An Address, Delivered Before the Was-ah Ho-de-no-son-ne or New Confederacy of the Iroquois / Also, Genundewah, a Poem

by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft; William H. C. Hosmer

The Iroquois have their full share in the fabulous and allegoric periods, and an examination of their tales and traditions will be found, I apprehend, to give ample scope to poetry and imagination. In their fabulous age, as recorded by Cusick, they have their war, with flying Heads, the Stone Giants, the Great Serpent, the Gigantic Musquito, the Spirit of Witchcraft, and several other eras, which afford curious evidences of the way-farings and wanderings of the human intellect, unaided by letters, or the spirit of truth.

Actual history plants its standard close on the confines of these benighted regions of fable and allegory. It is not proposed to enter into much detail on this topic. The modern facts are pretty well known, but have never been thoroughly investigated or arranged. Of the earlier facts in their origin and history, we know very little. The first writers on the subject of the Indians generally, after the settlement of America, dealt in wild speculations, and were carried away with preconceived theories, which destroy their value. Colden, who directed his attention to the Iroquois, scarcely attempted any thing beyond a specific relation of transactions, which are intended for the information of the Board of Trade and Plantations, and these do not come down beyond the peace of Ryswick. There is a large amount of printed information, adequate for the completion of their history in the 18th and 19th centuries, but most of the works are of rare occurrence, and are only to be found in large libraries at home and abroad. Other facts exist in manuscript official documents, numbers of which, have recently been obtained by the State, from foreign offices, and are now deposited in the Secretary's office at Albany. The lost correspondence on Indian affairs, of Sir William Johnson, may yet come to light, and would necessarily be important. Private manuscripts and the traditions of aged Indians, still living, would further contribute to their history. They are a people worthy the separate pen of a historian, and it may be hoped that an elaborate and full work, may be produced.

Where the Iroquois originated? is a question, which involves the prior and general one, of the origin of the Red Race. So far as relates to their proximate origin, on this continent, I am inclined to think, that it was in the tropical latitudes extending west from the Gulf of Mexico.—Facts indicate the great tide of our migration, to have been from that general race. The zea maize which is a southern plant, came from that quarter, and was spread, as the tribes moved from the south to the north, the east, and northeast, and north west. Which of the ancient Indian stocks came first we know not. The Iroquois, if we follow one of their own authors, have strong claims to antiquity, but we cannot accept this in full. That they migrated up the valley of the Mississippi, and the Ohio to its extreme head (they call the Alleghany Oheo) is probable. Our actual knowledge on this subject, historically speaking, is very small, and we must grope our way through dark and shadowy traditions. These, however, sustain the general fact stated, which is helped out by other accessions. That they had crossed the great artery of the continent, (the Mississippi river) prior to the Algonquin race, but after the Alleghans, is shown by the traditions of the latter. [P.W.][D] With this race, tradition asserts, that they formed an alliance, at a remote era, and maintained a bloody war, for many years, against the ancient Alleghans, who are supposed, in these wars, to have erected the fortifications and mounds, of the Mississippi valley. That this ancient Alleghanic empire of the West, so to call it, fell before the combined courage and energy of the Iroquois and Algonquins, and that the defeated tribes either retired down the waters of the Mississippi, or were in part incorporated with themselves, or yet exist in the Far West, under other names, we have various traditions for asserting or believing.

Thus far we are speaking of the ante-historical period. When the colonies came to be planted, and our ancestors spread themselves along the Atlantic coast, from the initial points of settlement in Virginia, Nova Belgica, and New England, the Iroquois were already well seated, and spoke and acted, whenever they desired to make allusion to the matter, as if they had been forever seated on the soil they then occupied. To conceal the fact of their title being held by right of conquest, or to supply the actual want of history, one tribe, the Oneidas, asserted that they had sprung from a rock. Another, the Wyandots, alleged that they came out of the ground by the fiat of the great spirit. [Oneota.] None of them acknowledged a foreign origin beyond seas. None of them acknowledged, at first, that they knew aught of the ancient mound-builders and people who built the old fortifications in the West, or in their own country; but they subsequently connected, or accommodated these mounds, to their war with the Alleghans. This is in accordance with Indian policy, and suspicious foresight. When closely questioned, they told Gov. Clinton that these old works were by an earlier people, and that their oldest traditions related to their wars with the Cherokees, and the people of the extreme south. That they originally dwelt in those latitudes—that they migrated north through the Ohio valley, around the Alleghanies, and came into Western New-York from the borders of the Lakes and the St. Lawrence, are points very well denoted by their languages, vestiges of arts, geographical nomenclature and history, so far as we have had the means of recording it.

Cartier, in 1535, found them seated at Hochelaga, the present site of Montreal. They had an ancient station, as low down the Connecticut at least, as Northfield. Towards the north of lakes Ontario and Erie, they extended to the chain of lakes which stretches through from the northern shores of the former to lake Huron. It is seen from Le Jeune, that they ordered the Wyandots of the ancient Hochelaga Canton, who had formed an alliance with the French and with the Algonquins, to quit that spot, and remove into the territory south of the lakes. And in default of this, they warred against them, and drove them west, through the great chain of lakes to Michilimackinac, and even to the western extremity of lake Superior.

The period of the settlement of Canada, ripened causes of hostility to the entire Algonquin, or as they called them, Adirondak race, into maturity. The Wyandot alliance with the French gave an edge to this contest, and having soon been supplied with guns and ammunition by the Dutch, they defeated this race in several sanguinary battles between Montreal and Quebec, and drove them out of this valley, by the way of the Ontario river, and pursued them to their villages and hunting grounds in area of lakes Huron, Michigan and Algoma. They defeated the Kah Kwahes or Eries. They pushed their war parties, from the lakes, through to the Miami, the Wabash, and the Illinois, on the latter of which they were encountered by La Salle and his people, in his early expedition, in the seventeenth century. Their great avenue to the west, the avenue by which, in part at least, they appear to have migrated at an early day, was the Alleghany river, through which, they continued to exercise their ancient or acquired authority in the Ohio valley, and the Alleghanian range.

Back on this route, they continued their war expeditions against the tribes of the southern Alleghanies at and, for some time, after the era of the first settlement of the country. The point of their hostility, was directed against the Catawbas, the Cherokees, and their allies, the Abiecas, Hutchees and others. Smith encountered them on these wars, in the interior of Virginia, in 1608. And it is well known, that they brought off their brothers, the Tuscaroras, after the settlement of North Carolina, and gave them a location among themselves, and a seat at their council fire, in Western New-York.

Launching their war canoes on the Delaware and the Susquehanna, they extended their sway over the present area of New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, bringing under their sovereign power, that member of the great Algonic family of America, who call themselves Lenni Lenapees, but who are better known in our history as Delawares. Go which way the traveler will, even at this day, for a thousand miles west, southwest and northwest of their great council fire at Onondaga, and the inquirer will find that the name of a Nadowa, which is the Algonquin term for Iroquois, was a word of terror to the remotest tribes. Writers tell us it was the same throughout New England. By the peaceful and wise policy of the Dutch prior to 1664, and of the English subsequent to that date, this confederacy was kept in our interest; and he must be a careless reader of our history, who does not know, that they formed a perfect wall of defence against the encroachments of the French Crown upon our territories. It was to curb this power, and gain some permanent foot-hold on the soil, that La Salle built fort Niagara in 1678. Vaudruiel, the Governor General of New France, could give no stronger reason to his King, for taking post on the straits of Detroit, and fortifying that point, in 1701, than that it would enable him to "curb the Iroquois." [Oneota.]

But, I do not stand before you to enter into a critical history of the Iroquois' powers. Who has not heard of their fame and prowess—of their indomitable courage in war,—of their admirable policy in peace: of their eloquence in council: of the noble fire of patriotic independence, which led them to defend the integrity of their soil against all invaders; and of the triumphs they achieved, throughout Aboriginal America, by the wisdom of their principles of confederation. The history of their rise and early progress, we shall probably never satisfactorily know. It is said by early writers, that the origin of their confederation was not very remote. But so much as we know of them—so much of their career as has passed while we have been their neighbors, proves that they had well established claims to antiquity—that they were a free, bold and valorous stock of the human race—that they had thought to plan, language to express, and energy to execute.—Compared to other races north of the tropics, there were two principles, apparent in their history, which give them the palm, as statesmen and warriors, although in some other departments of intellectual attainment, they were probably excelled by certain of the Algonquins. I allude to the principles of political union; and the wise and humane policy, which led them to adopt, into their body, the remnants of the nations whom they conquered. Here were two elements of political power, in which they were not only a century in advance of all the other stocks of the north; but they were in advance of the most prominent examples of the semi-civilized Indian tribes of this day.—Neither the Choctaws, the Cherokees, or other expatriated tribes now assembled on the Neosho territory, west of the Mississippi, although they adopted governments for themselves, have had the wisdom to adopt a general union.—The worst and most discouraging fact to the friends of the aboriginal race, in these Tribes, is, that they will not confederate. Discord, internal and external, has assailed them with great power, in late years, and threaten even to defeat the humane policy of the government, in their colonization.