town of Genesee in Revolutionary days as one containing one hundred and twenty-eight houses, mostly large and elegant, well located and "almost encircled with clear flat land extending a number of miles; over which extensive fields of corn were waving, together with every kind of vegetable. . ."17 The hunting season was the winter, the hunting preserve the land from Maryland north and Ohio east. Fishing time followed that of hunting and extended into the summer. Each of the other occupations-berry picking, planting, harvesting, nut gathering, etc.—was pursued in its season. The heavy work such as a big harvest, the felling of trees, the clearing of sites, the building of houses, fell to the men. They, too, usually made the tools of production. The actual planting and caring for grain and vegetables were done by groups of women. A matron was chosen to act as overseer, and the whole party planted, cultivated and harvested under her direction. The fact that women farmed in groups was not a peculiarity, for hunters and fishermen likewise worked in parties. Because they knew only extensive agriculture soil exhaustion occurred about every twelve years. This fact, in addition to the nigh total consumption of accessible wood fuel in the same time, necessitated a migration and the raising of a new village.18 Although it has varied from time to time, the total Iroquois population has been and is about fifteen thousand, of which the 17 Quoted by Parker, loc. cit., 20. 18 Morgan, II (notes 88-93), 251–253. Parker: loc. cit., 21-36 passim, gives a full discussion of agriculture and includes photographs. Compare what he says with Mrs. Jemison's account of her work, given in Seaver: Mary Jemison, 69–73. Stites, Pt. I, chs. II, III. Older writers discussed the subject: Bacqueville de La Potherie: Histoire, III, 18–20. Charlevoix: Voyage to N. A., II, 91–94. Loskiel: History of the Mission . among the Indians, Pt. I, chs. Lafitau: Moeurs, II, 75-81, 86, 107–112, 336-338. On food, utensils of all sorts, division of labor among the Hurons, who were so closely related to the Iroquois, see Parkman: Jesuits in North America, I, 16-18, 22-23. (Copy used is vol. III of the Champlain Edition of Parkman's works, published in Boston in 1897.) Senecas had and have a plurality.19 This population was gathered together in two or three dozen villages, each containing a few hundred persons. A village was simply a number of houses close enough together to form a neighborhood, for there were no streets, no roads and no orderly arrangement of dwellings. In each house there lived from a half dozen to over a dozen families in our sense of the term. The house itself was an oblong, bark dwelling with a door at each end, a series of open, single "rooms" or sections along both sides of the building, and a line of fire places down the center, each fire serving the families in the two sections flanking it.20 The maternal family was the smallest political and social unit. Such a family included a woman, her sons and daughters, the sons and daughters of her daughters, and so on. When a household became large, one or more of the younger couples would go off and, with the aid of their relatives, would build a house for themselves. Such houses usually were small at first but grew and in time became real long-houses. Descent was matrilinear and relationships were matronymic. Governance was matripotestal; but final authority rested in the brothers and uncles of the women of the household, one of these men being selected by the women to represent the house in relations between it and outsiders.21 19 Morgan, II (notes 59-60), 226-230, gives a fairly complete discussion. Goldenweiser, in Geol. Sur. of Canada, Rep. Anthr. Div., Sessional Paper no. 26 (1913), p. 370, conjectures that in the seventeenth century there were nearly forty clans in the League and that each clan contained about 375 persons, these being gathered into from two to five maternal families. 20 Descriptions of houses are given by Bartram: Observations Greenhalgh: Observations mentary Hist. of N. Y. Charlevoix: Voyage, II, 96–98. Lafitau, II, 9-16. 40-41. Morgan: House and House-Life diagram. being pp. 11-14 of vol. I of the Docu 119-125, with pictures and a A summary and discussion, together with diagrams, of the long house are given by Lloyd in Morgan: League, II (notes 124-126), 287-302. Parkman, u. s., I, 11-14, note 2 p. 12, note 1 p. 13. 21 Goldenweiser, u. s., Rep. for 1912, 467-468, 471. Hewitt, in the Handbook, 1, 617, 303. The social and political unit next above the maternal family was the clan. In any tribe a clan consisted of one or more maternal families. These clan members felt themselves to be related, although the relationship was not always clear. A clan did not live off by itself, for in almost any village could be found maternal families of different clans. In by-gone days the total number of clans may have been close to forty. The names, however, were about eight, to wit, Bear, Wolf, Turtle, Beaver, Snipe, Deer, Hawk and Heron. The Mohawk and Oneida tribes seem never to have had more than three of these clans, Bear, Wolf and Turtle, but all eight clan names could be found in each of the other four tribes. Each clan of a tribe, however, maintained its own unity, had its own sets of individual names, elected its own chief or chiefs to the Confederation when such was its privilege, and chose its own ceremonial officials. All clans had the right to adopt outsiders. The clan, too, appears formerly to have had rights to a portion of the tribal property (see below, p. 81) and to have had its own burial grounds. Clansmen were expected to protect and to avenge one another. For the last two hundred years, more or less, the clans have been the exogamous units, the interdict extending throughout the Confederacy so that, for example, not only may a Seneca warrior of the clan of the Bear not marry another Seneca Bear, but no woman of the Bear Clan in any tribe of the League can become his wife. When a husband had become a father he left the dwelling of his mother and joined that of his wife, although occasionally the wife became a member of her husband's house.22 Other features of clan 22 Discussion of political and social organization of the Iroquois has gone on for two centuries. Charlevoix: Voyage, II, 36, on exogamy; 16-23 on political organization. Lafitau has a long discussion of the subject, I, 463-580; particularly 463-465, 469-486, 552-553, 556, 558, 564-565. Loskiel, Pt. I, 56, on exogamy; 137-140 on political organization. Parkman, I, 46-54 on political organization; 38-41 on social life. passim. organization, such as the relation to the totem and the participation in Confederate affairs, will be discussed later (see Chapter IV). The clans of every tribe were grouped into two divisions or sides or phratries. The Iroquois had no distinctive names for these divisions. The clans of one side called one another brothers; they called those of the other side cousins. The phratries functioned mainly at social and religious ceremonies. The great games were played between the divisions, and affairs were conducted according to membership in the sides at burials, at the great religious festivals, at the election of chiefs, and so on. But at political councils phratric arrangements were not observed.23 The social and political unit next above the phratry was the tribe. As already mentioned, the clans were grouped into six tribes, each of which, except the Mohawk and the Oneida, contained eight or more clans. The members of the tribe felt themselves to be one, since they had a common tradition, a common land to use and to defend, a common speech and participation in the great tribal religious ceremonies and feasts as well as in the tribal councils relating to religious, military or other weighty matters.24 Even the women were interested directly in these councils, for they took part in some and in others could voice their opinions through some orator from among the men, whom they chose as their mouth-piece.25 In the later fifteenth century, probably, the five tribes in the New York region united into what was at first a loose confederacy, but one which gradually became more closely knit and strengthened. The purposes of the League, as reGoldenweiser, Reps. for 1912, 1913, passim. Hewitt, in Handbook, I, 303-306, 618. Also references in note 3 of Ch. IV below, p. 76. The most recent discussion of conciliar ceremonial has been by C. M. Barbeau: "Iroquois Clans and Phratries," Am. Anthr., n. s., XIX (1917), 392-402 and Goldenweiser's comment, ib., n. s., XX (1918), 118-120. 23 Goldenweiser: Geol. Sur., Rep. for 1912, 464-466. Hewitt, u. s., I, 304. Barbeau, loc. cit. 24 Cf. Hewitt, loc. cit., II, 814. 25 Stone: Red Jacket, 139–143, 155-158, gives some illustrations of this usage. Women did speak unofficially, however. Cf. Goldenweiser, u. s., Rep. for 1912, 469. vealed in the Deganawida Myth, were to secure public peace by providing a means for eliminating inter-tribal quarrels, to provide more effective force against foreign enemies and to promote the welfare of all through the authority and justice of law and the supporting arm of the whole body of warriors. The fifty chiefs who composed the Council of the League were chosen by the women of the tribe and clan to whom that right had been given and in the manner designated by the founders of the League. 26 An Iroquois, then, had a strong tie of kin to bind him to his household, clan and phratry. To his tribe he was bound by the bond of kin and by the bond of a common land, speech and council. The League had as unifying bonds the kin tie, since roughly speaking the clan systems were in all tribes, a common language, a common country to defend and a federal council. Morgan sums up the situation, although incompletely, by saying that "The life of the Iroquois was either spent in the chase, on the war-path, or at the council-fire. They formed the three leading objects of his existence."27 Other interests were mirrored in appropriate institutions. 28 The details of the education of the young will be discussed later (see p. 83); here it will suffice to say that education was strictly familiar, the mother teaching the child until puberty, at which 26 The Deganawida Myth and conciliar ceremonial will be discussed in Ch. IV, p. 75 sq. See note 3, p. 76. Beauchamp: Iroquois Trail, 11-38, 56-104 passim, 137-143. In Jour. Am. F.-L., I, 201–203; IV, 295–306. Brant-Sero: "Dekanawideh," in Man, 1901, 166-170. Clark: Onondaga, I, 21–30, 38–43. Canfield: Legends, 23-40, 137-148 and Cornplanter's comment, 208. Hewitt: "Legend of the Founding of the League," Am. Anthr., V, 131– 148. In Handbook, II, 815. For the actual formation of the League see note 14 above. Some instances attesting the weakness of conciliar control, whether federal or tribal, and the looseness of the Confederation in the seventeenth century, are to be found in XLIII Jes. Rel. (1656-7), 101, 103, 115, 137, 215. Sara Stites is of the opinion that sufficient consideration hitherto has not been given to the economic influences underlying the political tribe, clan, etc. Cf. Stites, 96-120. 27 I, 102. 28 Parkman, I, introduction pp. 3-87, gives an easily accessible summary of Indian life in the central East. |