Iroquois

Iroquois, one of the main divisions of the North American aborigines, whose domain originally comprised the middle St. Lawrence basin with the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie, the present State of New York and most of Pennsylvania, besides enclosures in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee, but nowhere quite reaching the Atlantic, being almost everywhere surrounded by various branches of their hereditary foes, the Algonquian people. The Iroquois proper, mainly centred in New York and the opposite side of the St. Lawrence, formed a renowned historic confederacy of five nations, afterwards (1712) increased to six by the accession of the Tuscaroras from North Carolina, the original "five nations "(Onyicehonwe, "Superior Men") being the Mohawks, founders of the union, the Oneidas, Onondagoes, Senecas, and Cayugas, The other branches of the Iroquoian race, some hostile, some friendly, were the Eries, "Neuters," and Wyandots (Hurons) of the lakes region; the Conestogas of the Lower Susquehanna, the Nottoways and Chowanoes bordering on the Tuscaroras, and the Cherokees of South Carolina. Physically the Iroquois were scarcely to be distinguished from their Algonquian neighbours, being of the ordinary Prairie Indian type; but mentally they were superior to them and to all other aborigines north of the Pueblo Indians (New Mexico and Arizona), as shown especially by their powerful political organisation, enabling them for generations to hold their own against all the surrounding Algonquians, by whom they were vastly outnumbered. They were also distinguished by their speech, a stock language of the normal polysynthetic type still spoken in several marked varieties on the reservations to which all the surviving tribes are now confined. They number (1893) altogether 43,000, of whom 34,000 are in the United States and 9,000 in Canada, the chief reservations being those of Indian Territory (Quapaw and other agencies), New York (Cattaraugus, Oneida, Alleghany, Tonawanda, and others), and Canada (Caughnawaga of Quebec, Quinte Bay, Grand River, and others of Ontario), besides the Green Bay Agency in Wisconsin for the Oneidas. The Eries, Conestogas, Neuters, Tionontates, and Wyandots are extinct. During the border warfare before the British conquest of Canada, the Iroquois usually took sides with the English, the northern Algonquians with the French. Since then the Iroquois have also accepted British culture, being mostly Protestants, and receiving instruction in English, while retaining the use of their several tribal dialects. They are of peaceful habits, and skilful agriculturists, raising much farm produce for the surrounding markets (Gallatin, in Schoolcraft, III. p. 401; Berghau's Irokesen, 1887; Bancroft, History U.S., III. p. 243).