15 P. 14., 'On these occasions the state of Lacedaemon ever occurs to my mind, which that of the Five Nations in many respects resembles, their laws and customs being in both framed to render the minds and bodies of the people fit for war.' Parkman, too, says of them, 'Never since the days of Sparta were individual life and national life more completely fused into one'; see The Jesuits in North America (1885 ed.), Introduction, p. lx.
| Principle of adoption among the Iroquois. |
Constantly weakened by the strain of war, to some extent they renewed their strength by the principle of adoption.16 Of the prisoners whom they took, most were put to death with nameless tortures, but many were admitted to their tribes; and in one instance they incorporated a whole people. This was the Tuscaroras, a kindred tribe from the Carolinas, driven north by war with the colonists early in the eighteenth century. About 1715, they were admitted into the league as a sixth nation, though not on equal terms, and were assigned a dwelling-place among the Oneidas and Onondagas.
16 'They strictly follow one maxim, formerly used by the Romans to increase their strength, that they encourage the people of other nations to incorporate with them' (Colden, p. 5).
| Their sphere of influence. Their feud with the French. |
The tribes of the Huron Iroquois stock were agriculturists to a greater extent than the Algonquins. In other words, they had passed out of the nomad stage and made permanent homes. Still, they lived in great measure by the chase; they were born hunters as they were born warriors, and furs and beaver skins were the products which they bartered for the white man's goods. The Five Nations hunted and raided far beyond the limits of their cantons. In 1687, Dongan, Governor of New York, wrote of them: 'The Five Nations are the most warlike people in America, and are a bulwark between us and other tribes. They go as far as the South Sea, the North-West Passage, and Florida to war.'17 Their interests as well as their pride demanded that on the upper St. Lawrence, as well as on Lakes Erie and Ontario, their power should be paramount. As far as other groups of Indians were concerned, they ensured their object, conquering and in great measure exterminating the Hurons, the Neutral Nation, and the Eries; but they knew well that the few Frenchmen in Canada were more dangerous to their ascendency, and possibly to their existence, than any native tribe or race, however numerous. The French began by making the Iroquois their foes. Champlain had hardly settled at Quebec, when he joined the Hurons and Algonquins in an expedition against them. Thenceforward the Five Nations were the enemies of France. This result would probably have followed in any case, and it is difficult to suppose that one early action determined all succeeding history. It was rather the beginning of an inevitable struggle for the control of the upper St. Lawrence and of the Canadian fur trade. On all sides of their own country the Iroquois, like other masterful peoples, extended their sphere of influence; but their real outlet was to the north, towards the lakes and the great river. On this side the white men were most active and restless, ever sending their emissaries a little further on, ever putting themselves in evidence in some new tribe or village.18 The French were not content to live outside the Indians; nor were they content, having found a resting-place, to stay there. To be in and among the natives, to control and to convert them, to be the recognized protectors of the land and its peoples, to be the ultimate recipients of the produce of the country, and the guardians of the channels by which the produce was conveyed—no smaller aims sufficed for the French in Canada. In the pursuit of these objects they directly competed with the Iroquois Indians. Great was the territory, few in number were the Frenchmen and Iroquois alike; but they were rivals for ascendency on the same river, and there was not room for both.
17 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1685-8, No. 1160, pp. 328-9, Dongan to the Lords of Trade, March, 1687.
18 'But this justice must be done to the French, that they far exceeded the English in the daring attempts of some of their inhabitants, in travelling very far among unknown Indians, discovering new countries, and everywhere spreading the fame of the French name and grandeur' (Colden, p. 35).
Because they were enemies of the French, the Iroquois naturally became the allies of the English; but before they had much, if any experience of the latter, they had come into contact with a third European people, the Dutch on the Hudson river.
| The Dutch on the Hudson river. New Netherland. |