The Iroquois Confederacy

In 1779, when American Revolution forces on a punitive mission arrived in western New York’s Mohawk River valley, they were astounded at the evidence of the remarkable Iroquois culture that greeted them. Before then lay broad cultivated fields of corn, squash, potatoes, beans and peas; expertly pruned apple, peach and pear orchards; and well-equipped farms with domesticated animals and livestock. In the eyes of the common soldiers, the Iroquois lived better in their wood frame and stone houses with brick chimneys and glazed windows than most of the European settlers of the region.

Around 1650, the Iroquois achieved the most advanced native American civilization north of the Rio Grande. When European colonists began to settle on the eastern seaboard, the most powerful Iroquois tribes – the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida Onondaga, and Seneca – had already formed the political association known as the Iroquois Confederacy, or the Five Nations, in order to end intertribal warfare. In 1722, the Five Nations became the Six Nations when they were joined by the Tuscarora Indians, driven out of the South by settlers.

According to tradition, their loose confederacy had been organized in the 16^th century by the Mohawk visionary Dekanawida and his disciple Hiawatha, who made a life’s work of persuading village after village to sign the “great peace”. By the 17^th century the territory controlled by the Iroquois extended from New England to the Mississippi River in the West and to the Tennessee River in the South. The unique political structure of the confederacy, of independence and interdependence among the tribes, delegated a special place to women. Not only was the lineage based on the maternal line, but women also nominated the 50 sachems who sat on the governing council of the Five Nations, as well as the male representatives to the tribal councils. Although the league did not interfere in tribal affairs, it did mediate successfully in many intertribal conflicts.

Due mainly to the influence of the Indian superintendent Sir William Johnson, the Iroquois sided with the British against the French in the European struggle for territory and for the fur trade. Except for the Tuscaroras and half of the Oneidas, the Iroquois also sided with the British in the Revolutionary War – a choice that turned out to be disastrous for the Indians. After the participation of Iroquois in the 1778 Cherry Valley and Wyoming Valley massacres, General George Washington ordered the devastating punitive expedition led by General John Sullivan. By the end of the 18^th century, war and disease had reduced the Iroquois by one-quarter, and they eventually lost most of their territory, often through treaty violation and land fraud by real estate speculators.

In their heyday, the Iroquois exercised far beyond their numbers – some 16,000 at their height. Not only were they able to hold two great European empires, Great Britain and France, at bay, but they also organized a sophisticated political structure that reportedly served as the model for some of Benjamin Franklin’s proposals for the new United States Federal Government.