Aboriginal Group: Iroquoian

Aboriginal Group: Iroquoian

The Iroquoian nation of Canada lies in the regions of Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, reaching up to the south of the St. Lawrence River.

They made their living by use of their moderate climate and good soils to grow corn, beans and squash, acting as a primarily a hunter-gatherer society.

Iroquoian communities were characterized by the longhouse, which was six metres wide and sometimes over thirty metres long. It was here their households were set up, housing approximately forty members of an extended family. Each village would have thirty to fifty longhouses, with a row of fires down the middle with bedrooms on either side. Matrilineal and matrilocal in kinship, women dominated agricultural labour such as planting and harvesting, while men hunted and ploughed.

Iroquoian spirituality had complex burial practices. The Feast of the Dead, occurred once per decade, where the remains of the dead were unearthed and placed in a common burial ground. This ceremony was thought to have allowed the souls of the dead to travel westward to the land of souls. Iroquois also believed that the land they lived on was on the back of a turtle. It is Great Turtle Island, or Anglo-European known North America, that the Iroquois believed they hunted, lived and prospered.

The Five Nations Confederacy of the Iroquois founded by Dekanawidah and Hiawatha, to end intertribal warfare, politically aligned the Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga and Mohawk tribes. Within this confederacy, trading was very important. Nations would be in an alliance if trading; if not trading they would be at war with each other, though not necessarily fighting. Trade was not only economic, but political and cultural as well. Men were chosen by women in the villages to settle disputes between other villages regarding war and peace. With no permanent officials, the confederacy required the consent of tribes for decisions to be put into place.

Their relationship was colonizers led to half of the Iroquoian nation allying with France, while the other half fighting with them. Jesuit missionaries too began pouring in, bringing with them Catholic education and European ethnocentrism.

Source:

Conrad, M., Finkel, A. (2003). History of the Canadian Peoples: Beginnings