LEAGUE OF THE IROQUOIS The Iroquois proper of history comprise the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, living in this order from east to west in central New York. According to tradition, Hiawatha, a Mohawk, and Dekanawida, reputed a Huron by birth, induced the five tribes to form a league which preserved the integrity of each, but united them in a common council, and common ceremonies, with a fixed number of chiefly delegates from each tribe. In a sense this was representative democracy; and each delegate was elected ; but he was chosen by the members of a lineage as repre sentative of that lineage, and therewith of a clan and tribe, so that a group-hereditary principle prevailed. Each such clan dele gate had further to be approved by the tribal and league council. There was no head of the league ; and deliberate action usually became effective only upon unanimity. Apparently this league differed from other native confederacies, which were common in the eastern United States and south-eastern Canada, in being more precisely defined and organized. It allowed of the develop ment of a tradition of political sagacity independent of the occa sional superior individual, and this in turn permitted the fruits of wars to be conserved instead of dissipated, with success still fur ther strengthening the established policy.
The league in its historic form is estimated to have been con stituted only a generation before the coming of the whites among the Iroquois, about 157o. During this formative period the Iro quois drove from the St. Lawrence a series of tribes who joined the Huron. In the first half of the 17th century they harried and wore down the Conestoga, their kinsmen on the south, and the Algonkin tribes on their east. Their most striking successes came about the middle of the century, of ter they had acquired guns in friendly trade with the Dutch. In rapid succession they attacked and broke up four Iroquoian tribal aggregations to the west of them : Huron, 1648-5o; Tionontati, 1649; Neutral, 1650-51; Erie, 1653-56. Parts of some of these nations were transplanted among the Iroquois, where they gradually became absorbed ; remnants fled, scattered, joined one another or alien tribes, and became lost to history. The completeness of their destruction was perhaps partly due to their habit of concentration in large palisaded towns; the more scattered Algonkin generally withstood the Iro quois longer. The Illinois suffered badly at the hands of the
Iroquois, the Delaware submitted in 172o, and all Virginia was harassed. Only the distant Ojibwa set a boundary to the Iroquois conquests in the west, and the Cherokee and Catawba of North Carolina to the south, though the latter were almost worn down in the struggle. The Tuscarora, an Iroquoian tribe of North Caro lina who had voluntarily moved to New York, were formally ad mitted into the confederacy about 1715, this being henceforth the League of Six Nations. Other tribal remnants of various origin sought shelter with them, and these, with the absorption of cap tives, helped to make up the Iroquois losses in constant warfare. At that, the five tribes probably never numbered more than at present, i6,000.
From the first, the Iroquois were consistent and bitter enemies of the French, who had shown amity to their traditional foes. They remained in friendship and trade with first the Dutch and then the English, who utilized them against their Indian enemies and the French, whereas the Iroquois profited in fire-arms, other trade articles, and the sanction if not protection of civilized powers. They undoubtedly greatly hampered French extension from Canada southward; but for the consistent Iroquois check, the English colonies would have been flanked behind by the French and the history of their development might have been very different. This is a remarkable achievement for a savage people that never put into the field an army greater than 2,000 men.
When the American Revolution broke out, the league as such took no part, but most of the tribes sided with the British, and were defeated by the Americans. The Mohawk and Cayuga mainly withdrew to Ontario, many of the Onondaga and Seneca remained on reservations in western New York, and part of the Oneida after a time moved to Wisconsin. The present population is considerably diluted with white blood; two-thirds are on Cana dian soil, including the descendants of seceding groups won over to the French interest at the end of the 17th century. A shadow of the league is still perpetuated as a ceremonial form.
See L. H. Morgan, League of the Iroquois (1851) ; Ancient Society (1877) ; H. Hale, The Iroquois Book of Rites (1883) ; J. N. B. Hewitt, Bur. Am. Ethn. Rep. xxi. (1933), xxxii. (1918). (A. L. K.)