Canada by Sir John George Bourinot (e ink ebook reader TXT) 📖

The whole organisation was essentially a democracy, as the chiefs, although an oligarchy in appearance, were controlled by the voices and results of the councils. In this as in other American savage nations, the rule governing the transmission of hereditary honours and possessions was through the female line.

Beyond the Huron villages, south of Nottawasaga Bay--so named probably from the Nottaways, a branch of the same family, driven by war to the south--we come to the Tionotates or Tobacco tribe, who were kin in language and customs to their neighbours and afterwards joined their confederacy. The Neutral Nation, or Attiwandaronks of Iroquois stock, had their homes on the north shore of Lake Erie, and reached even as far as the Niagara. They were extremely cruel, and kept for a long while their position of neutrality between the Hurons and Five Nations. To the south of Lake Erie rose the smoke of the fires of the Eries, generally translated "Cats," but, properly speaking, the "Raccoons." Like the Andastes, near the Susquehanna, mentioned in a previous chapter, they were famous warriors, and for years held their own against the Iroquois, but {118} eventually both these nations yielded to the fury of the relentless confederacy.

We have now come to the western door of the "long house" (_Ho-de-no-sote_) of the Iroquois, who called themselves "the people of the long house" (_Ho-de-no-sau-nee_), because they dwelt in a line of villages of "long houses," reaching from the Genesee to the Mohawk, where the eastern door looked toward the Hudson and Lake Champlain. The name by which they have been best known is considered by Charlevoix and other writers to be originally French; derived from "Hiro" (I have spoken)--the conclusion of all their harangues--and Koue, an exclamation of sorrow when it was prolonged, and of joy when pronounced shortly. They comprised five nations, living by the lakes, that still bear their names in the State of New York, in the following order as we go east from Niagara:

IROQUOIS NATIONS. ENGLISH NAMES. FRENCH NAMES.

Nundawaeona ) Seneca Tsonnontouans
Great hill people )

Gueugwehono ) Cayuga Goyogouin
People of the marsh )

Onundaegaono ) Onondaga Onnontague
People of the hills )

Onayotekaeono ) Oneida Onneyote
Granite people )

Gaeneaegaono ) Mohawk Agnier
Possessors of the flint )

Each tribe lived in a separate village of long houses, large enough to hold from five to twenty families. Each family was a clan or kin--resembling the _gens_ of the Roman, the _genos_ of the Greek--a {119} group of males and females, whose kinship was reckoned only through females--the universal custom in archaic times in America. As among these people the marriage tie was easily sundered and chastity was the exception,--remarkably so among the Hurons, their kindred--it is not strange that all rank, titles, and property should be based on the rights of the woman alone. The child belonged consequently to the clan, not of the father, but of the mother. Each of these tenement houses, as they may well be called, was occupied by related families, the mothers and their children belonging to the same clan, while the husbands and the fathers of these children belonged to other clans; consequently, the clan or kin of the mother easily predominated in the household.[2] Every clan had a name derived from the animal world, as a rule, and a rude picture {120} of the same was the "totem" or coat-of-arms of the kin or _gens_, found over the door of a long house or tattooed on the arms or bodies of its members. The Tortoise, Bear, and Wolf, were for a long time the most conspicuous totems of the Iroquois. These people were originally a nation of one stock of eight clans, and when they separated into five tribes or sections, each contained parts of the original clans. Consequently, "all the members of the same clan, whatever tribe they belonged to, were brothers or sisters to each other in virtue of their descent from the same common female ancestor, and they recognised each other as such with the fullest cordiality."

Whatever was taken in the hunt, or raised in cultivation, by any member of the household--and the Iroquois were good cultivators of maize, beans, and squash--was used as a common stock for that particular household. No woman could marry a member of her own clan or kin. The marriage might be severed at the will of either party. Yet, while the Iroquois women had so much importance in the household and in the regulation of inheritance, she was almost as much a drudge as the squaw of the savage Micmacs of Acadia and the Gulf.

The tribe was simply a community of Indians of a particular family or stock, speaking one of the dialects of its language. For instance, the Five Nations or Tribes spoke different dialects of the Iroquoian stock language, but each could understand the other sufficiently for all purposes of deliberation and discussion. Each tribe was governed by its {121} own council of sachems and chiefs--the latter inferior in rank--elected by their respective clans, but invested with office by the whole tribe. For all purposes of tribal government the tribes had separate territories and jurisdiction. For common purposes they united in a confederation in which each tribe occupied a position of complete equality--the exception being the Tuscaroras--Dusgaoweh or "shirt-wearing people"--who came from the south at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and made up the "Six Nations." If a tribe made peace it would not bind the other tribes unless they had given their consent in formal council, or by the presence of their representatives. A general council of fifty sachems, equal in rank and authority, administered the affairs of the confederation. These sachems were created in perpetuity in certain clans of the several tribes and invested with office by the general council. They were also sachems in their respective tribes, and with other clan-chiefs formed the council which was supreme over all matters appertaining to the tribe exclusively. Women, too, had their clan and other councils, and could make their wishes known through the delegates they appointed to the council of the league. In the federal council the sachems voted by tribes, and unanimity was essential before action was taken or a conclusion arrived at. The general council was open to the whole community for the discussion of public questions, but the council alone decided. The council of each tribe had power to convene the general council, but the latter could not convene itself. {122} With the object of preventing the concentration of too much power in one man's hands, the federal council appointed two war chiefs, equal in authority. The council fire or brand was always burning in the valley of the Onondagas, where the central council met as a rule in the autumn, or whenever a tribe might consider a special meeting necessary. The Onondagas had also the custody of the "Wampum," or mnemonic record of their structure of government, and the Tadodae'ho, or most noble sachem of the league, was among the same tribe. The origin of the confederacy is attributed in legendary lore to Hae-yo-went'-hae, the Hiawatha of Longfellow's poem.

These are the main features of that famous polity of the Iroquois which gave them so remarkable a power of concentration in war, and was one reason of their decided superiority over all the other nations of America. In council, where all common and tribal affairs were decided, the Iroquois showed great capacity for calm deliberation, and became quite eloquent at times. Their language was extremely figurative, though incapable of the expression of abstract thought, as is the case with Indian tongues generally. The Indian--essentially a materialist--could only find his similes, metaphors, and illustrations in the objects of nature, but these he used with great skill. The Iroquois had a very keen appreciation of their interests, and were well able to protect them in their bargains or contracts with the white men. In war they were a terrible foe, and a whisper of their neighbourhood brought consternation to Indian camps and cabins, from the Kennebec {123} to the Delaware, from the Susquehanna to the Illinois. They have been well described as "the scourge of God upon the aborigines of the continent." In their political organisation, their village life, their culture of the soil, their power of eloquence, their skill as politicians as well as warriors, they were superior to all the tribes in America as far as New Mexico, although in the making of pottery and other arts they were inferior to the mound-builders of the Ohio and the Mississippi--probably the Allegewi who gave their names to the Alleghanies and are believed by some writers to have been either exterminated by a combination of Algonquin and Iroquois or driven southward where they were absorbed in other nations. At no time could the Iroquois muster more than 3000 warriors; and yet they were the scourge and dread of all the scattered tribes of Algonquins, numbering in the aggregate probably 90,000 souls, and eventually crushed the Hurons and those other tribes of their own nationality, who did not belong to their confederacy and had evoked their wrath.

The Algonquin and Huron-Iroquois nations had many institutions and customs in common. Every clan had some such totem as I have described in the case of the Iroquois. Every tribe had its chiefs as military leaders and its councils for deliberation and decision. Consequently the democratic principle dominated the whole organisation. Eloquence was always prized and cultivated as a necessity of the system of government. Some tribes had their special orators among the chiefs. Though a general {124} war was dependent on the action of the council, yet any number of warriors might go on the warpath at any time against the enemies of the tribe. They had no written records, but their memories were aided in council or otherwise by reeds or sticks and rude pictures; strings of wampum--cleverly manufactured from shells--served as annals, which the skilled men of a tribe could decipher and explain. The wampum belts performed an important part in the declaration of war or peace, and the pipe was equally effective in the deliberations of council and in the profession of amity. Murder might be expiated by presents to the family or relatives of the dead, and crime was rarely followed by death except there was a question