A constitutional league of peace in the stone age of America

by J. N. B. Hewitt

The establishment of the league of the five Iroquois tribes in the closing decades of the sixteenth century was in large measure not only a drastic reformation but also an experiment. Avowedly it was designed as an institution for the extension and preservation of peace and equity and righteousness among all men; and it made a fundamental departure from the practice of the past in completely excluding in so far as terms go the military power from participation in the conduct of purely civil affairs.

When using the terms war and warfare, it must be remembered that while they denoted defensive, apprehensive, and offensive strife, and the mood and the means (the weapons belonging thereto), they did not imply the war and warfare waged by a military State, a body of soldiers, drilled and regimented and organized independently of the civil body. There were, strictly speaking, no armies among tribal men; only the beginnings, the more or less developed germs of these things. There were, indeed, groups of fighters who were regimented and organized, not in a practical or rational manner and mood, but in accordance with mythical and sociological conceptions and predispositions, and strictly with relation to their kinship status, individually and severally, in the tribal organization to which they belonged. For every tribe, great or small, or group of tribes, was, exclusive of the women and the children, an inchoate, undifferentiate army, a group of instant or else actual fighters.

For like reasons there was no State religion, where all forms and moods of it were tolerated and practised.

At the period of the formation of the league and for at least 75 years afterwards these five tribes, thus united, were surrounded by a number of powerful and hostile tribes, nearly all of which were cognate with them in speech. On the St. Lawrence River, approximately on the present sites of the cities, Montreal and Quebec, dwelt two strong Huron tribes. On the upper Ottawa River were the Algonquin and their congeners. Around Lake Simcoe were two more powerful Huron tribes, to which the two mentioned above as living on the St. Lawrence River migrated about the beginning of the seventeenth century, and formed an alliance with them. These are the four Huron tribes mentioned in the Jesuit Relations. Southward from the Huron tribes, and in the peninsula lying westward from Niagara River and northward from Lake Erie and extending eastward over Niagara River to the watershed of the Genesee River in New York State, were situated the numerous towns of the powerful “neuter nation,” also of cognate speech. South and southeastward of Lake Erie dwelt the warlike Erie, who also were of cognate speech with the Iroquois tribes; and still farther eastward were the little known Black Minqua also of cognate language. In the upper Susquehanna river valley, especially in the Wyoming valley, lived the noted Massawomeke also of cognate speech. On the lower Susquehanna dwelt the fiercely warlike Conestoga. On the Delaware river and its affluents dwelt the Lanape or Delaware tribes who spoke Algonquian dialects. Eastward, along and beyond the Hudson River dwelt the Mohegan and their cognates who also spoke Algonquian dialects. Such summarily was the tribal environment of the five Iroquois tribes at the era of the institution of their league or confederation. Tradition is silent as to any extensive warfare with these surrounding tribes anterior to the founding of the league.

History records the use of two fundamentally distinct methods of grouping peoples by means of institutional bonds. The grouping of men in this manner has been aptly termed regimentation. The two systems mentioned are the tribal system of regimentation and the national system of regimentation. In the first, men are regimented or organized on the basis of kinship and affinity, real or as a legal fiction, and in the second, men are regimented or organized in institutional units on the basis of territory. But history records transitional forms of organization, and the most important of these is the feudal, for both methods mentioned above are found in feudal society, showing transition from tribal to national society and government.

Now, the tribes of the Iroquoian stock of languages are regimented or organized on the basis of kinship and affinity, real or as a legal fiction, and they trace descent or lineage of blood only through the mother.

To grasp fully and to comprehend clearly the structure and the workings of the great institution which is called the league or confederation of the Five Nations, one must have a summary but clear knowledge of the several constituent units which in the last analysis have voice and place in its structure and workings.

In brief, these are the ohwachira (= the uterine family), of which one or more constitutes a clan; the clan, of which one or more may constitute a sisterhood, or, as it is usually called, a phratry of clans; the sisterhood or phratry of clans, of which only two constitute a tribe in Iroquois social organization; the tribe, of which two or three constitute a sisterhood or phratry of tribes; and finally the league or confederation which is composed of just two sisterhoods or phratries of tribes.

The common noun ohwachira (as pronounced by the Mohawk and other r-sounding dialects) or ohwachia (as uttered by the Onondaga and other r-less dialects) signifies a group of male and female uterine kin, real, or such by legal fiction. It includes all the male and the female progeny of a woman, and also the progeny of a woman and of all her female descendants, tracing descent of blood in the female line and of such other persons as may have been adopted into it. In so far as known the ohwachira, unlike the clan, does not bear the designative name of a tutelary or other protecting genius, or “totem” as it is commonly but loosely called when applied to a clan; and yet it is commonly known that the influential matron of an ohwachira usually bears the reputation of being deft in the peculiar arts of the sorceress, each of which being the potence or orenda of some tutelary.

The matron of an ohwachira is usually, not always, the oldest woman in it. But, by becoming incapacitated by age or other infirmity to manage the affairs of an ohwachira as its moderator, she may ask permission to resign so that a much younger woman of recognized ability and industry and integrity of character may be nominated and installed to preside over the ohwachira in her stead.