IROQUOIAN ir'tekwoi'An ) STOCK. I ffie of the most important linguistic stocks of the American Ingliami, formerly inhabiting a large part of the present Ontario. Sew York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. with portions of NISI -rut Vir ginia and North Carolina and the whole of the southern .111eglieny region. The stock name is derived from that of the Iroquois (q.v.), or con federated Five Nations of Now York—the Mo hawk, ()neigh'. Onondaga, Cayuga. and Seneea. Other important trila.s were the Wyandot (or Ilunuo, Neutral Nation, Erie, Conestoga, Not toway. Meherrin, Tuscarora. and Cherokee.
lioth tradition and history inglieate the lower Saint Lawrence region as the early home of the Iroquoian tribes, whence they gradually worked their way up the river. the liurons, Neuters, and others finally establishing themselves in the of Ontario; the Iroquois proper, with the Erie, Conestoga. Nottoway. and Tuscarora, It:riling southward, while the Cherokee, who ap pear In have constituted the advance guard of wandered so far from the hotly of their kindred that for a long time the rela tionship was eonside•ed doubtful. The primary cause of the removal of the Iroquoian tribes from the Saint Lawrence country appears to have been the hostility of the neighboring Al gonquian tribes. In 1535 Cartier found an Iro quoian people holding the sites of the present Quebec and Montreal; but seventy years later the same territory was in possession of Algon quian tribes. The formation of the Iroquois checked the Algonquian invasion and the Iroquois to assume the offensive.
Limmistic and other evidence shows that the separation of the Cherokee from the parent stock must have far antedated this period.
All the tribes of this stock were agricultural, being noted above their neighbors for their fields of corn, pumpkios, and tobacco, to which, at a later period, were added orchards of apple and peach trees. Those of the North occupied com munal 'long houses' of poles overlaid with bark, in wagon-top shape, and sometimes from SO to 100 feet in length. Among the Cherokee and others of the South each family occupied a house of a single room, usually built of logs plastered over with clay. The 'town house' of the Southern tribes, reserved for ceremonial purposes, was a large round structure of logs, with a conical earth-covered roof. The clan system had reached a high development among all the Iroquoian tribes, and women occupied a position of much importance, while the inherent tenacity of char acter and capacity for organization exhibited by the Indians of this stock gave them a con trolling influence wherever they were established, and enabled them more than any other of the Eastern tribes to withstand the new civilization. The present population of the Iroquoian tribes is about 40.000, of whom about 10,000 are in Canada. The Cherokee constitute fully one-half of the whole body.