Ben's

   The Iroquois Indians were a group of Indians that lived in the areas of present day upstate New York and Ontario.  They had been in that are for over 4,00 years and were known for their complex government and millitary.  Insterestingly though, the word Iroquois refers only to the language that they spoke, not the tribe it self.  The Iroquois as we know it was made up of about 5 other groups of Indians.  These five groups of Indians hated each other.  They spent most of their time and resources killing each other, until about the 1500s.  

 

Government

 

The 5 Iroquois tribes developed a very modern day type of government, a two house system similar to the US Congress. Some say that their constitution had a huge impact on our very own contitution, drafted in 1776.  They even had a unwritten constitution.  Four of the five tribes would meet and vote on ideas, while one tribe the Onondaga decided that they wanted to be stubern and veto every idea their peirs had. Two of the tribes, the Seneca and Mohawk, would meet while the other two, the Oneida and Cayuga, would meet in another.  They had a confusing parentership. All five tribes reconized that they were more or less the same, but they were not united, kind of like the Italian city states in a way.   The best way to descibe how these tribes all worked together would be more or less like a disfunctional family that killed each other when there was too much disfunction.   

 

Who They Hated

 

The Iroquois tribes hated everyone for a good bit of history.  They would fight the Bristish and French colonists that came over to settle, and they would fight each other in small battles inbetween waves of settlers, kind of like the idea of uniting under a comon enemies.  The settlers were also their best oponents when is came to fighting.  They calmed down with the whole inter-tribe fighting when the Revolutionary war started.  Mohawk Indian cheif Joeseph Brant was obviously the cheif of one of the tribes, but he was also a Christian Missionary and a officer in the Bristish millitary.  Being that the cheif of their tribe was British, the Mohawks and the other four tribes fought with the Bristish during the Revolutionary war. Little did they know that they picked the wrong side, silly Indians. 

 

Life as an Iroquois Indian

 

One could argue that the Iroquois are most known for their Long Houses, a.k.a. their homes. Some Long Houses have been discovered that were over 100 yards long. That is a huge building just to be made out of wood and tree branches and only built using very crude tools.  Farming was also a very big part of being an Indian, and women at the time had a very diffrent role in society then women in Europe. Women were in control of how the food was distrubuted, farmed, and planted.  Women were also head of familys instead of the men, but they were not head of the tribes due to the fact that the leaders fought a lot of battles (no one wants the women being killed).

 

 

Decline of the Iroquois

 

Even though they were admired by some of the most admired people in American History, such as Ben Franklin, they were forced to give up pretty much all of their land due to treaties and many other "land grabs".  They ended up blending into the population, but many still sticked in the same area.