American Indians and the Natural World
Ancestry in the Land
From the sixteenth century on, six nations have allied themselves to form the Iroquois Confederacy. Originally, they lived in the Eastern Woodlands, in an area that extended from the land south of Lake Ontario, along the Mohawk River, and westward to the Finger Lakes and Genessee River, in what is now New York State.
Though known as the Iroquois, they call themselves Haudenosaunee, the People of the Longhouse. The Mohawk nation has historically stood guard at the easternmost door of a symbolic longhouse. The Seneca watch over the western door, while the other nations, the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and the Tuscarora, are spread in between.
Skilled in warfare and gifted in peace, the six nations established a peace treaty which led to the formation of one of the world’s earliest democracies. This society gave rise to great orators, like the Onondaga, Hiawatha, and noble leaders, such as the Seneca, Cornplanter, who was rewarded with a tract of land along Pennsylvania’s Allegheny River for his diplomatic efforts with the fledgling government of the American Colonies.
The Iroquois people were rooted in the land, which designated each person an important function as the seasons changed. Men were hunters and warriors, providers and protectors of the community. Women owned the houses, gathered wild foods, cooked, made baskets and clothing, and cared for the children.
Sustainers of Life
To the Iroquois people, corn, beans, and squash are the Three Sisters, the physical and spiritual sustainers of life. The three vegetables composed the main food supply of the Iroquois. These life-supporting plants were given to the people when all three miraculously sprouted from the body of Sky Woman’s daughter, granting the gift of agriculture to the Iroquois.
The Iroquois agricultural system was based on the hill-planting method. Iroquois women, who were responsible for farming, placed several kernels of corn in a hole. As the small seedlings began to grow, the farmers returned periodically to mound the soil around the young plants, ultimately creating a hill one foot high and two feet wide. The hills were arranged in rows about one step apart.
Iroquois women mixed their crops, using a system called “interplanting.” Two or three weeks after the corn was planted, the women returned to plant bean seeds in the same hills. The beans contributed nitrogen to the soil, and the cornstalks served as bean poles. Between the rows, the farmers cultivated a low-growing crop such as squash or pumpkins, the leaves of which shaded the ground, preserving moisture and inhibiting weed growth.
Animals and Men
The Iroquois recognized the importance of the animals with which they shared the forest. They depended on animals for survival and patterned their society on the structure of Nature. The Iroquois people organize themselves according to the model of the animal world. Everyone belongs to the clan of his or her mother, and every group has its own clan animal. One of the main functions of the clan is to provide kinship with clan members in other villages. Hunting often took Iroquois men away from the village. However, they could always depend upon their clan for food and lodging.
Iroquois men spent much of their time and energy protecting their village and territory, trading for goods, and hunting and fishing. Their most important quarry was the deer, and they needed to shoot one a week to provide sufficient meat for their families.
The European desire for furs, especially beaver, began to dominate Iroquois affairs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In exchange for furs, Iroquois men brought home a wealth of useful trade goods, especially metal items such as guns, axes, knives, hoes, cooking pots, needles, scissors, and nails. By 1800 the Iroquois had exhausted their own supply of beaver. Through alliances, first with the Dutch and then with the English, the Iroquois established themselves as the middlemen in the fur trade. They regulated the flow of furs coming from the western tribes to the traders in the east.
Date posted: Friday, May 23rd, 2008 11:37 pm | Under category: First Peoples and the Land
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