Chapter IX: The Iroquois and the Hurons

“Stripped to the waist, his copper-colored skin
Red from the smouldering heat of hate within,
Lean as a wolf in winter, fierce of mood—
As all wild things that hunt for foes, or food—
War paint adorning breast and thigh and face,
Armed with the ancient weapons of his race,
A slender ashen bow, deer sinew string,
And flint-tipped arrow each with poisoned tongue,—
Thus does the Red man stalk to death his foe,
And sighting him strings silently his bow,
Takes his unerring aim, and straight and true
The arrow cuts in flight the forest through,
A flint which never made for mark and missed,
And finds the heart of his antagonist.
Thus has he warred and won since time began,
Thus does the Indian bring to earth his man.”

From the poem, “The Archer,” by the late Pauline
Johnson, of the Mohawk tribe of the Iroquois.

THE IROQUOIS AND THE HURONS.

When Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence nearly four hundred years ago the Indians whom he met were of the Algonquin nation, one of the four great divisions of Indians east of the Rocky Mountains in North America. The others were the Iroquois, the Maskoki or Southern, and the Siouan of the West.

The Algonquin country extended from Tennessee to Hudsons Bay and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and included the Delawares, Miamis, Ojibways, Ottawas, Sacs, Foxes, Pottawatomies, and Illinois. They lived in wigwams covered with bark or skins and were a warlike nation, subsisting on hunting and fishing. There were probably 100,000 in number when at the height of their prosperity.

The Iroquois occupied the territory now known as Pennsylvania, New York, the south shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and on the Upper St. Lawrence. They were known as the Five Nations, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Ononadagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, to which were added in 1715 the Tuscaroras, who came north from Carolina and whose speech even to this day differs much from the other Iroquois tongue. These made up what we know so well as the Six Nations. They never numbered more than 40,000, but they were mobile and made forays from their towns in New York, sweeping over the country like a scourge and returning to their villages for feasting. A Jesuit, describing the raids of the Iroquois, said “They approach like foxes, they attack like tigers, disappear like birds.”

Algonquin was the general name for the tribes enumerated, but there was no bond of union except a likeness of language, while, on the other hand, the tribes of the Iroquois were in a real confederacy, which enabled them to join together against a common enemy. It was this power of organized and sustained warfare that made them so formidable. Even as early as the time of the coming of the white man they had reached a comparatively high stage of social development and government, so that they lived in villages, and the Long House or community dwelling in which many families lived under one roof, indeed in one room, was being displaced by the separate hut. In the centre of the village was the Council House, the place of meeting, of ceremonials and of trade, just as the Town Hall and Market are to-day in many a town.

We are given an interesting picture of the Council in a Mohawk village in New York:

“Sixty old men sat on a circle of mats smoking around the central fire. Before them stood the captives.... After passing the Council pipe from hand to hand in solemn silence, the Sachems prepared to give their views. One arose, and offering the smoke of incense to the four winds of heaven, to invoke witness to the justice of the trial, gave his opinion on the matter of life and death. Each of the chiefs in succession spoke. Without any warning whatever one chief rose and tomahawked three of the captives. That had been the sentence. The rest were driven to lifelong slavery.”

When the palisaded or stockaded village life was abandoned for the freer, more independent life of the great village, the location was generally upon the banks of a stream so that there might be a plentiful supply of water, and in many cases easier transportation. While not an agricultural people they had always enough women and captives to provide the means of living, for the warriors and the hunters returning with game. Fields of corn, pumpkins, and squashes, orchards of plum and apple, and small herds of hogs and cattle were to be found in these villages; for the handling of the fruit and water, baskets and pots were made with great skill by the women.

The Iroquois were great travellers, and a thousand mile journey was little to them if the object to be attained seemed worth while. They were intelligent in the making of trails so as to get the shortest and easiest route, an illustration of which may be seen to-day in the fact that the New York Central Railway from Lake Erie to the Hudson River follows an Iroquois trail.

Their principal ceremonies were in honour of the season, the Maple Sugar Festival at the going of the snows of winter, and the Green Corn Dance, and the Harvest Home Festival of the autumn.

The legend of Hiawatha, the most popular of all poems relating to Indian life, was told by Longfellow as if Hiawatha were an Ojibway, whereas it is likely that the story in its original form was from the Ononadaga nation of the Iroquois, and Hiawatha is the very wise man who formed a plan of universal peace among the nations of the Iroquois. However, it may have been because the Iroquois and the Ojibways were very friendly up to the middle of the seventeenth century, when the Ojibways sympathized with the Hurons whom the Iroquois had driven from Huronia on the Georgian Bay. They afterwards made peace and became as brothers. So much so indeed that when many, many years afterward the Mississagas, a band of the Ojibways, were forced to give up their reserved lands on the River Credit, near Toronto, the Iroquois on the Grand River Reservation took them in and gave them a tract of valuable land. Longfellow took many phases of the legend and grouped them so as to give the atmosphere of Indian life and interpret the meaning of its ceremonies. The leading thought in all the legends is:

“How he prayed and how he fasted,
How he lived, and toiled, and suffered.
That the tribes of men might prosper,
That he might advance his people!”

This is the great legend of the Indians of New France told in every winter lodge, and told in a somewhat different form among different tribes. It gets local colour from the traditions of the particular tribe.

How they became the unrelenting enemy of the French we are told in the story of Champlain, who joined the Hurons and Algonquins in 1609, when they were on an expedition against the Iroquois, who lived near Lake Champlain. It was in that battle the Iroquois first saw and experienced the effect of the death dealing musket of the white man, and they never forgot that it was used against them by the French.

Each nation was divided into tribes or clans with names such as Wolf, Bear, or Turtle, and as the same tribes were in all the nations, the section in each nation was related to the corresponding section in all the other nations. So the Seneca Turtle was a brother to the Mohawk Turtle. The families belonging to the Turtles were the most respected and were accorded the highest honours.

Each of the nations had its own government for local affairs and elected sachems to sit in the Great Council of all the Nations, where fifty sachems dealt with national affairs. It is not too much to say that the Iroquois were the most intelligent of the Indians of New France, for they were always ready, well organized, and watchful, and knew how to take defeat. When pressed back by the French and village after village destroyed by a great expedition organized to severely punish them, they retired in good order, and when things had calmed down they returned, rebuilt their villages, replanted their fields and planned revenge.

The Hurons are said to have been relatives of the Iroquois, but if so they must in some earlier time have ceased to be even friendly, for we find them allied with the Algonquin, and from the time of Champlain on the side of the French in the great international conflict. They lived on the shores of the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, in what is called now the County of Simcoe. This district was known as Huronia, and at the height of their power there were about 30,000 inhabitants, almost as many as live in the corresponding district to-day. They traded with the French at Quebec by sending each year a fleet of canoes up the Bay and by the French River, Lake Nipissing and the Ottawa River to the St. Lawrence. This was the route by which Le Caron and Champlain entered this great northern country in 1615, and were the first white men to see the Great Lake, afterwards called Huron, the first of the Great Lakes to be discovered by the French. The route by the Great Lakes was unknown, and indeed all that southern country was dangerous because of the presence of the dreaded Iroquois.

They were more of an agricultural nation than were the Iroquois. Possibly they were not better farmers, but they were poorer warriors and so remained on the land more than their fighting relations. They raised pumpkins, sunflowers and rye. The corn they planted in hills higher, larger, and much further apart than we do to-day.

They lived in villages in the Long Houses or community dwellings which were to be found among the Iroquois in their early days. These were built by bending saplings and tying them together to form the frame, which they sheathed with bark. Down the centre were the fires, each of which was shared generally by two families. The smoke was supposed to go out by a hole in the roof. On either side of the fire and stretching from end to end were platforms on which the families slept, while underneath were the stores of clothing and provisions. No wonder the dogs, dirt and disease impressed the missionaries to these people, and made them plan for huts rather than a share in these dwellings.

Some of the greater villages were palisaded for protection, but the smaller ones were not permanent, being moved about at the will of the people or because of the unsanitary condition of the land that had been occupied. The villages became large when the necessity for protection became greater and some had as many as 2,000 inhabitants. The favourite site for a village was on high ground near springs or an inland lake, so that there would be a good water supply. There was a village Council or Assembly, which dealt with local matters and a tribal assembly for matters of general importance but there was no union for offence and defence well organized and ready for action, as among the Iroquois.

The Hurons were smaller in stature than the Iroquois, the largest men being about five feet eight inches in height. They had their feast days, which resembled those of other nations in being associated with the seasons, but their custom of burying the dead has a somewhat marked character. The body was wrapped and placed on a platform away from marauding animals and every ten years or thereabouts there was a great Feast and Dance for the Dead, when, after preparing a great pit, the bodies were placed in it sometimes in rows, sometimes in circles and sometimes in parcels of bones of those who had been long dead.

Into the pit were cast pottery, implements of warfare and kettles which were first rendered useless so that the graves might not be desecrated. This is in contrast to some other nations of Indians who bury with the deceased the things which they think will be useful to him in the “happy hunting ground” to which he has gone. This pit is called an Ossuary, and to the excavation of these we owe much of our knowledge of this nation. This communal burial with the Hurons corresponded to the communal life which preceded the era of the individual burial and the individual wigwam.

This Huronia county enjoyed great prosperity during the first half of the seventeenth century with constantly increasing immigration, growing villages, better implements for increased comfort in living, great production and skill in handicraft owing to the influence and example of the Jesuit mission. Into this peaceful country, unprepared for war, there came in the last decade of this first half of the century the Iroquois much as the Assyrian, “like the wolf on the fold.” In a series of well planned, vigorous attacks the Hurons were massacred or driven out of the country, the villages burned, the Jesuit missionaries slaughtered in the fight, or reserved for a death by torture.

First on one of the Christian Islands off the shore they built a fort, but soon realized that the important question of food supply could not be met as long as the Iroquois remained on the mainland and intercepted all messengers. Part of the nation then set off for Quebec, and there threw themselves upon the kindness of their friends, the French, who gave them a grant of land and their protection. Others went north to Michillimackinac, and in their fear went even well up into Lake Superior, where they were ministered unto by Father Marquette. But they were not long there until the warlike Sioux became so great a menace that with their protector, the great Marquette, they went back again to Michillimackinac. Afterwards many of them went still further south and under the name of Wyandottes they settled near Sarnia and Windsor, opposite the present city of Detroit.

This group depicts a company of Oneida Indians gathered in a sheltered spot in their capital village on Nicols pond, township of Fenner, Madison county. This was the fort unsuccessfully stormed by Champlain in 1615.

The arrow maker is telling an amusing tale while he chips his flints. To his right are a basket maker and a belt weaver. To his left are a wood carver, a moccasin maker and a potter, all engaged at their trades as they listen to the arrow maker’s tale.

In aboriginal times among the Iroquois each person had an occupation and was by necessity industrious. Both men and women had their special forms of labor, which with the men was often arduous.

The figures are casts of Oneida Indians made upon the New York and Canadian reservations.

The purpose of this group is to show six typical Iroquois industries and to indicate the social nature of the workers. The Iroquois at home among his own folk is social in habits and full of humor. To the stranger he appears taciturn and diffident and oftentimes indolent.]

These are typical nations of Indians of the days of New France, the crafty, strong, nomadic, warlike and well organized Iroquois on whom the missionaries could make little or no impression, the allies of the English and the most feared of all the nations; and the less intelligent and more domesticated, the traders and the canoemen, the hunter and fisher, the unorganized Hurons, who suffered the missionaries to settle among them and pretended to be converted because it did not interfere but rather increased their comfort, the allies of the French, with little initiative and no cohesion.