroquois Indians

• migrating north from the region of the Roanoke River in response to hostilities with White colonists. In the 1980s members of the 6 Iroquoian tribes lived in Quebec and Ontario, Canada and New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma in the United States.
• On the eve of European contact the Iroquois territory extended from Lake Champlain and Lake George west to the Genesee River and Lake Ontario and from the St. Lawrence River south to the Susquehanna River. Within these boundaries each of the original 5 tribes occupied an north-south oblong strip of territory; from east to west, they were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. The region was primarily lake and hill country dissected by numerous rivers. Deciduous forests of birch, beech, maple and elm dominated the region, giving way to fir and spruce forests in the north and in the higher elevations of the Adirondack Mountains. In aboriginal times fish and animal species were diverse and abundant.
• In 1600 the population of the Five Nations is estimated to have been about 5,500 and that of the Tuscarora about 5,000. By 1904 the 6 Iroquois tribes numbered at least 16,000, not including several thousand persons of mixed blood. In the 1980s the total population of the 6 tribes was estimated to be over 20,000.
• The languages of the 6 tribes are classified in the Northern Iroquoian branch of the Iroquoian language family. The languages of all 6 tribes are still spoken.
• However, Iroquois aggression and expansion eventually brought them into conflict with the French and, at the same time, into closer alliance with the English. In 1687, 1693 and 1696 French military expeditions raided and burned Iroquois villages and fields. During Queen Anne's War (1702-1713) the Iroquois allied with the English and at the War's end were acknowledged to be British subjects, though they continued to aggressively maintain and extend their middleman role between English traders at Fort Orange (Albany) and native groups farther west. The victory of the English over the French in North America in 1763 weakened the power of the confederacy by undermining the strategic economic and political position of the tribes and by promoting the rapid expansion of White settlement. When the American Revolution broke out in 1775 neither the League as a whole nor even the tribes individually were able to agree on a common course of action. Most of the Iroquois allied with the British and as a result during and after the Revolution were forced from their homelands. In the period following the American Revolution the members of the Iroquois tribes settled on reservations in western New York state, southern Quebec and southern Ontario, where many of their descendants remain today.

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• here is also a coincidence of belief in relation to the origin of spiritual existences. The ancient mythology taught, that the Gods were born, nativos esse Deos,     and furnished, at the same time, their genealogy, with all the minuteness of legendary license. The Iroquois, also, believed that the Great Spirit was born; and tradition has handed down the narrative, with embellishments of fancy which Hesiod himself would not have disdained. 
• Whether the Gods ruled the universe, and were interested in the affairs of men, was a disputed question in the ancient schools. The Epicureans taught that they were unmindful of all human transactions, and spent their existence in ease and pleasure.
• But the Stoics took the opposite view, and not only affirmed  Page: 145 their constant supervision and intervention in human affairs, but also their active administration of the works of nature.
• This was also the popular belief. The notions of the Iroquois approached nearest to the latter. In error in ascribing to the Great Spirit a finite origin, and with feeble conceptions of his attributes, they yet believed him to be their creator, ruler and preserver; and that in him was the residuum of power.

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• While the religious system of the Iroquois taught the existence of the Great Spirit Hä-wen-ne[unknown] -yu,      1       This is an original uncompounded word, and in the Seneca dialect. It signifies simply “A Ruler.”   it also recognized the personal existence of an Evil Spirit, Hä-ne-go-ate[unknown] -geh,      the Evil-minded. According to the legend of their finite origin, they were brothers, born at the same birth, and destined to an endless existence. To the Evil Spirit, in a limited degree, was ascribed creative power. As the Great Spirit created man, and all useful animals, and products of the earth, so the Evil Spirit created all monsters, poisonous reptiles,  Page: 148 and noxious plants. In a word, while the former made everything that was good and subservient, the latter formed everything that was bad and pernicious to man. One delighted in virtue, and in the happiness of his creatures, to which end he exercised over them his unceasing protection. The other was committed to deeds of evil, and was ever watchful to scatter discord among men, and multiply their calamities. Over the Evil-minded the Great Spirit exercised no positive authority, although possessed of the power to overcome him, if disposed to its exertion. Each ruled an independent kingdom, with powers underived. Man's free agency stood between them, with which, in effect, he controlled his own destiny. A life of trust and confidence in the Great Spirit, and of obedience to his commands, afforded a refuge and a shelter to the pious Indian against the machinations of the Evilminded.

• The Iroquois worshipped a pantheon headed by the Great Spirit, Hä-wen-ne[unknown] -yu, who was the creator of man, and all useful animals and plants. Morgan claims the existence of an Evil Spirit, Hä-ne-go-ate[unknown] -geh (the evil minded),  1       Morgan, League of the Ho-de[unknown] -no-sau-nee      (1904), vol. 2, 156.   brother  Page: 22 of the Great Spirit, creator of monsters, poisonous reptiles and noxious plants.  2       It is possible that the idea of an Evil Spirit, co-eternal with the Great Spirit, is a European concept.   A host of subordinates of the Great Spirit grouped under the term Ho-no-che-no[unknown] -keh (Invisible Aids) were included in the pantheon. To He[unknown] -no, the Thunderer, was committed a thunderbolt which was a voice of admonition and vengeance. His beneficence toward man was expressed in the formation of clouds and the gift of rain. “By He[unknown] -no was the earth to be cooled and refreshed, vegetation sustained, the harvest ripened, and the fruits of the earth matured.”

• Compliance with the values expressed in religious beliefs was enforced by teachings concerning the destiny of the soul.  8       Cf. Fenton, Iroquois Suicide      (1941).   The soul of the Iroquois possessed immortality and in the future state was subject to rewards and punishments. After death, the soul traveled to the spirit land along the Milky Way. As it ascended to the abode of the Great Spirit, a fork in the road was reached where the thunder clouds continually raised and lowered. Here the souls of the wicked, frightened by the thunder and lightning, turned off to the abode of the Evil One. The righteous persisted on the road, finally reaching the Great Spirit in the seventh celestial realm.

• Iroquois society distinguished between male and female productive roles. The women's role was agricultural. The mythology has the female as mother earth. Agricultural produce was depicted as the Three Sisters, the beans, squash and corn (Fenton,1962). The male role centered around hunting and warfare. The Sapling mythology depicts the male hare as a  Page: 14 combatant and expert huntor (Hewitt, 1928).

• Six regular festivals, or thanksgivings, were observed by the Iroquois. The first, in the order of  Page: 176 time, was the Maple festival. This was a return of thanks to the maple itself, for yielding its sweet waters. Next was the Planting festival, designed, chiefly, as an invocation of the Great Spirit to bless the seed. Third came the Strawberry festival, instituted as a thanksgiving for the first fruits of the earth. The fourth was the Green Corn festival, designed as a thanksgiving acknowledgment for the ripening of the corn, beans and squashes. Next was celebrated the Harvest festival, instituted as a general thanksgiving to “Our Supporters,” after the gathering of the harvest. Last in the enumeration is placed the New Year's festival, the great jubilee of the lroquois, at which the white dog was sacrificed.

• Dreams have important functions. Herbalists claim to know particular plants through dreams; it is through dreams that they become aware of the healing powers of specific plants. Certain fortunetellers, termed dreamers, diagnose illness through dreams. An instance of this was reported in a previous section when a false face cure was diagnosed by a fortuneteller through a dreaming ritual. A dream guessing rite is an essential part of the Mid-winter Ceremony in which a persistent and sinister dream, usually involving drowning, the dead or encirclement occurring between the five days of the last new moon, is guessed on the third day of Mid-winter (Shimony, 1961:181). An individual asks the chiefs of the opposite moiety to guess the dream. Speck (1949) reports that the individual renders only an affirmative or negative answer. The guessing continues until the dream has been correctly guessed and the answer is affirmative. The cure is the guessing of the recurrent dream coupled with the administration of some good medicine, usually a miniature dream object. If the dream is not guessed the subject of the dream will be realised. Shimony (1961: ) reports an instance when a dreamer dreamed he fell into a swamp and was helped by the swamp weed (háo hiwo); however, no one guessed his dream at Mid-winter. The following spring the man was discovered drowned with his head resting on the swamp weed. Thus, for believers dream guessing rites are crucial. The rite frequently continues for many sessions into the night until the dream is guessed.
• The curing focus of most longhouse ceremonialism, developed during the transitional era. This focus has continued into the modern day. Curing is a mechanism that unites various rituale that hail quite different functions in aboriginal times within a coherent framework. As an overall theme it has allowed Longhouse innovators to structure a formalised network of religious  Page: 247 ceremonialism. This formalisation of Iroquois religion represents a continued evolutionary process of the New Religion from a revitalization movement 1800-1850, to an orthodox institutionalized structure.