The

later Champlain recorded contact with the Iroquois. latter's contemporary, the lawyer Lescarbot, published a history in three volumes that presented the information then current concerning New France and included several scores of pages relating to the Iroquois and kindred tribes. A generation later the cleric Sagard likewise published a history of French America, the dominant theme of which was missionary work since 1615. In Sagard's time a Dutch lawyer, Van der Donck, visited the New Netherland and wrote a description of it. Unfortunately his descriptions of the Indians in Dutch America were the least valuable portions of his book. Another generation elapsed before a European again recorded contact with the Iroquois. A settler in the middle colonies, Greenhalgh by name, visited the Iroquois country and wrote a brief description of the Iroquois village, population and house. His few pages of observations in 1677 have proved to be the most authentic of any yet referred to. At the close of the century two Frenchmen visited Canada. The first to arrive was a young Baron, La Hontan, who became an officer in the French colonial army in 1683 and remained in the country for ten years. His lengthy account of the new world included important references to Iroquois customs and characteristics which, however, have been accepted cautiously because of the young soldier's exuberant imagination. His fellow-countryman Bacqueville de La Potherie arrived about three years after La Hontan had returned to France, and made a voyage southward along the eastern coast. His visit resulted in a history of North America in four volumes, the third of which dealt with the Iroquois.

The written evidence contributed in the eighteenth century had at least twice the volume of that of the preceding two centuries and was more definite and trustworthy. In the summer of 1720 the Jesuit Charlevoix arrived in America and began a series of letters about his voyage to North America that has been of great value to the student of Iroquois life. Later he got out a history of New France based mainly upon the reports made by the Jesuit missionaries. At the time that Charlevoix was writing his letters another French churchman, Lafitau, was collecting information, largely from Jesuit sources, concerning North American Indians. His two large,

illustrated volumes together with Charlevoix's letters about his voyage to North America and the voluminous relations or reports of the Jesuit missionaries themselves, were the best works dealing with the Iroquois that appeared during the century. In the British colonies men were becoming interested in gathering information about the Indians, and a number of accounts survive that deal with the Iroquois. In that third decade in which Lafitau and Charlevoix wrote, an Englishman of the colony of New York, Colden by name, who had the benefit of close contact with the Iroquois, published a history chiefly of their relations with Europeans. The second volume contained the transactions that took place at many councils and shed considerable light upon Iroquois customs. A generation slipped by before another Englishman visited the Iroquois and wrote an account of what he saw. The famous John Bartram visited them almost seventy years later than Greenhalgh and supplemented the latter's description of Iroquois villages by reliable notes on the same subject. After the close of the Revolutionary War there appeared a history of the mission of the United Brethren among the North American Indians, written by the missionary Loskiel and containing first hand and reliable information about the life and the habits of the Indians of the middle colonies. Working in the same field at the same time was the missionary Heckewelder. Following the close of the French and Indian War he spent half a century among the Indians and then wrote an account of the Indian Nations that has fine descriptions of customs and characteristics, including those of the Iroquois.

The written evidence of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries concerning the Iroquois was not only scant but usually appeared at intervals of a generation or more. This unfortunate condition would have been true in large measure for the eighteenth century were it not for two great collections that span the intervals. The first of these, the eighteen volumes of documents relating to New York colonial and state history, appeared as two separate works about the middle of the nineteenth century. Most of the documents dealt with the relations of the Iroquois and the colonists and contained little of value to a student of religion and morals. From time to time, however, appears a document bearing upon a council, some

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social custom, agricultural methods, or the Indian attitude toward drunkenness, that repays the tedious search through the many hundreds of pages. The other collection has been referred to several times. The Jesuit Fathers were in contact with the Iroquois from about 1640 almost to the French and Indian War. These patient and long-suffering men left behind them a record, in their humble reports of labors in eastern Canada and the land to the south, that is second to none yet mentioned.

From the time that Heckewelder terminated his missionary work until there appeared the next record of an observer among the Iroquois, a half century elapsed. Then followed a different type of investigation and a different type of worker. The missionary gave way to the trained ethnologist, and the latter's reports superseded those of the former. One of the earliest of such reports was by Schoolcraft who published some notes on the Iroquois in 1846. These notes, not infrequently unreliable, marked the beginning of two decades of activity among students of the Iroquois. In 1849 J. V. H. Clark got out two volumes on the Iroquois entitled "Onondaga," the first of which contained many accounts of what he saw among them. Two years later appeared Morgan's "League of the Iroquois," the classic on the subject. A trained and enthusiastic ethnologist, he studied Iroquois life in his day and wrote an account of it that is indispensable. Although his enthusiasm often carried him away, his statement of what he himself saw and heard is highly reliable. At the same time there appeared Seaver's biography of an adopted Iroquois, Mary Jemison, which shed much light upon Iroquois customs about 1850. Just after the close of the Civil War W. L. Stone published fine biographies of two eminent Iroquois, Joseph Brant and Red Jacket. Two years later Brinton published some New World Myths that included some of the myths of the Iroquois.

Another barren decade then passed. It was the last interruption in the stream of evidence. The year 1880 inaugurated activity among students of the Iroquois that has gone on ever since. The Bureau of Ethnology has promoted interest, and almost a score of trained investigators have written on the Iroquois. Among the older writers must be mentioned Hale,

whose invaluable "Iroquois Book of Rites" appeared in 1883. Since that ninth decade J. N. B. Hewitt has contributed many important articles dealing with various phases of Iroquois life. His studies of the social and political aspects of the League of the Iroquois have been especially valuable. Shortly after Hewitt's first articles appeared, Arthur C. Parker, himself an Iroquois, began to publish studies of a variety of Iroquois activities so authoritative in character as to place him in the foremost rank of the students of that people. For more than a score of years both Hewitt and Parker have been gathering an extensive mass of material concerning them, a great part of which still awaits publication. These writers of the last generation or more have recorded the myths, beliefs, institutions and other elements, that made up the life of the Iroquois of the nineteenth century, on the whole with such accuracy and completeness that they furnish a body of information far superior to any that preceded.

MAIN FEATURES OF IROQUOIS LIFE.

The Dutch and the French found five tribes of Iroquois settled in villages in what is now New York State. About Lake Onondaga were the members of the central tribe, the Onondagas; to the west of them were the Cayugas while to the east were the Oneidas; in the region below Lake Ontario and east of Lake Erie were the Senecas; west of the Hudson and Lake Champlain were the Mohawks. Later, in 1715, the Tuscaroras settled on Oneida territory.14 The land of the Iro

14 The movements of the Iroquois before the seventeenth century are not known accurately. The following give a fairly complete discussion of the matter:

EARLY EXPLORERS AND WRITERS.

Baxter: Memoirs of Jacques Cartier, 160-172.

Lafitau: Moeurs des sauvages, I, 101–102.

Charlevoix: History . . of New France, II, 72-73. ·

Voyage to North America, I, 167-171.

LATER WRITERS.

Beauchamp: Origin ... of the N. Y. Iroquois,” in Am. A. and O. Jour., VIII, 358-366; IX, 37-39; XVI, 61–69.

Converse: Myths. . . of the . . . Iroquois, 128.

Douglas: "Consolidation of the Iroquoian Confederacy," in Am. Geog. Soc. Jour., XXIX, 41-54.

quois was marked off rather definitely by the eastern Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River in the west and north, and by the rivers, lakes and hills in eastern New York. To a people capable of them this region favored intercourse, friendship and union, since a string of streams and lakes connected the east with the west and obstacles to travel were few. The country was a forest region, abundantly watered, fertile and well supplied with the animal and vegetable life of a temperate clime. The woods offered bear, deer and squirrel, and nuts, fruits and edible roots; the streams were filled with fish; the open spaces by their fertility made maize culture simple. The home country, then, furnished a goodly measure of protection against possible invaders, favored intercommunication and therefore union among the neighbors within it and offered fair reward to savage labor.15

The Iroquois were a people who could and did use these natural advantages. The men trapped and hunted and fished; the women—the very children, too—kept house, gathered nuts, grubbed roots and, most important of all, raised maize, beans, squashes, melons, pumpkins, fruits, tobacco and sunflowers for oil.16 Our common notions of savage life are embarrassed and disconcerted by the amount of extensive farming these "mere savages "did. The Senecas cultivated fields in the Genesee Valley for miles of its length. General Sullivan described the Hale: "Fall of Hochelaga," in Jour. Am. F.-L., VII, 1-14.

Iroquois Book of Rites, 19 and Appendix, note c.

.

Hewitt: "Formation of League of the Iroquois," in Am. Anthr., VII, 61–67. In Hodge's Handbook, I, 615–616, 618.

Morgan: League of the Iroquois, II (notes 16-21), 187–192.

Parker: "

Origin of the Iroquois," in Am. Anthr., n. s. XVIII (1916), 479-483, 503-507.

Stites: Economics of the Iroquois, 13-14.

Stone: Red Jacket, 106-112, 116-119.

MYTHS.

Cusick: . . . History of the Six Nations, 11-14, 53-59.

Schoolcraft: Notes on the Iroquois, chs. II, III.

15 Good descriptions will be found in: Charlevoix: History, II, 188– 192. Jesuit Relations, XLIII (1656–1657), ch. XI. Van der Donck: Description of the New Netherland, 135-189.

More recent accounts are given by: Morgan, u. s., I, ch. 2. Stites, u. s., Pt. I, ch. I.

16 Parker: Iroquois Uses of Maize, 19-20. Stites, 15-19.