The Iroquois includes many Indian tribes speaking a language of the Iroquoian family, such as the Huron, Mohawk, Onondaga, and Seneca among others. However, the Huron is often spoken of separately. The Iroquois differs from the Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the Iroquois League. All of them were affected by the arrival and colonization by Europeans. While Iroquois have a reputation of being violent, they were at times peaceful and were employed by different European companies; they also spread their culture and some European ideas with them. The Iroquois League has been said to have influenced the Founding Fathers, but is that true? Another question is whether the Iroquois were cannibals. They believed in witchcraft, but witchcraft …show more content…
They were warlike and went out on expeditions to places in New Brunswick, Massachusetts, parts of Maine, and the north shore of Lake Huron. Excursions have been documented all the way to Ohio-Mississippi valley. “’The character of all these [Iroquois] Nations is warlike and cruel,’ wrote Jesuit missionary Paul Le Jeune in 1657.” (Richter, 528) They had different purposes for war than Europeans did. Thus, since the Europeans did not understand the similarities and differences, they were called savage. The Iroquois did not wage war all the time though. The Hudson Bay Company and the Northwestern Fur Company employed Iroquois as canoe men; they were also employed by private enterprises connected with the fur trade or exploration. The Iroquois employed by the Hudson Bay Company “are reputed to have been the most expert in the country, and many stories are told of their skill and spirit of adventure.” (Chamberlain, 460) They also hunted beaver for corporations, sometimes with their families with them. Iroquois were employed as “canoe men, guides, carriers, and voyagers in the service of the Hudson Bay Company.” (Chamberlain, 460) Some of the Iroquois went as far as the Rocky Mountains, where they stayed and brought their culture with them. As time passed though, they mixed cultures until one could hardly tell they were part Iroquois. They did bring dug-outs, the crossbow, and teaching of the Jesuit fathers to …show more content…
It has been thought that they were cannibals, and, though some have tried to challenge that claim, there is evidence that supports it. Thus, “the Iroquois practiced ritual cannibalism in the 17th century.” (Abler, 309) In 1967, archaeologist James Tuck discovered a roasting platform with fragments of human bones showing cut marks. This, though, was not the only find. There have been several archaeologists who have reported evidence of cannibalism dating about 1300 and forward. Of course, it is difficult to prove that the flesh was, in fact, eaten. Iroquois speeches have references of cannibalism, though it could have been metaphorical. There are accounts of cannibalism from supposed eye-witnesses. “Some confirmation is provided for this story [the story of a Christian Huron] by the careful examination of the bodies which confirmed the details of torture and mutilation, even though such an examination cannot prove that missing portions of the body were eaten.” (Abler, 313) In the end, French, Dutch, and English sources, both secular and religious, allege that the Iroquois were
A lot of people have tribes, and almost every tribe is different. In rules, looks, and meanings. There are two specific tribes to learn about today. That is the Apache tribe and the Lakota tribe. There are many similarities and differences.
In Marianne Mithun and Wallace L. Chafe’s article “Recapturing the Mohawk Language”, the two authors focus on an important aspect of language that I strongly agree on. Mithun and Chafe demonstrate how native Mohawk speakers acquire unconsciously all necessary rules of the Mohawk language. I find that their discovery can be used as an argument to prove professor Ray Jackendoff’s first fundamental rule: mental grammar.
Cherokee tribes led the way in adopting American traditions and ideals. They created their own schools and drafted a constitution. Some Cherokee people became farmers and slave owners. When they felt they were wronged or being taken advantage of, they filed court cases and sought justice as an American would. Surely all of these things speak to the fact that being a Native American Indian does not automatically make someone a “savage.” Classifying the Natives and savage made it easier for Jackson to justify their expulsion. If he had recognized them as equal citizens he could not have forced them from their
During the early beginnings of the Colonial period in the United States, the original inhabitants, the Native Americans had to deal with many invaders from Europe. Of all the Native American tribes, the Iroquois and Huron had the most interaction with the Europeans. The Spanish, English, and French were some of the few countries that worked with the Native Americans the most. Each country had their own methods of dealing with the Native Americans when it came to interaction or methods for trading and obtaining of goods. Of those three nations the French was the one nation that appeared to not take full advantage of the Huron and Iroquois.
local chief. The chief was the focus of power in the settlement. The local chief
Each of them brought their own customs, culture and values and integrated them into society. Native Americans, however, were known as savages because the government saw them as uncivilized and uncontrollable. Although the United States claims, it is a free country and states in the First Amendment that you may believe in any religion you want without persecution, but it did not give that right to the Natives. Instead, the government was trying to convert the Native Americans religion to Catholic or Christian. Many people came to America to escape religious persecution.
Before this settlement by the Europeans, Indian tribes lived on the land now known as Pennsylvania. Some Indian tribes included Erie, Huron, Honniasont, Iroquois, Leni Lanape, Shawnee, and Susquehannock. Penn was informed of the Indians that lived on the land...
Why is it significant that the Pueblo tradition of story telling makes no distinction between types of stories, such as historical, sacred, or just plain gossip?
The Algonquians on the other hand had tried to take over the Iroquoian territory. The Iroquois had fought and won a battle with the Algonquians for the territory they had lost for 20 years. Other than these two main groups, the Iroquois people were well rounded. All of the many families in a clan, many clans in a tribe, and many tribes make what is known as the one Iroquois Confederacy. Some of the famous people who were a big part of the Iroquoian culture were Deganawida and Hiawatha. Deganawida along with Hiawatha were the two founders of the Iroquoian Confederacy. They both organized a few of the Native American tribes and made it into a political and cultural confederacy. Another famous Iroquoian person is Dina A. John, who was a resident of the Onondaga tribe and survived the Van Shaik Expedition. She had also served in the War of 1812 and became an artist and entrepreneur in New York. These famous people are representing for what the Iroquois Confederacy has become. Contrary to what many historians believed, based on the narratives of this essay one would unequivocally conclude that indeed Native-Americans were never impoverish nor culturally
For the Native Americans to explain their existence, they created stories that described how things came to be. These stories are much like the ones that you would find in the Bible, and are very insightful in getting a better understanding of the Native Americans religious viewings. The Native Americans strongly believed in spirits and beings of another world. In the Iroquois Creation Story, these believes are strongly represented by telling the story of two brothers. This story is a representation of how the world was created. There is a good minded brother and a bad minded brother, which are not just brothers but twins. These unborn brothers and their mother were sent to the back of a turtle that in order to secure them from the dangers of the dark world she fell to. In a hurry to be born, the bad minded brother murders
Aboriginals influenced classical Liberalism to some extent due to other numerous factors that are contributed in influencing classical Liberalism. Various opposing tribes occupied similar grounds in North America, consequently caused disputes which subsequently led to fighting. Due to the constant fights that were occurring, men were dying from each tribe and as a result a solution was needed to be established. Therefore, decided on unifying the five tribes in order to create one tribe termed the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee.) This enabled there to peace and ultimately a more unified tribe, drastically limiting on their disputes by resolving them democratically. Additionally, Iroquois women were perceived as equal to their counterparts, therefore
In his essay, “The Indians’ Old World,” Neal Salisbury examined a recent shift in the telling of Native American history in North America. Until recently, much of American history, as it pertains to Native Americans; either focused on the decimation of their societies or excluded them completely from the discussion (Salisbury 25). Salisbury also contends that American history did not simply begin with the arrival of Europeans. This event was an episode of a long path towards America’s development (Salisbury 25). In pre-colonial America, Native Americans were not primitive savages, rather a developing people that possessed extraordinary skill in agriculture, hunting, and building and exhibited elaborate cultural and religious structures.
Native Americans were hunter gatherers and lived off the land. They were very conservative people and would make sure absolutely nothing was put to waste. Native Americans were able to adapt to different environments due to their creativity of how to live off of Mother Nature. They were able to find ways to live in places ranging from deserts to forests to alongside oceans. They were unquestionably great hunters and effective farmers. The Indians unquestionably had much better diets than the Europeans and were far less likely to ever face starvation or hunger. It is recorded that the first Europeans to ever arrive at America often commented on the Indians massive size, which was probably due to their better diets. Each tribe built their own towns and traded over far distances with other
People have been living in America for countless years, even before Europeans had discovered and populated it. These people, named Native Americans or American Indians, have a unique and singular culture and lifestyle unlike any other. Native Americans were divided into several groups or tribes. Each one tribe developed an own language, housing, clothing, and other cultural aspects. As we take a look into their society’s customs we can learn additional information about the lives of these indigenous people of the United States.
In the United States, an emphasize in learning the dominant language, English for example, can inevitably put other languages within the country in extinction. In reality, there are many other spoken languages in the United Sates, like those spoken by Native Americans, that are becoming endangered because of the immensity of more used languages. One may ask, what is an endangered language? According to Michael Cahill (Bonvillain), who has studied and researched many different endangered languages around the world, a language is endangered when "it is in fairly eminent danger of dying out." Cahill states two ways to quickly identify when a language is on its way to becoming endangered. One is when the "children in the community do not speak the native language of their parents, and the other is when there are only a small number of people left in the ethnolinguistic community" that know how to speak the language (Bonvillain). In specific, the Cherokee language fits into the category of an endangered language in the United Sates because less and less speakers speak it and because it is taught less often to younger generations as well. Although Cherokee, a language containing its own rules in grammar, morphemes, syntax, and phonetics, was once a language spoken in vast areas around the United States by native peoples, the language struggles to survive albeit historical foreign attack and current domination of other languages such as English.