Jesuits in North America in the 17th Century — Intro. pt 03: The Huron-Iroquois Family,

THE HURON-IROQUOIS FAMILY.

And now, before entering upon the very curious subject of Indian social and tribal organization, it may be well briefly to observe the position and prominent distinctive features of the various communities speaking dialects of the generic tongue of the Iroquois.

In this remarkable family of tribes occur the fullest developments of Indian character, and the most conspicuous examples of Indian intelligence.

If the higher traits popularly ascribed to the race are not to be found here, they are to be found nowhere.

A palpable proof of the superiority of this stock is afforded in the size of the Iroquois and Huron brains.

In average internal capacity of the cranium, they surpass, with few and doubtful exceptions, all other aborigines of North and South America, not excepting the civilized races of Mexico and Peru.

[29] [29] "On comparing five Iroquois heads, I find that they give an average internal capacity of eighty-eight cubic inches, which is within two inches of the Caucasian mean."

--Morton, Crania Americana, 195. --It is remarkable that the internal capacity of the skulls of the barbarous American tribes is greater than that of either the Mexicans or the Peruvians.

"The difference in volume is chiefly confined to the occipital and basal portions,"--in other words, to the region of the animal propensities; and hence, it is argued, the ferocious, brutal, and uncivilizable character of the wild tribes.

--See J. S.

Phillips, Admeasurements of Crania of the Principal Groups of Indians in the United States.

In the woody valleys of the Blue Mountains, south of the Nottawassaga Bay of Lake Huron, and two days' journey west of the frontier Huron towns, lay the nine villages of the Tobacco Nation, or Tionnontates.

[30] In manners, as in language, they closely resembled the Hurons.

Of old they were their enemies, but were now at peace with them, and about the year 1640 became their close confederates.

Indeed, in the ruin which befell that hapless people, the Tionnontates alone retained a tribal organization; and their descendants, with a trifling exception, are to this day the sole inheritors of the Huron or Wyandot name.

Expatriated and wandering, they held for generations a paramount influence among the Western tribes.

[31] In their original seats among the Blue Mountains, they offered an example extremely rare among Indians, of a tribe raising a crop for the market; for they traded in tobacco largely with other tribes.

Their Huron confederates, keen traders, would not suffer them to pass through their country to traffic with the French, preferring to secure for themselves the advantage of bartering with them in French goods at an enormous profit.

[32] [30] Synonymes: Tionnontates, Etionontates, Tuinontatek, Dionondadies, Khionontaterrhonons, Petuneux or Nation du Petun (Tobacco).

[31] "L'ame de tous les Conseils."

--Charlevoix, Voyage, 199. --In 1763 they were Pontiac's best warriors.

[32] On the Tionnontates, see Le Mercier, Relation, 1637, 163; Lalemant, Relation, 1641, 69; Ragueneau, Relation, 1648, 61. An excellent summary of their character and history, by Mr. Shea, will be found in Hist.

Mag.

, V.

262. Journeying southward five days from the Tionnontate towns, the forest traveller reached the border villages of the Attiwandarons, or Neutral Nation.

[33] As early as 1626, they were visited by the Franciscan friar, La Roche Dallion, who reports a numerous population in twenty-eight towns, besides many small hamlets.

Their country, about forty leagues in extent, embraced wide and fertile districts on the north shore of Lake Erie, and their frontier extended eastward across the Niagara, where they had three or four outlying towns.

[34] Their name of Neutrals was due to their neutrality in the war between the Hurons and the Iroquois proper.

The hostile warriors, meeting in a Neutral cabin, were forced to keep the peace, though, once in the open air, the truce was at an end.

Yet this people were abundantly ferocious, and, while holding a pacific attitude betwixt their warring kindred, waged deadly strife with the Mascoutins, an Algonquin horde beyond Lake Michigan.

Indeed, it was but recently that they had been at blows with seventeen Algonquin tribes.

[35] They burned female prisoners, a practice unknown to the Hurons.

[36] Their country was full of game, and they were bold and active hunters.

In form and stature they surpassed even the Hurons, whom they resembled in their mode of life, and from whose language their own, though radically similar, was dialectically distinct.

Their licentiousness was even more open and shameless; and they stood alone in the extravagance of some of their usages.

They kept their dead in their houses till they became insupportable; then scraped the flesh from the bones, and displayed them in rows along the walls, there to remain till the periodical Feast of the Dead, or general burial.

In summer, the men wore no clothing whatever, but were usually tattooed from head to foot with powdered charcoal.

[33] Attiwandarons, Attiwendaronk, Atirhagenrenrets, Rhagenratka (Jesuit Relations), Attionidarons (Sagard).

They, and not the Eries, were the Kahkwas of Seneca tradition.

[34] Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1641, 71. --The Niagara was then called the River of the Neutrals, or the Onguiaahra.

Lalemant estimates the Neutral population, in 1640, at twelve thousand, in forty villages.

[35] Lettre du Père La Roche Dallion, 8 Juillet, 1627, in Le Clerc, Établissement de la Foy, I. 346. [36] Women were often burned by the Iroquois: witness the case of Catherine Mercier in 1651, and many cases of Indian women mentioned by the early writers.

The sagacious Hurons refused them a passage through their country to the French; and the Neutrals apparently had not sense or reflection enough to take the easy and direct route of Lake Ontario, which was probably open to them, though closed against the Hurons by Iroquois enmity.

Thus the former made excellent profit by exchanging French goods at high rates for the valuable furs of the Neutrals.

[37] [37] The Hurons became very jealous, when La Roche Dallion visited the Neutrals, lest a direct trade should be opened between the latter and the French, against whom they at once put in circulation a variety of slanders: that they were a people who lived on snakes and venom; that they were furnished with tails; and that French women, though having but one breast, bore six children at a birth.

The missionary nearly lost his life in consequence, the Neutrals conceiving the idea that he would infect their country with a pestilence.

--La Roche Dallion, in Le Clerc, I.

346. Southward and eastward of Lake Erie dwelt a kindred people, the Eries, or Nation of the Cat.

Little besides their existence is known of them.

They seem to have occupied Southwestern New York, as far east as the Genesee, the frontier of the Senecas, and in habits and language to have resembled the Hurons.

[38] They were noted warriors, fought with poisoned arrows, and were long a terror to the neighboring Iroquois.

[39] [38] Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1648, 46. [39] Le Mercier, Relation, 1654, 10. --"Nous les appellons la Nation Chat, à cause qu'il y a dans leur pais vne quantité prodigieuse de Chats sauuages."

--Ibid.

--The Iroquois are said to have given the same name, Jegosasa, Cat Nation, to the Neutrals.

--Morgan, League of the Iroquois, 41. Synonymes: Eriés, Erigas, Eriehronon, Riguehronon.

The Jesuits never had a mission among them, though they seem to have been visited by Champlain's adventurous interpreter, Étienne Brulé, in the summer of 1615. --They are probably the Carantoüans of Champlain.

On the Lower Susquehanna dwelt the formidable tribe called by the French Andastes.

Little is known of them, beyond their general resemblance to their kindred, in language, habits, and character.

Fierce and resolute warriors, they long made head against the Iroquois of New York, and were vanquished at last more by disease than by the tomahawk.

[40] [40] Gallatin erroneously places the Andastes on the Alleghany, Bancroft and others adopting the error.

The research of Mr. Shea has shown their identity with the Susquehannocks of the English, and the Minquas of the Dutch.

--See Hist.

Mag.

, II.

294. Synonymes: Andastes, Andastracronnons, Andastaeronnons, Andastaguez, Antastoui (French), Susquehannocks (English), Mengwe, Minquas (Dutch), Conestogas, Conessetagoes (English).

In Central New York, stretching east and west from the Hudson to the Genesee, lay that redoubted people who have lent their name to the tribal family of the Iroquois, and stamped it indelibly on the early pages of American history.

Among all the barbarous nations of the continent, the Iroquois of New York stand paramount.

Elements which among other tribes were crude, confused, and embryotic, were among them systematized and concreted into an established polity.

The Iroquois was the Indian of Indians.

A thorough savage, yet a finished and developed savage, he is perhaps an example of the highest elevation which man can reach without emerging from his primitive condition of the hunter.

A

geographical position, commanding on one hand the portal of the Great Lakes, and on the other the sources of the streams flowing both to the Atlantic and the Mississippi, gave the ambitious and aggressive confederates advantages which they perfectly understood, and by which they profited to the utmost.

Patient and politic as they were ferocious, they were not only conquerors of their own race, but the powerful allies and the dreaded foes of the French and English colonies, flattered and caressed by both, yet too sagacious to give themselves without reserve to either.

Their organization and their history evince their intrinsic superiority.

Even their traditionary lore, amid its wild puerilities, shows at times the stamp of an energy and force in striking contrast with the flimsy creations of Algonquin fancy.

That the Iroquois, left under their institutions to work out their destiny undisturbed, would ever have developed a civilization of their own, I do not believe.

These institutions, however, are sufficiently characteristic and curious, and we shall soon have occasion to observe them.

[41] [41] The name Iroquois is French.

Charlevoix says: "Il a été formé du terme Hiro, ou Hero, qui signifie J'ai dit, et par lequel ces sauvages finissent tous leur discours, comme les Latins faisoient autrefois par leur Dixi; et de Koué, qui est un cri tantôt de tristesse, lorsqu'on le prononce en traînant, et tantôt de joye, quand on le prononce plus court."

--Hist.

de la N. F.

, I.

271. --Their true name is Hodenosaunee, or People of the Long House, because their confederacy of five distinct nations, ranged in a line along Central New York, was likened to one of the long bark houses already described, with five fires and five families.

The name Agonnonsionni, or Aquanuscioni, ascribed to them by Lafitau and Charlevoix, who translated it "House-Makers," Faiseurs de Cabannes, may be a conversion of the true name with an erroneous rendering.

The following are the true names of the five nations severally, with their French and English synonymes.

For other synonymes, see "History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac," 8, note.

English French Ganeagaono, Mohawk, Agnier.

Onayotekaono, Oneida, Onneyut.

Onundagaono, Onondaga, Onnontagué.

Gweugwehono, Cayuga, Goyogouin.

Nundawaono, Seneca, Tsonnontouans.

The Iroquois termination in ono--or onon, as the French write it--simply means people.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION.

In Indian social organization, a problem at once suggests itself.

In these communities, comparatively populous, how could spirits so fierce, and in many respects so ungoverned, live together in peace, without law and without enforced authority?

Yet there were towns where savages lived together in thousands with a harmony which civilization might envy.

This was in good measure due to peculiarities of Indian character and habits.

This intractable race were, in certain external respects, the most pliant and complaisant of mankind.

The early missionaries were charmed by the docile acquiescence with which their dogmas were received; but they soon discovered that their facile auditors neither believed nor understood that to which they had so promptly assented.

They assented from a kind of courtesy, which, while it vexed the priests, tended greatly to keep the Indians in mutual accord.

That well-known self-control, which, originating in a form of pride, covered the savage nature of the man with a veil, opaque, though thin, contributed not a little to the same end.

Though vain, arrogant, boastful, and vindictive, the Indian bore abuse and sarcasm with an astonishing patience.

Though greedy and grasping, he was lavish without stint, and would give away his all to soothe the manes of a departed relative, gain influence and applause, or ingratiate himself with his neighbors.

In his dread of public opinion, he rivalled some of his civilized successors.

All Indians, and especially these populous and stationary tribes, had their code of courtesy, whose requirements were rigid and exact; nor might any infringe it without the ban of public censure.

Indian nature, inflexible and unmalleable, was peculiarly under the control of custom.

Established usage took the place of law,--was, in fact, a sort of common law, with no tribunal to expound or enforce it.

In these wild democracies,--democracies in spirit, though not in form,--a respect for native superiority, and a willingness to yield to it, were always conspicuous.

All were prompt to aid each other in distress, and a neighborly spirit was often exhibited among them.

When a young woman was permanently married, the other women of the village supplied her with firewood for the year, each contributing an armful.

When one or more families were without shelter, the men of the village joined in building them a house.

In return, the recipients of the favor gave a feast, if they could; if not, their thanks were sufficient.

[42] Among the Iroquois and Hurons--and doubtless among the kindred tribes--there were marked distinctions of noble and base, prosperous and poor; yet, while there was food in the village, the meanest and the poorest need not suffer want.

He had but to enter the nearest house, and seat himself by the fire, when, without a word on either side, food was placed before him by the women.

[43] [42] The following testimony concerning Indian charity and hospitality is from Ragueneau: "As often as we have seen tribes broken up, towns destroyed, and their people driven to flight, we have seen them, to the number of seven or eight hundred persons, received with open arms by charitable hosts, who gladly gave them aid, and even distributed among them a part of the lands already planted, that they might have the means of living."

--Relation, 1650, 28. [43] The Jesuit Brébeuf, than whom no one knew the Hurons better, is very emphatic in praise of their harmony and social spirit.

Speaking of one of the four nations of which the Hurons were composed, he says: "Ils ont vne douceur et vne affabilité quasi incroyable pour des Sauuages;

ils ne se picquent pas aisément....

Ils se maintiennent dans cette si parfaite intelligence par les frequentes visites, les secours qu'ils se donnent mutuellement dans leurs maladies, par les festins et les alliances....

Ils sont moins en leurs Cabanes que chez leurs amis....

S'ils ont vn bon morceau, ils en font festin à leurs amis, et ne le mangent quasi iamais en leur particulier," etc. --Relation des Hurons, 1636, 118. Contrary to the received opinion, these Indians, like others of their race, when living in communities, were of a very social disposition.

Besides their incessant dances and feasts, great and small, they were continually visiting, spending most of their time in their neighbors' houses, chatting, joking, bantering one another with witticisms, sharp, broad, and in no sense delicate, yet always taken in good part.

Every village had its adepts in these wordy tournaments, while the shrill laugh of young squaws, untaught to blush, echoed each hardy jest or rough sarcasm.

In the organization of the savage communities of the continent, one feature, more or less conspicuous, continually appears.

Each nation or tribe--to adopt the names by which these communities are usually known--is subdivided into several clans.

These clans are not locally separate, but are mingled throughout the nation.

All the members of each clan are, or are assumed to be, intimately joined in consanguinity.

Hence it is held an abomination for two persons of the same clan to intermarry; and hence, again, it follows that every family must contain members of at least two clans.

Each clan has its name, as the clan of the Hawk, of the Wolf, or of the Tortoise; and each has for its emblem the figure of the beast, bird, reptile, plant, or other object, from which its name is derived.

This emblem, called totem by the Algonquins, is often tattooed on the clansman's body, or rudely painted over the entrance of his lodge.

The child belongs to the clan, not of the father, but of the mother.

In other words, descent, not of the totem alone, but of all rank, titles, and possessions, is through the female.

The son of a chief can never be a chief by hereditary title, though he may become so by force of personal influence or achievement.

Neither can he inherit from his father so much as a tobacco-pipe.

All possessions alike pass of right to the brothers of the chief, or to the sons of his sisters, since these are all sprung from a common mother.

This rule of descent was noticed by Champlain among the Hurons in 1615. That excellent observer refers it to an origin which is doubtless its true one.

The child may not be the son of his reputed father, but must be the son of his mother,--a consideration of more than ordinary force in an Indian community.

[44] [44] "Les enfans ne succedent iamais aux biens et dignitez de leurs peres, doubtant comme i'ay dit de leur geniteur, mais bien font-ils leurs successeurs et heritiers, les enfans de leurs sœurs, et desquels ils sont asseurez d'estre yssus et sortis."

--Champlain (1627), 91. Captain John Smith had observed the same, several years before, among the tribes of Virginia: "For the Crowne, their heyres inherite not, but the first heyres of the Sisters."

--True Relation, 43 (ed.

Deane).

This system of clanship, with the rule of descent inseparable from it, was of very wide prevalence.

Indeed, it is more than probable that close observation would have detected it in every tribe east of the Mississippi; while there is positive evidence of its existence in by far the greater number.

It is found also among the Dahcotah and other tribes west of the Mississippi; and there is reason to believe it universally prevalent as far as the Rocky Mountains, and even beyond them.

The fact that with most of these hordes there is little property worth transmission, and that the most influential becomes chief, with little regard to inheritance, has blinded casual observers to the existence of this curious system.

It was found in full development among the Creeks, Choctaws, Cherokees, and other Southern tribes, including that remarkable people, the Natchez, who, judged by their religious and political institutions, seem a detached offshoot of the Toltec family.

It is no less conspicuous among the roving Algonquins of the extreme North, where the number of totems is almost countless.

Everywhere it formed the foundation of the polity of all the tribes, where a polity could be said to exist.

The Franciscans and Jesuits, close students of the languages and superstitions of the Indians, were by no means so zealous to analyze their organization and government.

In the middle of the seventeenth century the Hurons as a nation had ceased to exist, and their political portraiture, as handed down to us, is careless and unfinished.

Yet some decisive features are plainly shown.

The Huron nation was a confederacy of four distinct contiguous nations, afterwards increased to five by the addition of the Tionnontates;--it was divided into clans;--it was governed by chiefs, whose office was hereditary through the female;--the power of these chiefs, though great, was wholly of a persuasive or advisory character;--there were two principal chiefs, one for peace, the other for war;--there were chiefs assigned to special national functions, as the charge of the great Feast of the Dead, the direction of trading voyages to other nations, etc. ;--there were numerous other chiefs, equal in rank, but very unequal in influence, since the measure of their influence depended on the measure of their personal ability;--each nation of the confederacy had a separate organization, but at certain periods grand councils of the united nations were held, at which were present, not chiefs only, but also a great concourse of the people; and at these and other councils the chiefs and principal men voted on proposed measures by means of small sticks or reeds, the opinion of the plurality ruling.

[45] [45] These facts are gathered here and there from Champlain, Sagard, Bressani, and the Jesuit Relations prior to 1650. Of the Jesuits, Brébeuf is the most full and satisfactory.

Lafitau and Charlevoix knew the Huron institutions only through others.

The names of the four confederate Huron nations were the Ataronchronons, Attignenonghac, Attignaouentans, and Ahrendarrhonons.

There was also a subordinate "nation" called Tohotaenrat, which had but one town.

(See the map of the Huron Country.

) They all bore the name of some animal or other object: thus the Attignaouentans were the Nation of the Bear.

As the clans are usually named after animals, this makes confusion, and may easily lead to error.

The Bear Nation was the principal member of the league.