SIX NATIONS OF THE IROQUOIS, The. The five Iroquois tribes — the Mohawk the Seneca, the Onondaga, the Oneida and the Cayuga— speak dialects of the Iroquoian stock of languages. This stock is merely one of nearly 50 such linguistic groups on the Ameri can continent north of This linguis tic classification of languages into stocks does not by any means imply necessarily a com munity of blood descent among the peoples using the several dialects within each several stock, so that homogeneity of blood descent may not be consequently predicated of two peoples speaking dialects of the same stock. In the closing decades of the 16th century these five nations or tribes, or at least the main bodies of them, united in a defensive and offen sive league or confederation under a consti tutional form of government. It was a limited democracy, in which mother-rule was dominant.
The available historical data, although very meagre, make it probable that this act of federa tion was the last of a series of attempts to unite these and also other tribes in a permanent federal union. It may also be gathered from these same sources that the year 1570 A.D. is the approximate date of the founding of this re markable league or confederation of the five Iroquois tribes or nations; the number was in creased to six in the 18th century. At that time and for 200 years after they inhabited the central, the northern and the northeastern re gions of what is to-day New York State.
Early French explorers and writers first called them the Iroquois; but when the exact geo graphic positions of these tribes became better known they•named the Mohawk the Lower, and the four other tribes the Upper, Iroquois; but English authors, quite generally, knew them as the Five Nations. But, in 1722, the Tuscarora, a southern tribe, speaking a dialect of the Iroquoian stock of languages, became officially the sixth tribe of the federation or league of the Iroquois. Thenceforth, these six tribeS ( ?nations) were usually called the Six Nations of New York Indians, often abbreviated to Six Nations.
In 1535 Ica, Capt. Jacques Cartier, while ex ploring the Saint Lawrence River, obtained, from their Huron enemies, meagre but trust worthy information concerning the five Iroquois tribes, under the name "Troudamani° and °Agouionda." He learned that a state of cruet, desultory warfare existed not only among the five tribes themselves but also between them on the one hand and the Huronian and other allied tribes, then dwelling on the Saint Lawrence, on the other. When Champlain, in exploring the Saint Lawrence River in the first decades of the 17th century, came in contact with the war parties of the five tribes of the Iroquois, about 75 years after Cartier's time, he learned that they had so effectively harassed the Huron tribes who had formerly dwelt on the Saint Lawrence River as to compel them to withdraw to allied peoples then living on the banks of Lake Simcoe or to seek a precarious asylum among neutral tribes elsewhere. But, these
Saint Lawrence regions, he found, were in fested with marauding bands of the disrupted and dispossessed Huron peoples and of the tribes of Algonquian speech allied with them. These still stoutly disputed the Iroquois con quest of these territories. The dispossessed Huron tribes were sedentary, only leaving their villages and fields to hunt and to fish at cer tain seasons of the year. In 1622 Champlain attended a peace conference, at which were present Huron, Algonquian and Iroquois diplo mats; it had been convoked for the purpose of bringing to an end a war which had then been waged, it was declared, for "more than fifty years.' Peace was finally concluded in 1624. But in 1626 these Iroquois tribes were at war with the Mohegan who had a palisade "op posite Fort Orange (Albany, N. Y.), on Castle Island.' Although inadvertently aided by the Dutch the Mohegan were defeated, and the Dutch commander and his men killed. It is said that some of the dead, including one or more of the Dutchmen, were eaten by the Iroquois. The peace concluded in 1624 with the Canadian tribes lasted for only about 10 years, for in 1634 these Iroquois tribes, or five nations of Iroquois, inaugurated a far-reach ing policy which enabled them in subsequent years to overrun all Lower Canada and to take the first steps toward the entire subjugation of Upper Canada. The Algonquian tribes inhabit ing the banks of the Ottawa River were either thrust back inland or entirely dispersed. In 1636 the five tribes or nations of Iroquois be gan a systematic raiding of the four federated Wendat or Huron tribes who lived around the shores of Lake Simcoe. And the complete political destruction of this Huron federation was accomplished during the summer of 1649. Then there followed the defeat and dispersal of the Tionontate or Tobacco Nation (Tribe). And in 1651 these Iroquois tribes attacked and utterly defeated the powerful Neuter Nation, the so-called Attiwendaronk, occupying what is to-day the southern peninsula of Ontario, Canada, and what is to-day western New York State as far as the Genesee River watershed.