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The Iroquois are one the largest ethnic groups of Native Americans significant for their culture, history, territory of their distribution and traditions. This group of Indians were among the first to encounter European settlers – the French and the British – and has had close, but often controversial, relationships with them ever since. They name themselves the Haudenosaunee, which means “the People of the Long House,” their abodes became incorporated into their original name as a distinctive feature of the tribal community, and as an essential element of their culture (Tehanetorens 5). A longhouse is a symbol of a large extended family uniting several generations living under the same roof and sharing all basic necessities. Iroquois is a name given by their enemies – the Algonquians labelled them Iroqu (“rattlesnake”) and the French Gallicized it into the Iroquois, which became their generally accepted name. However, they may be called in many different ways – Five Nations, Six Nations (since 1722), Canton Indians, Confederate Indians, Nadowa, Matchenawtowaig etc (“Iroquois History”).
North East is considered their original territory where they have lived since their arrival, this terrain includes the “lands bordering the lower Great Lakes – Huron, Erie, and Ontario – and the St. Lawrence River, in what are now parts of Ontario and Quebec in Canada, upstate New York, and adjacent Pennsylvania” (Fenton 3).
The Iroquois people came to what is now the United States and Canada long before the Europeans did. It is problematic to define the precise date of their appearance on these lands due to the fact that they did not have written language, or the systems of recording the events like the Aztecs, Mayas, or Incas of Central and South America. The archeological digs reveal that the longhouses trace their history back to ca. 1100 A.D. The maize began cultivated by the Iroquois in the period between years 1300 and 1400. On the boundary between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as the researchers say, this people started the practice ritual cannibalism after the significant growth of population and increasing warfare tension between the tribes (“Iroquois History”).
The famous Iroquois League was established in sixteenth century according to the majority of the scholars, although there still exists a suggestion that the confederacy might have emerged as long ago as the tenth century A.D., but most of the researchers do not support the above mentioned view. The League was originally formed by five tribes that had been so far engaged in continuous warfare against each other. The tribes were the following – the Cayuga, the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, and the Seneca (Five Nations), in 1722 they were joined by the Tuscarora and became known ever since as Six Nations, the latter, however, did not have the right to vote.
The next important historic event was the Beaver Wars that lasted for some 70 years and had a considerable impact on the further history of the relationships between the Five Nations and their Indian and European neighbors. It was the confrontation between the Mohawk, on one side, and the Algonquian and Montagnais, on the other, caused by the desire to gain the monopoly on the fur trade. That warfare stopped in 1701 after concluding a truce with France and their allies. In the Seven Years War, the Iroquois supported Britain against the French and the Algonquians.
The American Revolution provoked a bitter division within the Six Nations League, and had a far reaching consequences both for those who took the side of the revolutionaries and the side of Great Britain. The majority of the tribes adhered to the British military forces, so the Cayugas, the Seneca, the Onondagas, and the Mohawks were fighting under the British flag. The Oneida and Tuscarora joined the American revolutionaries. After the war, many of the British allies moved to Canada and were given land for their service, the Cayuga and the Seneca, however, remained on their native terrain, while the Oneida were not appropriately rewarded for their contribution to the Independence War (“Iroquois History”).
Since 1790s there began a slow but steady recovery of the Haudenosaunee, the tribes started to enjoy a calmer life with less turmoil and confrontation. During nineteenth and twentieth centuries they were being deprived of their land by the white settlers, e.g. many of the Mohawk and Seneca lost their land in New York, the land was also changing its proprietors in other states – Ohio, Kentucky, Delaware etc. Nowadays there are about 70,000 of Iroquois residing in the United States and Canada and occupying eight reservations and twenty settlements in New York, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Ontario and Quebec.