In nautical matters the five (later six) na tions of Iroquois were measurably inferior to the Huron and the Algonquian tribes of Canada. The canoes of the former were con structed of elm bark and were of clumsier workmanship and they were no match for the beautiful birch bark canoes of the latter. So it is found that in most of the canoe fights mentioned in history these Iroquois tribes were usually worsted. After the establishment of the league or confederation the five federated tribes of Iroquois lost no time in making their united power felt. The evidence of this fact is found in the expulsion of the two Wendat (later Huron) tribes from their habitat on the Saint Lawrance River, about the close of the 16th century. When the Dutch traders estab. lished themselves at Fort Orange near the present site of Albany, N. Y., these Iroquois obtained firearms from them and were thereby enabled to extend their conquests over practically all the neighboring tribes, in such manner that their sway was acicnowledged from the Tennessee to the Ottawa River and from the Kennebec to the Illinois River and Lake Michigan; the Chippewa, however, checked their westward advance; the Cherokee and the Catawba and their allies effectually barred their further advance southward, while at the north they were much hampered by the operations and machinations of the French and their native allies. A list of the tribes against whom they raised the hatchet is simply startling. In brief, they attacked more than 28 Algonquian tribes, 12 Iroquoian tribes and at least three Siouan peoples. So that by 1664, when the English displaced the Dutch at Albany, the conquests of the league of the Iroquois or five nations had extended so far that the sway of these tribes was supreme over the native tribes in practically the entire valley of the Saint Law rence River. In 1666 the five nations of the Iroquois league made peace with the French and their native allies who had attacked and burned some of their villages. Both parties to this peace observed it for a long period. The league was organizing to push its conquests further south and west than they had previously done.
Their wars were waged primarily for the security of their homes and their hunting lands and for the perpetuation of their independence and political life, briefly, for the preservation of their institutions and for the welfare and integ rity of their unique commonwealth.
The French in the latter part of the 17th century made a number of attempts through the Jesuit missionaries to induce the people of the five federated Iroquois tribes to break off their English alliance and to emigrate to Can ada and to come under French jurisdiction. These attempts were so far successful that numbers from the different tribes, chiefly the Mohawk and Onondaga, left their former alle giances and formed Catholic settlements in Saint Regis, the Bay of Quint& Oka, Lake of the Two Mountains and Caughnawaga, on the Saint Lawrence River. The tribes of the league, however, made repeated unsuccessful efforts to induce these emigrants to return to their former homes, and so in 1684, after real izing the futility of their efforts, they declared these emigrants traitors to the peoples of the league. The residue of the peoples of the five nations occupied their original habitats until the Sullivan raid in 1779 dislodged them and caused some to seek new homes elsewhere. Those who did not emigrate, live on reserva tions in New York State and those who did, live in Ontario, Canada.
The constructive principles of right and justice, underlying the institution of the league or confederation, defined primarily the rights and the obligations arising from blood kinship and affinity. Their internal and their foreign
polity was molded and guided in consonance with these principles. The motive for the in stitution of the league was avowedly to secure universal peace and welfare (Ne" Sklienow) among men by the recognition of the equality of rights and obligations among citizens of their commonwealth and the establishment of righteousness and justice (Ne- Ganwi-io in directing and regulating personal and public conduct by them; and by the stopping of blood shed through the proscription of the bloodfeud by the tender to the aggrieved family of the prescribed price for the killing of a cotribes man or cotribeswoman; by abstention from the eating of human flesh; and, lastly, by the maintenance and the effective exercise of power (Ne" Gefehasdos"str), not only military strength but also the magic power (the orenda) believed inherent in the forms and words of their ceremonial, social and political activities. The tender by the offender and his family (ohwachira) to the aggrieved family (ohwa chira) for the homicide of one of its members was 20 strings of wampum— 10 for the dead person and 10 for the forfeited life of the of fender; but, if the victim was a woman, 30 strings were required, as the value of a woman's life was held to be double that of a man.
The tribes in question were of course seden tary and agricultural, deriving only a portion of their subsistence from their hunting and fishing grounds. Skill and adaptability in lodgebuilding and in the construction of pali saded fortifications were marked characteristics of these tribes when first encountered. In political organization and statesmanship, in military prowess and in the aptitude to found their institutions on universal principles of right and justice and mercy these five (later six) nations were second to no other native Indian people north of Mexico. The astute diplomats of France and England who at dif ferent times treated with their wily leaders found them their peers and exemplars in state craft. Each tribe was an independent political unit and exercised the rights of local self government, but in all federal affairs it acted jointly with its confederates through a federal council, composed of chiefs who were members of both the tribal and the federal councils. Every tribal (i.e., clan) chief was not a federal officer.
Before the great principles of the league or confederation of the five (later six) nations were constructively formulated into a system of interdependent federal institutions the avowed polity of these five (later six) na tions of the Iroquois was a narrow tribalism which naturally regarded and treated all other people as game or as animal pests to be de stroyed for the common good. This harsh, although orthodox, standpoint was not alto gether changed by the universal principles of reconciliation and goodfellowship adopted as the working forces of the institutions of the league or federation by its great founders. So in the warfare of the league or federation prisoners were subjected to the most ferocious cruelty; unadopted women and infant prisoners were at times burned as alleged reprisals for similar treatment by their enemies. Yet, withal, they were not "a race of rude and savage war but they were ua kindly and affectionate people, full of keen sympathy for kin and friends in distress, kind and deferential to their women, exceedingly fond of their children,* anxiously 'striving for the establishment of peace and goodwill, righteousness and justice and mercy, among men, and profoundly imbued with a just reverence for the institutions of their federal commonwealth and for its noted founders and prophet statesmen and states women.