CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

SMALLPOX AND THE IROQUOIS WARS:

AN ETHNOHISTORICAL STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF

DISEASE AND DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS ON IROQUOIAN CULTURE

HISTORY, 16)0-1700

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in

Anthropology

by

Steven Martin Clark

June 1981

The Thesis of Steven Martin Clark is approved:

{Dr. ~vid H~no)

Lynn Mason, Chair

California State. University, Northridge

ii

ABSTRACT

SMALLPOX AND THE IROQUOIS WARS:

AN ETHNOHISTORICAL STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF

DISEASE AND DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS ON IROQUOIAN CULTURE

HISTORY, 1630-1700

by

Steven Martin Clark

Master of Arts in Anthropology

Smallpox epidemics in the 17th century constituted a

significant variable in the survival of the Five Nations

of the Iroquois and their expansion at the expense of

other Iroquoian groups. Analysis of early ethnohistorical

accounts indicates that two primary factors, the arrival

of infectious Old World diseases such as smallpox into

northeastern North America and an escalated pattern of

inter-Iroquoian tribal warfare, brought about the concom­

itant stabilization of the Iroquois population and the

demise of the surrounding Huron, Tionnontate, Neutral,

Erie, and Susquehannock nations. By 1700, the Iroquois

people had become an amalgamation of original Iroquois

iii

and surviving members of depopulated Iroquoian tribes.

This process resulted mainly from the transformation of a

minor social custom, that of adopting war captives into a

victorious tribe, into a ~~jor adaptive strategy during

the Iroquois Wars of the mid-17th century. This case

study is given as a specific illustration of social

responses to a population crisis and as a general example

of how sociocultural phenomena can be conditioned by

in:troduced diseases and other demographic factors.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Figures and Tables ••.•••••••••••••••••.••••••••••••••• vi

Preface . ............................ ·· . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Introduction.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Chapter One--The Iroquois and Their Neighbors ••.•.•••• 19

Chapter Two--The Epidemiology of Smallpox in · 17th Century North America ••..••••••••••• 32

Chapter Three--Iroquoian Healing and Health Care •••••• 45

Chapter Four--Iroquoian Political Origins and the Iroquois Wars ••••••••.•••••••••••••• 59

Chapter Five--The Demographic Effects of Smallpox among the Iroquois ••••.••••••.••..•••••• 74

Chapter Six--The Sociocultural Effects of Smallpox among the Iroquois •••••••••••.••••••••••• 91

Chapter Seven--Conclusions •••••.•••••••••••••••••••••• 101

Notes ... ...................................•.. 81....... 108

References Cited •.•••.••••••••••••••••••••••• ~ •• ~ ••••• 111

v

FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1--Approximate territories occupied by the Five Nations and their Iroquoian neighbors in 1630 •••••.•••••••••••••.•••• 20

Table 1--Comparative populations of Iroquoian nations in 1640 ••••••••••••••.•••.• ; •••••• 24

Table 2--Major smallpox epidemics among Iroquoians, 1634-1696 •••••••••••••.••••••••••.•••••••• 42

Table 3--Population changes among Iroquoian nations in the 17th century ••••••••••••••.•••••••• 75

vi

PREFACE

Perhaps the greatest medical triumph of the 1970's was

the World Health Organization (WHO)-directed conquest of

variola major and variola minor, commonly known as small­

pox. Although smallpox has not been a serious threat to

health in North America since the mid-nineteenth century,

there had been fatal outbreaks in Ethiopia, India, and

Bangladesh as late as ten years ago. It was in these

countries that WHO-coordinated epidemic surveillance and

vaccination teams sought to eradicate the last traces of

· this deadly disease. Through a persistant campaign of

surveillance, containment, and mass vaccination in target

areas and in spite of frustrating political and cultural

barriers, these WHO medical teams successfully surrounded

the final outbreaks of both the Asian (V. major) and

African (V. minor) strains (Henderson 1978; Shurkin 1979).

Since all potential hosts were finally vaccinated, the

virus theoretically had to die out.

In every nation's collective relief at the demise of

this deadly infection, it is easy to forget the horror

inflicted by smallpox on its millions of past victims.

Few Americans living today have experienced an attack of

smallpox, but prior to Jenner's development of the small-

1

pox vaccination, all ethnic groups in colonial America,

including Caucasians, suffered severely from the disease.

Though smallpox was a leading killer of colonial Americans

in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its effect

among the Indians of North America was far more devastating.

Even with the somewhat sketchy figures available, it is

safe to say that smallpox alone killed far more Indians

than were killed in all European-Indian wars combined •

. Smallpox, and diseases such as measles, typhus, malar­

ia, yellow fever, and influenza that often accompanied it in

the New World, ran rampant over the sixteenth century

native populations conquered by the Spanish in Mexico and

Peru, killingan estimated 90 percent of these peoples

within 120 years after contact(McNeill 1976:181). Many

North American Indian groups fared no better in the follow­

ing centuries, including the Pennacook, Massachusetts, and

Mandan, Who lost around 90 percent of their populations in

single epidemics(H. Williams 1909; Heagerty 1928; Cook 1973;

1976; McNeill 1976:)09, note lJ). In the 150 year period

following the Pilgrims' landing at Plymouth in 1620, small­

pox and other Old World infe'ctions were a constant threat

to most Indian groups in the Northeast.

Though all New World peoples were equally vulnerable,

in theory at least, to smallpox at first contact, not all

groups suffered as much as others; indeed, a few North

American tribes seem actually to have benefitted from the

2

regional chaos created by massive epidemic outbreaks. Far

from being impotent victims of "stunned acquiescence" to an

unknown disease brought by conquering Europeans as McNeill

(1976:184) described the defeated Aztecs and Incas, some

North American Indians were better able to manage their

fates and minimize the impact of infectious disease.

A case in point is the impact of smallpox on the Five 1

Nations of the Iroquois in the seventeenth century. While

the combination of epidemics and intertribal wars severely

reduced the populations of the neighboring Iroquoian-2

speaking nations, the Iroquois not only survived the period

with a remarkably stable population base but they also be­

came the dominant Indian military power in the Northeast

for the next century. They did this not with greater med­

ical expertise than their neighbors but by purposefully

altering and expanding a traditional social custom into an

effective stress-relieving device, that is, through the

adoption of thousands of Iroquoian war captives to replace

those killed by disease or in war. As we shall see, this

was a measure from which the Five Nations reaped both long.

and short term benefits. Of course, the Iroquois' escala­

ted policy of prisoner'adoption could only have been as

successful as their military strategy proved to be. How~

ever, due to the severe mortality suffered by northeastern

Indians in the earliest smallpox epidemics, the Iroquois'

new ~doptive policy was as much a rationalization for as

J

an outcome of the Iroquois Wars from 1649 to 1654.

In recent years, anthropologists concentrating on the

medical aspects of culture have begun systematically to

study the full ramifications of introduced diseases on

Amerindian populations(Cf. Friedlander 1969; Mason 1976;

Landy 1977). There were a few notable exceptions prior to

1960, such as S.F. Cook's(l937;1943:13-34;1955) demogra­

phic studies on epidemics and the Indians of Mexico and Cal­

ifornia which he began in the 1930s. However, traditional

ethnographic studies largely have subsumed the medical

component of cultural systems under either religious or

psychological headings(Landy 1977:4). Most works on

American Indian medicine have concentrated on responses

to traditional ailments and omitted information on adapta­

tions to Old World diseases in the postcontact period

(Ct. Stone 1932; Corlett 1935; Vogel 1970).

W.H.R. Rivers(l927:1) recognized long ago that the

intricacy with which the medical, magical, and religious

components are woven together in aboriginal cultures pre­

sents a serious hindrance to the study of each as an indep­

endent subsystem(Cf. Malinowski 1948). Indeed, the concept

of "medicine" in many American Indian cultures is defined

as a power which encompasses many quasi-magic~l skills in

addition to healing. Although in a definitive sense, most

native cultures' ernie beliefs about medicine are obviously

deeply rooted in that culture's general belief system,

4

medical anthropological studies do not have to stop at this

rationalization. Native healing theories may reflect other

aspects of tribal society, as Whiting(l950) found among

the Paiute. Her monograph suggested that Paiute theories

abo~t sorcery-induced illness were diagnostic of latent

aspects of their sociopolitical structure rather than

indicative of their level of medical acumen.

Making explicit the ways in which a culture's medical

system affects other component's of that society is one of

the most important aims of medical anthropologists today.

Two recent writers in the field give parallel definitions

of medical anthropology as:

and

the study of human confrontations with disease

and illness, and of the adaptive arrangements

(i.e. medicines and medical systems) made by

human groups for dealing with these ••• panhuman

dangers(Landy 1977:1)

the study of medical phenomena as they are

infiuenced by social and cultural features and

social and cultural phenomena as they are illum­

inated by their medical aspects(Lieban, in

Landy 1977:15).

This case study of the seventeenth century Iroquois is

offered as a specific illustration of social adaptation to

5

a population crisis and as a general example of how socio­

cultural phenomena can be conditioned by medical and demo­

graphic factors. Furthermore, this adaptation to disease

was crucial in the Iroquois' sudden rise as a military

power in a critical period in their modern formative

history.

6

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the demogra­

phic effects of smallpox and other epidemic diseases on the

culture history of the Iroquois tribal confederacy or Five

Nations(Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk) from

1600 to 1700. This period covers the first century follow­

ing the earliest known direct contact between· the Iroquois 3

people and Europeans, and includes both the introduction

of smallpox into northeastern North America and the inter-

tribal wars through which the Five Nations gained regional

ascendancy as an Indian military power.

My analysis of the Iroquois adaptation to Old World

diseases focuses on two related hypotheses:

A. Mortality rates following smallpox epidemics

constituted a significant variable in the survival

and rise of the Iroquois as a military power

and the correlative decline of other Iroquoian

nations.

B. By expanding their custom of adopting prisoners

of war, refugees of weakened tribes, and in many

cases, the survivors of prior epidemics(thereby

raising the level of tribal immunity to those

diseases) during the period from 1634 to 1660,

7

the Iroquois not only compensated in part for

population losses due to warfare and disease,

they also mitigated the effects of future epidemics.

The literature on the League of the Iroquois is among

the richest in American anthropology. Based on the journ­

als of early explorers and missionaries in the Northeast,

we have several good, first-hand accounts of Iroquoian life

in the early colonial period. Ethnographers of the Iroquois

have written in great detail about many aspects of their

culture, including religion(Parker 1909; Blau 1964; Wallace

1969), government(Morgan 1904; Hewitt 1915), economy

(Morgan 1904; Hewitt 1933), social structure(Morgan 1904:

1907; Trigger 1976; 1978). It is significant that very

little has been written on Iroquois adaptations to European

diseases.

It is true that five medical histories of epidemics in

colonial America contain excerpts about the Iroquois, but

these references are altogether too brief(Heagerty 1928;

Ashburn 1945; Stearn and Stearn 1945; Duffy 1951, 1953).

Usually·the writers give only the years in which the Iro­

quois suffered from smallpox epidemics. Mortality figures

are few and details on the deeper impact of disease are

fewer still.

From 1634 to 1700, the Iroquois suffered 17 known

smallpox epidemics(see Table 2). Mortality figures are

8

incomplete for most of these epidemics, but the data sug­

gest that, although a few thousand Iroquois may have died

from smallpox during this period, the immediate impact of

the disease was far more severe among the Huron than among

the Iroquois following the initial outbreaks.

The reality of the intertribal politico-military situ­

ation in the Northeast was that by 1640, pressure on the

Iroquois from their northern border was greatly relieved.

Later, an escalation of Iroquois raids on Huron trading

parties along the St. Lawrence River throughout the 1640s

further weakened the Huron's trade-oriented economy.

Finally, during the five year period from 1649 to 1654,

the Iroquois applied the final stroke of conquest in a

swift series of large-scale military thrusts against the

Huron, Tionnontate, Neutral Nation, Erie, and St. Lawrence

Algonkin, defeating and dispersing all of these peoples

from their homelands(Hunt 1940; Trigger 1976).

Despite the tremendous upheaval due to epidemics,

regional warfare, and European invasion and economic

change in the Northeast, population estimates provided by

colonial observers suggest that the Iroquois population

remained relatively stable--between 10,000 and 16,000

persons--from 1640 to 1700(see Table J). We 8hould, of

course, regard these figures with caution on two accounts.

First, population figures provided by some colonial admin­

istrators were often based on second-hand information.

9

Total tribal populations usually were obtained by multiply­

ing the known number of warriors in a tribe or nation by a

factor of five, which was given as the average number of

family members for each Iroquoian warrior. Some Jesuit

censuses were taken by visiting all known tribal villages

and counting the number of individuals in each residential

unit. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, the Iroquois'

apparent population stability must be measured against

their adoption of considerable numbers of Iroquoian(Huron,

Erie, Neutral) war captives and refugees taken during the

Iroquois Wars. Thus, in spite of the relative demographic

stability of the gross population, the internal composition

of Iroquois tribes which comprised the Five Nations under­

went much change. The incorporation of defeated Indians

in the aftermath of the Iroquois Wars meant an increase in

the heterogeneity of the social groups within the Iroquois

League.

In the final analysis, the demographic effects of

epidemic diseases and warfare must be considered together

as fostering the consolidation of Iroguoian and a smaller

number of northeastern Algonquians into a more heterogene­

ous Iroquois League of Nations in the latter half of the

seventeenth century. Introduced diseases cannot be consid­

ered as the direct cause of the escalated pattern of Iro­

quois warfare and prisoner adoption. Nevertheless, as a

conscious response to population stress due to disease and

10

intertribal warfare, the adoption of war captives and

refugees from tribes on the wane served as a definite

stabilizing mechanism for the Five Nations during an

extremely critical period in their history.

METHODOLOGY

This thesis is offered as an application of the ethno­

historical methodology to demonstrate both a demographic

point about the Iroquois' survival in a highly stressful

era and the utility of the medical perspective in socio­

cultural studies. The ideas presented herein are based on

three data sources -- primary documents, secondary refer­

ences, and medical/epidemiological histories. The best

primary sources for the seventeenth century Iroquois are

the Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents(Thwaites, ed.

1959; hereafter referred to as JR), Sagard's(l935) Long

Journey into the Country of the Hurons, and Documents

Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York

(O'Callaghan, ed. 1853-57; ·hereafter referred to as

DRCHNY).

Gabriel Sagard-Theodat, a Recollet(reformed Franciscan

order) missionary who spent the winter of 1623-24 in Huron­

ia, was the first European after Champlain to live among

and write about the Hurons. Through the Huron, Sagard

learned much about the Iroquois. The Jesuits, who lived

11

with the. Huron from 1634 to 1650 and with the Iroquois off

and on after 1655, were the first known Europeans to live

w~th the Iroquoian-speaking Indians for prolonged periods

of time and kept a nearly complete record of their experi­

ences. Although their zealous efforts to Christianize

them usually met with failure, the Jesuits had the fore­

sight to record many of the customs, beliefs, and medical

practises of the peoples visited. Unlike all but a few of

the seventeenth century explorers in North America, they

had both a relatively high level of education and a great

propensity for recording their observations. Of course,

these missionaries(Sagard included) did not write without

some bias toward the Iroquoians whom they regarded as hea­

thens, but at least some writers, notably Sagard, LeJeune,

and Rageneau, included enough cultural details that readers

can judge for themselves the value of these missionaries'

journals as ethnographic works. The Jesuits seemed to be

genuinely interested in the healing arts and rituals of the

Iroquois and Huron, if only to point out their inadequacy

vis-a-vis European medicine. Ironically, seventeenth cen­

tury European medicine was hardly more advanced than Iro­

quoian medicine at the time. For a good critique of the

French writers, including Champlain, Sagard, and the Jes­

uits, see Tooker's(l964:4-7) ethnography of the Huron.

The New York colonial docw~ents pertinent to this

thesis include letters from English and French colonial

12

administrators to their respective sovereigns from 1666 to

1700. These letters relate to general business carried on

between the settlers and Indians. There is frequent

mention of smallpox epidemics afflicting the Iroquois, and

these documents provide a little insight on the subsequent

Indian mortality rates as well as some data, however brief,

on the sociocultural effects of disease.

Other primary sources consulted were the journals of

the early explorers on the St. Lawrence River and in Iro­

quoian country: Cartier(l5J4-l5J6), Champlain(l606-l616),

Radisson(l65l-l655), and LaHontan(l688-1700). Cartier's

account of his second voyage up the St. Lawrence River in

15J5 is relevant because it represents the earliest record­

ed contact between Europeans and Iroquoian-speakers, who

at the time inhabited Montreal Island(Burrage, ed. 1906).

Cartier learned that the herbology of these Iroquoians,

who may have been ancestors of either the Iroquois or

Huron, included an effective remedy for scurvy.

Champlain's journal of his travels up the St. Lawrence

in the .early 1600s provides greater detail about the cul­

ture of the Huron, Montagnais, and Algonkins, although he

had less personal cont·act with the Iroquois (Grant, ed.

1907). Champlain and his French crew joined with warriors

· from the former three tribes in making several raids

against the Iroquois. Radisson(see Scull, ed. 194)) was

mor~ vagabond than explorer, but he had the bad timing

1J

to be captured by Mohawks in 1651 and later witnessed the

massacre of a Huron band. Radisson made brief notes on the

population, trading practises, and medicine of the Iroquois

and Huron. LaHontan{l905) visited the Five Nations in the

169qs when they were suffering through a severe smallpox

epidemic.

Secondary sources include Morgan•s(l904) classic

ethnography of the Iroquois League as well as relevent

articles and books by Fenton, Parker, Blau, Wallace, and

others. As mentioned above, the medical histories of

Heagerty(l928), Ashburn(l945), Stearn and Stearn(l945),

and Duffy(l951; 1953) were consulted for their epidemiolog­

ical data on smallpox in colonial America. These authors

obtained most of their data on smallpox among the Iroquois

and Huron from the Jesuit Relations and the New York colon­

ial documents, and I was able to trace their mortality

figures back to their original sources.

The overall purpose of this methodology is to demon­

strate that the variability of smallpox mortality among

several. Iroquoian nations effected certain changes in their

populations in the seventeenth century and led to the emer­

gence of the Five Iroquois Nations as the most powerful

Indian group in the area. I did not expect to find "new"

data on the health status of the Iroquois. The ethnogra­

phic record on the Iroquois of this period is limited and

certainly is familiar to any student of northeastern

14

Indian culture. Corroborative data on Iroquoian mortality

might be provided by archaeologists in New York and south­

ern Ontario. Excavations of burial sites of the 1600s, if

undertaken within guidelines acceptable to the modern

Iroquois people, would yield valuable demographic data for

future research. Besides making a demographic point, I

would also like to speculate on the consequences of intro­

duced disease among the Iroquois. What were the cumulative

effects of seventy years of smallpox on their social struc­

ture, medical beliefs and practises,and general world

view? Since all of these effects cannot be measured in

this thesis, I will focus on the demographic effects and

only briefly suggest some probable sociocultural effects

of smallpox on the Iroquois.

While it is not my purpose to debate the utility of

ethnohistorical method here, a few words should be said

regarding its validity in the field of anthropology. The

antihistorical biases of anthropologists have been recount­

ed elsewhere(Sturtevant 1966:4). Some of this prejudice

has been directed against the veracity of early regional

historians and other "nonanthropological" sources of hist­

orical data(Sturtevant 1966:7-13). On the other hand,·

there have been many anthropologists for whom ethnohistor­

ical data were crucial to their studies(Hickerson 1970:2;

Pitt 1972:6; see also Fenton 1940; Tooker 1964; Friedlander

1969; Trigger 1976). Ethnohistories ultimately are depend-

15 @ '

ent on the interpretation of primary records such as the

journals of early explorers and missionaries in North Amer­

ica. As long as the interpretative aspects of ethnohistor­

ic studies are explicitly laid out(Cf. Hickerson 1970:121),

data from historical and/or "pre-anthropological" sources

can be used to supplement data from oral records, compara­

tive ethnology, and archaeology. For the Iroquois and

their neighbors in the seventeenth century, primary docu­

ments provide a relatively plentiful data supplement to the

scarce archaeological data and the vague and often contra­

dictory oral traditions of these peoples, giving us a rare

glimpse into a period of epidemics and wars that radically

altered the direction of Iroquoian culture history.

SUMMARY

Chapter One outlines the environmental setting, comp­

arative populations and economic base of the Five Nations

and their immediate Iroquoian neighbors. Also mentioned

are the basic features that make up the Iroquoian cultural

complex, some background data on the intrusive position of

Iroquoians among the more numerous Algonquian linguistic

groups of the Northeast, and the economic factors which

set the Iroquois and Huron apart as natural rivals.

Chapter Two reviews the history and epidemiology of

smallpox in northeastern North America. The general

16

pathological features of smallpox, epidemics and mortality

data for the Iroquois and Huron, and the increased viru­

l.ence and pathogenicity of smallpox among native Americans

as opposed to colonial settlers are discussed.

Chapter Three gives an historical sketch of Iroquoian

healing theories and therapies in the 1600s. Iroquoian

disease etiology, the role of the shaman and herbalist,

the use of dream interpretations, healing rituals, sweat

house therapy, and the general state of Iroquoian health

in the early colonial period are discussed.

Chapter Four reviews the main theories on the prehist­

oric origins of the Iroquois confederacy and the causes

and consequences of the Iroquois Wars from 1649 to 1654.

The historical events preceeding these wars and the demo­

graphic changes resulting from them are discussed.

Chapter Five analyzes the major factors(disease, war­

fare, migrations) that produced the dramatic changes in

Iroquois demography of the mid-1600s. The Iroquois policy

of prisoner adoption is linked to the extreme social heter­

ogeneity of the Five Nations after 1650.

Chapter Six speculates on some of the sociocultural

effects of smallpox epidemics on the Iroquois. The empha­

sis here is on changes in the Iroquois medical beliefs,

the role of epidemics in promoting factionalism between

Christianized and traditional Hurons, and other social

changes directly or indirectly attributable to smallpox.

17

The final chapter summarizes the adaptability of the

Iroquois to smallpox epidemics, assesses the validity of

the aforementioned hypotheses, and suggests how some of

the posited effects could be tested for confirmation in

the archaeological record.

18

CHAPTER ONE -- THE IROQUOIS AND THEIR NEIGHBORS

The seventeenth century Iroquois occupied a narrow

strip of territory in central New York state, running

east-to-west from the Hudson River to the Genesee River

(see Figure 1). Each of the Five Nations -- Seneca, Cayuga,

Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk -- was a political entity in

itself (see Chapter 4). The western.rnost group was the

Seneca, who occupied two large villages and several ham­

lets in the Genesee Valley west of Seneca Lake. The Cayuga

nations had three villages situated along Cayuga Lake. The

Onondaga nation, the symbolic center of the Iroquois

League and keeper of the sacred fires which were to burn

so long as the confederacy held together, occupied two

villages situated southeast of modern Syracuse. The lone

Oneida town was located in either the Oneida or Oriskany

Valleys; the precise original location is not kriown. The

easternmost nation was that of the Mohawk, who were located

in three towns and .five hamlets in the central l'llohawk River

Valley(Trigger 1976:98). Travelling in war or trading

parties, Iroquois men journeyed far beyond this modest

home territory. After 1650, the Iroquois could venture

freely in any direction except to the east and northeast

where colonists from England and France had begun to settle

in growing numbers.

19

LAKE "5UPERlOR. OJIBWA

_/ .A.~E NPI.K I

L}'.K.E: CHI'.N\PL.AIN

50KOKI

MAI-\ICAN

FOX

r KEY:

lr!J ARE. Po. OF IROQUOIAN SE.TTLEMENT~

0 ?0 100

Mile.,

FIGURE 1 -- Approximate territories occupied by the Five Nations and their Iroquoian neighbors in 1630(after Trigger 1976)

l\)

0

Kroeber{l9J9:17,91-92) gives the following environ­

mental description for the Iroquoian territories:

The territory south of Lake Ontario is one vegeta­

tional as well as physiographic unit with the country

just north of Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and southeast

of Lake Huron. Deciduous birch-beech-maple-elm

forests with coniferous admixture of pine and hemlock

give way in the north to fir and spruce.

There is some debate over the antiquity of the Iro­

quois occupation of this land. Hunt(l940:15) argues that

the Iroquois were a nomadic people until they became a

dominant military power in 1649, and adds that they origin­

ally may have been an offshoot of the prehistoric Hopewell

cultures of the Ohio Valley(see also Willey 1966:260).

Some Iroquois legends seem to support this western origins

theory(Richard 0. Clemmer, personal communication). Fen­

ton(1940:164-165), questioning the intrusive geographical

position of the Iroquoian nations in a region otherwise

peopled by Algonquian-speakers, suggests the Southeast as

a possible point of origin for Iroquoians. He cites three

basic cultural similarities nucleated village structure,

slash-and-bum horticulture with maize as the most impor­

tant staple crop, and matrilineal kinship -- as partial

evidence for this theory. Archaeological sequences, which

date the Onondaga and Mohawk occupation of their tradition-

21

al territory back to the eleventh century A.D., have now

been recognized and it is quite possible that Iroquoian

groups were established in the area as early as the time

of Christ(Tuck 1978:322-323).

! While Hunt is probably correct in surmising that the

Iroquois confederacy was a loose, ineffectual political

unit until the 1640s(Cf. Trigger 1976:98), the Iroquois

were certainly not as nomadic as he implies. In contrast

to the hunter-gatherer economic system found among the sur­

rounding Algonquian-speakers that led to a predominantly

nomadic lifestyle, the subsistence system of the Iroquoians

was sedentary, oriented primarily toward horticulture and

supplemented by hunting and fishing. As a mixed economic

system, the traditional Iroquois work regimen had different

locational requirements for the sexes. Women's work -­

growing and harvesting crops, child care, and managing the

affairs of the Iroquois residential unit, the longhouse

was essentially sedentary, while men's work -- hunting,

fishing, clearing the land, house construction, trade and

warfare --was more mobile(Trigger 1976:100). Nonetheless,

archaeological evidence points to an early growth of both

a sedentary settlement· pattern and the maize-beans-squash

agricultural triad in late prehistoric(ca. 1400 A.D.) Iro­

quoian sites(Trigger 1976:132-154). Apparently both the

Iroquois and Huron relocated their village sites about

every 10 to 30 years when local resources such as arable

22

soils and firewood became depleted(Grant, ed. 1907:314).

For the Iroquois, village resettlements were made as near

to the old village site as practicable, often within two

or three miles(Tuck 1978:323). Thus, the Five Iroquois

Nations occupied the same basic lands in New York from

about 1400 until 1784, when the process of relocating their

people onto reservations began.

In 1640, the Jesuits gave the first known estimate of

Iroquois population as 16,000(see Table 3). Morgan{l904:

25,227-228) estimated their 1655 population as 25,000, but

this figure has been doubted as much too high by other

writers. From 1640 to 1700, the number of Iroquois tribal

members varied from between 10,000 and 16,000 persons,

tending toward the lower figure late in the century.

Today, about 12,000 Senecas live on the Allegheny, Cattar­

augus, and Tonawanda Reservations in west-central New York.

About 5,000 Mohawks are divided between two reservations,

one in upstate New York and the other just across the St.

Lawrence River in southeastern Ontario. Over 12,000 other

Iroquois live elsewhere in· Canadian reservations. Finally,

over 4,000 Oneidas live on the Oneida Reservation in Wis­

consin and several thousand Senecas, Cayugas, and Oneidas

live in reservations in Oklahoma. Though scattered about

in these areas, the Iroquois in 1980 numbered over 35,000,

greater than at any time in their recorded history(Levin

and Lurie 1968: population map on inside back cover;

23

Richard 0. Clemmer, personal communication).

A look at the population estimates for each of the

Five Nations compared to those of other Iroquoian nations

elucidates the defensive function of the League of the

Iroquois(see Table 1 below). Although the overall Iroquois

population was comparable to all but the Huron nation in

16)0, only the Seneca and Mohawk could have hoped at that

time to stand successfully on their own against the Huron,

Erie, or Neutrals in battle. Indeed, the military alliance

of Hurons, St. Lawrence Algonkins, and Montagnais easily

TABLE 1 -- Comparative Populations of Iroquoian Nations in 1640.

Tribal Group Population Source

IROQUOIS Seneca 7,000 Cayuga 2,000 Onondaga 3,000 Oneida 1,000 Mohawk 3,000

total 16,000 Morgan 1904:227-228

HURON 10,000 Heidenreich 1978: 369-370, Table 1

TIONNONTATE ),000 Garrad and Heiden-reich 1978:395

NEUTRAL 12,000 JR 20:10)-105

ERIE 14,500 JR 62:71

WENRORONON 600 JR 17:29

SUSQUEHANNOCK 6,000 Jennings 1978:)62

24 @ '

routed the Five Nations in several battles between 1606

and 1640. Until the populations of these enemies of the

Iroquois started to thin out after the epidemics of the

1630s, the northern boundaries of the Iroquois confederacy

were very tenuous. Even in 1640, when the Iroquois popula-'

tion was larger than all other Iroquoian nations, each of

the individual Five Nations was smaller than the Huron,

Erie, and Neutral Nation.

The Erie tribes and Neutral Nation in the west and

Hurons to the north were long-time enemies of the Seneca.

The Seneca were the most populous Iroquois nation, were

considered quite warlike, and were known as the guardian

of the League's western border. The Mohawk nation, guard­

ian of the eastern borders, traditionally waged war with

the St. Lawrence Algonkins and Montagnais to the north and

Mahicans to the east(Jameson, ed. 1909:174). Another

ancient enemy of the Iroquois was the Susquehannock nation,

also called Andaste or Conestoga, of east-central Pennsyl­

vania along the Susquehanna River. Susquehannock warriors

travelled far to the north· and were traditional allies of

the Huron and St. Lawrence Algonkin.

Very little is known about either the Susquehannock or

the Erie, except that they frequently fought with the Iro­

quois and ultimately were destroyed(Trigger 1976:96-97).

Another little-known Iroquoian tribe was the Wenroronon or

Wenro, reportedly located between Niagara Falls and the

25

Genesee River. According to Trigger(l976:96,443, notes 62

and 63), the Wenro "are said to have been allied in some

way with the Neutral confederacy prior to their dispersal

in 1638, after being decimated by war and disease." The

Tionnontate, also known as the Petun or Tobacco Nation,

were another poorly understood tribal group of the area.

They were allied with and often included in population

estimates for the Huron.

The Iroquois, Huron, Tionnontate, Neutral Nation,

Erie, Wenro, and Susquehannock were all of the same lan­

guage stock -- Iroquoian. Although each of these tribal

groups, as well as each of the Five Iroquois Nations,

spoke different dialects and were culturally distinctive

in some ways, there are enough similarities to define what

has been called the Iroquoian cultural pattern. The Iro­

quois, Huron, and Neutrals all lived in tribal confedera­

cies of large, fortified villages. Other basic features

of the Iroquoian cultural complex are summarized below

(Trigger 1976:99-104):

1. Subsistence systems were mixed, with primary depen­

dence of slash-and-burn horticulture(corn-beans­

squash) and supplemented by fishing and hunting.

2. Kinship descent and clan membership were based on

matrilineal principles and residence was preferably

matrilocal.

26

). Warfare was characterized, prior to 1649, by small­

scale raids, in which men could gain personal

prestige by taking scalps or capturing prisoners

for ritualized torture.

4. Creation myths, pantheistic religious orientations,

certain specific feasts and festivals, and a special

interest in shamanism and healing rituals were shared

by both Iroquois and Huron(Cf. Wallace 1969:345-346,

note 6).

Despite differing linguistic dialects, geographic

locales, and subtly varied mixtures of horticulture, fish­

ing, and hunting, the way of life among all Iroquoian

groups was strikingly similar. The subsistence systems for

both Iroquois and Huron were mainly dependent on horticul­

ture, which was women's work, and secondarily dependent on

hunting, fishing, and trade, which were men's tasks. Iro­

quoian women produced most of the food consumed by the tribe

and, as heads of the household groups, they were locked into

a sedentary lifestyle in which there was little daily vari­

ation. Although Iroquois and Huron men made important con­

tributions to their respective economies through land

clearing, house construction, and trade, they were probably

best known for their fearless ability as warriors. It has

been suggested elsewhere that due to a gradually diminished

importance of hunting in Iroquoian food production through

27

time, warfare became the main activity in which men could

gain personal prestige by exhibiting bravery or taking an

e.nemy captive(Witthoff 1959:32-36; Trigger 1976:146).

One of the most salient and, at least to the outsider,

grotesque features of Iroquoian warfare was the ritualized

torture of war captives. Indeed, the Iroquoian torture

rituals, which occurred in the aftermath of military skir­

mishes, seem to have been regarded as important as the

battles themselves. Though viewed by "civilized'' Europeans

as proof positive of the Iroquoians' uncivilized state,

perhaps we should be quicker to judge the "civility" of

the supposedly Christ-sanctioned torture of the heathen

during the Spanish Inquisition or of accused witches

during the Salem trials later in the seventeenth century.

The specific cruelties inflicted by the Iroquois and

Huron against each other have been recounted in sufficient

detail elsewhere(Trigger 1969:47-51), and need not be

repeated here. In one sense, Iroquoian torture rituals

can be seen as expressions of respect for a relative

killed in war. Wallace(l969:J2-JJ) writes, "All(Iroquois

children) had seen captives tortured to death; all had

known relatives lost in war whose whose death demanded

death or replacement." Also, Iroquoian tortur·e represented

a culturally sanctioned means of judging the merit of cap­

tives, perhaps as a screening process for "replacements."

A truly noble warrior did not show any sign of pain or

28

suffering during the torture. Wallace describes the ideal

Iroquois war~ior as "always stoical and indifferent to

privation, pain, and even death''(Wallace 1969:30; Cf.

Kenton, ed.l898:2:78-80).

Yet torture rituals may also have served as partial

deterrent to large-scale, inter-Iroquoian warfare. Iroquois

men may have been socialized to tolerate pain, but torture

could not have been altogether pleasant to every victim.

Certainly the threat of captivity and torture precipitated

more than one hasty retreat from battle.

The Five Nations gradually became more aware of prison­

er adoption as a practical alternative for death as Iroquoi­

an warfare itself escalated after 1640. During the Iroquois

Wars from 1649 to 1654 and for the next 25 years thereafter,

the Iroquois sought to capture and adopt as many of the

defeated Indians as possible. This drawn-out policy of cap­

ture and adoption is better described in Chapters 4 and 5.

Besides warfare, trade was another important all-male

activity, especially for the Huron, who built a formidable

economic empire by controlling the flow of virtually all

Indian and European goods moved from the Great Lakes to the

St. Lawrence River in the early seventeenth century. In

effect, the Huron monopoloized the supply of beaver pelts

to the French at Quebec and Three Rivers and of agricultur­

al foodstuffs to the Algonkins and Montagnais. This trading

partnership between the French, Huron, Algonkin, and

29

Montagnais was a strong military alliance as well, and

represented a solid northern front against the Five Nations

until 1640. Economically the relationship was symbiotic.

The Huron were horticulturalists; the Algonkins and Montag­

nais were hunters and gatherers, and so they could provide

themselves with goods unattainable to the other. The

Huron supplied the St. Lawrence tribes with tobacco and

hemp and the French with beaver pelts. The French in turn

armed the Indians with firearms and iron implements. The

Algonkin and Montagnais acted as middlemen between the

Huron and French.

On the other hand, the Iroquois were surrounded by

tribes that, like themselves, were primarily horticultural­

ists. The Five Nations therefore found themselves in nat­

ural competition with their neighbors over the only items

that they could not provide for themselves -- beaver skins

and firearms. Cut out of the Huron-Algonkin-French sphere

of exchange, the Iroquois turned to the Dutch and later to

the English for guns and to intensified raiding for the

pelts. Trigger(l976:174,842-843) feels that this competi­

tive economic environment contributed greatly to the Iro­

quois' sharp hostilities with the Huron in the early 1600s.

The environment of these Iroquoian tribal groups was

abruptly and permanently altered with the arrival of Euro­

pean settlers in northeastern America after 1607. One of

the most deadly features of colonial America with which

30

the local Indians had to contend was the variety of

infectious diseases brought to the New World by those

settlers. For many Amerindian tribal groups, the most

feared of the new contagions was smallpox.

31

CHAPTER TWO -- THE EPIDEMIOLOGY OF SMALLPOX IN SEVENTEENTH CENTURY NORTH M~ERICA

Smallpox is an acute contagious disease, initiated by

sudden, severe constitutional symptoms and characterized by

a progressive cutaneous eruption often resulting in perman-

ent scars on healing(Merck Manual 1978:738). What we know

as smallpox actually is caused by closely related virus

groups -- variola major, v. minor, v. intermedia, and

vaccinia(Shurkin 1979:32). Variola major, known as the

Asian strain, is the type that kills 15 to 40 percent of

those infected and causes blindness or disfigurement to

most of its victims.. Variola minor, the African strain, dis-

figures many of its victims but kills few. Variola inter=

media is a spectrum of viruses intermediate in virulence

between V. major and V. minor and can kill from five to 15

percent of its victims. While smallpox may be better known

in 1981 as a disease recently eradicated as a world health

threat, it is well to remember that this disease was one of

the leading killers and causes of blindness and disfigure­

ment in modern human history.

The mode of infection for smallpox is from person to

person. The virus normally enters the body through the nose

after it has been exhaled by an infected individual(Shurkin

1979:34). Smallpox can also be passed by direct contact

32

with the infected person or through contact with contamin­

ated clothing, sheets, or blankets.

The normal incubation period for smallpox is 10 to 14

days, after which an infected individual develops a high

fever and aches and pains. In another two days a charact­

eristic rash spreads over the body. Ten to 14 days later,

blisterlike vesicles fill with pus and scabs form(Hender­

son 1978:797). If the sores are not so numerous as to

touch each other, it is called discrete smallpox and the

prognosis is good; only 10 percent of the patients die. If

the sores run together to form pustules, the smal1pox is

said to be confluent and 50 percent of these patients die.

Hemorrhagic or "black" smallpox(variolosa purpura), the

most extreme form of the disease, is present when bleeding

erupts beneath the surface of the skin and from the nose

and mouth and is 100 percent fatal(Shurkin 1979:27).

Despite all the advances of modern medicine and medi­

cal technology in preventing epidemics on a world-wide

scale, there is no effective cure for smallpox once a per­

son is inflicted. Any treatment is symptomatic; a physi­

cian can only try to alleviate the patient's suffering and

administer anti-biotics to prevent secondary bacterial in­

fections. The best treatment has always been ~reventive

medicine. Vaccination not only reduced the incidence rate

of smallpox in historical times, but also mitigated the

severity of the epidemic and lowered its mortality rate

33

(Shurkin 1979:27). Of course, vaccines were not available

either to the Iroquois or colonial French and English in

the seventeenth century.

One factor which helps to determine the severity of a

particular smallpox epidemic is the periodicity of epidem­

ics in an area where the disease has become endemic(Razzell

1977:124). Of course, smallpox and other viral and bacter­

ial infections such as measles and influenza are most sev­

ere in virgin populations in geographically isolated

regions. Once the disease runs through a population after

a series of epidemics, enough people acquire immunity to

prevent massive outbreaks in the near future(Razzell 1977:

118).

Populations which are not affected by fairly frequent

epidemics which kill off a proportion of their members,

become genetically vulnerable to future attacks

through the survival of people with low natural

resistance to the disease. Frequent epidemics kill

off the biologically vulnerable, who are unable to

pass on their genes to future generations; there is

therefore a process of natural selection at work,

with those highly vulnerable disappearing from

the population.

Mortality figures recorded in remote islands north of Scot­

land indicate that the first smallpox epidemic in an iso-

J4

lated population can kill up to 90 percent of those infect­

ed. As an endemic disease in England, however, the mortal­

ity rate of smallpox from 1629 to 1700 varied from between

2.8 to 7.3 percent(Razzell 1977:128).

Other factors determinate in the mortality rate of

smallpox are the age structure of a population, the viru­

lence of particular variola strains, hygienic conditions,

and the presence or absence of other diseases in a popula­

tion(Razzell 1977:122). In general, the most vulnerable

groups are the youngest and oldest members of a population.

Although susceptibility to smallpox among the unvaccinated

is considered universal, in a given epidemic some cases

tend to be mild, while others are fatal(Benenson 1976).

Specific immunity, i.e. effective. circulating anti bodies,

must be activated for the infected individual to recover.

The degree to which these antibodies appear and their

timing determine the prognosis for the patient. Regardless

of the virulence of specific pathogens, a small minority of

a population, perhaps five to six percent, is totally

immune to smallpox(Razzell 1977:122).

Although very little epidemiological data is available

on smallpox in North America prior to 1720, what data we

have strongly suggests that the virulence of smallpox was

on the rise not only in aboriginal North America but also

in its colonial feeding grounds in Europe during the 1600s.

"In England, smallpox seemed to go through a dramatic, if

35

subtle change early in the seventeenth century"(Shurkin

1979:65; see also Razzell 1977:127). Having attained a

troublesome but stable status as one of many childhood

diseases in England, smallpox began to increase in frequen­

cy and virulence after 1620. Severe smallpox epidemics hit

London in the years 1649, 1652, 1655, 1659, 1661, 1674, and

1681(Shurkin 1979:76). Health conditions were no better

with regard to smallpox on the Continent. Whether this

added virulence can be attributed to a viral mutation, the

arrival of a new variola strain in Europe, increased popu­

lation and greater crowdin~, or simply better reporting of

disease fatalities is not known. Most likely the trend

toward increased virulence was a real one.

From the first recognizable outbreak of smallpox in

New England in 163J(For details on an unidentified 1617

epidemic that may have been caused by smallpox, typhus, or

bubonic plague, see H. Williams 1909 and Heagerty 1928)

until late in the nineteenth century, smallpox was a con­

stant threat to the Indians of North America, killing an

estimated 55 to 90 percent of those infected in the eight­

eenth century(Stearn and Stearn 1945:15). We can only

speculate on the mortality of smallpox when introduced to

the tribes of the Northeast in the early seventeenth cen­

tury. Smallpox was a leading cause of death in England and

in the English colonies from 1600 to 1775(Duffy 1953:16-22;

Razzell 1977:76,128). Compared to Indian mortality, that

J6 ' '

of the English settlers was low, generally around 12

percent(Stearn and Stearn 1945:35).

When smallpox broke out among northeastern Indian

tribes during the winter of 16J3-J4, it seemed to strike

them down with much greater virulence and frequency than

ever seen in Europe. Historical accounts make it clear

that northeastern Indian tribes generally suffered from the

worst possible form of variola major -- hemorrhagic small­

pox. References such as " ••. the pox breaking and mattering

and running into one another"(Bradford 1963:270), tend to

support this assertion. According to epidemiologists,

such high virulence is normal when smallpox attacks a popu­

lation previously free of the disease(Razzell 1977:103).

In fact, highly fatal outbreaks may be considered evidence

of the absence of acquired resistance to smallpox.

In 1633, the first wave of smallpox swept through New

England, spreading initially to the Connecticut and Narra­

gansett Indians from Dutch traders at the mouth of the

Connecticut River(Winthrop 1908:118). In 16J4, smallpox

broke out at Quebec and Three Rivers on the St. Lawrence,

where members of the Huron,'Algonkin, and Montagnais gather­

ed to trade with the French and were infected. Since

smallpox has a 10 to 14 day incubation period, those who

were infected did not become sick until they had returned

to their people. The Montagnais and Algonkins that lived

closest to the French settlements on the St. Lawrence were

J7

the hardest hit in this first outbreak. The Jesuit Father

Brebeuf described their condition in 1635(JR 8:89, emphasis

mine):

••• the greater part of the Montagnais ••• at 'l'hree

Rivers ••. were sick, and that many of them died;

and that almost no one who returned from trading,

was not afflicted with this contagion ••. I do not

know if anyone has escaped its attacks ••• a large

number of persons are sick(and many unrecovered) •••

The sickness began with a violent fever which was

followed by a sort of measles or smallpox, different,

however from that common in France, accompanied in

several cases by blindness for some days or by dim­

ness of sight, terminated at length by diarrhea ••••

From this account it would appear not only that this disease

was probably smallpox but also that it was a more virulent

form than that which was common in France during the early

seventeenth century, undoubtedly variola major.

Similarly, Mohawks trading with the Dutch at Fort

Orange(now Albany) on the Hudson River became infected and

spread the disease to their tribesmen and perhaps to other

Iroquois nations. A Dutch observer wrote in December, 1634,

that "a good many savages here in the castle(Mohawk village)

died ofthe smallpox"(Jameson, ed. 1909:141). Smallpox was

also reported in Seneca villages at this time(JR 21:211).

JB il '

The Wenro nation, located just west of the Seneca lands,

was reportedly so decimated by disease that the remaining

600 survivors abandoned their villages to live among the

Hurons in 1638(JR 17:29; White 1978:409).

Unfortunately, our data on epidemics in Iroquois

territory during this first wave of smallpox 'is limited to

the above three references. For the Huron, Jesuit sources

tell a grim story. After a mild initial outbreak in 1634,

sm~llpox broke out again in 1636, this time killing perhaps

1,000 Hurons in one year(Trigger 1976:526-528). The epidem­

ic lasted into 1637, diminished, and then flared up again

in 1639, when the disease was reintroduced by more traders

from Quebec(JR 8:87-89). As the disease wore down the pop­

ulation, more and more Hurons allowed themselves to be bap­

tized by the Jesuits, some thinking that the French priests

might have better "medicine" than their own shamans. Thus,

we have some information on disease mortality from the bap­

tismal records included in the Jesuit Relations. In one

village, 1,000 Hurons were baptized, of which 360 children

under the age of seven died{JR 19:77-79,123; Trigger 1976:

589). In another village, 120 infected Hurons were baptiz­

ed in one year, of which 27 out of 52 children(52%) died

and 22 out of 74 adults{30%) died(JR 17:11; Trigger 1976:

563-564). At still another village, there were 93 sick

Hurons, with 37 percent mortality for children and 59 per­

cent for adults(JR 17:61-63; Trigger 1976:564). At an

39

Arendaronon village the majority of 140 smallpox patients

died(JR 20:37; Trigger 1976:594). The epidemics ceased in

1640, but in the six year period, about half of the Huron

population had died from smallpox, most of whom were

children and the elderly. Many longhouses and several

villages were abandoned. Although the Huron confederacy

recovered temporarily with a good harvest and trading

season in 1641, the confederacy was left in a much weakened

state prior to the Iroquois Wars.

There are no reliable epidemiological data on the

Iroquois until 1662. From that year until 1665, the Five

Nations suffered three successive, severe smallpox epidem­

ics. In 1662, a Jesuit priest living among the Iroquois

reported a 60 percent(l20 deaths out of 200 cases)mortality

rate in his village(JR 47:193). In 1663, Jesuits baptized

300 dying Iroquois children(JR 48:83), and the following

year 1,000 more Iroquois were reported dead of smallpox

(JR 50:63). The Iroquois were hard hit by smallpox also in

1669 and 1679(Heagerty 1928:28), but no mortality figures

were reported. In 1679, Count de Frontenac wrote that:

••• the Small Pox ••• desolates them(the Iroquois)to

such a degree that they think no longer of meeting

nor of wars, but only of bewailing the dead, of

which there is already an immense number(DRCHNY

9:129).

40

From 1687 to 1696, smallpox plagued the Iroquois

repeatedly. In 1687, one village reported 430 cases and

130 deaths from smallpox(DRCHNY 9:354). In 1690, smallpox

spread from English soldiers to a party of Iroquois war­

riors, killing 100 of the latter and prematurely ending a

planned raid against the French at Quebec. Four hundred

more Iroquois died from smallpox and a village was nearly

exterminated when the warriors returned home and trans­

mitted the disease to many of their family and clan members

later that year(DRCHNY 9:354,460,492).

There were three principal waves of smallpox epidemics

among Iroquoian peoples, occurring in the years 1634-1640,

1662-1665, and 1687-1696. All known epidemics among Iro­

quoians and their estimated mortality are summarized in

Table 2 below. In some of the more severe epidemics,

smallpox mortality frequently was aggravated by secondary

attacks of measles, pneumonia, influenza, and other uniden­

tified "pestilential" fevers. In most of these cases, how­

ever, smallpox seems to have been the major killer. More­

over, the Iroquois suffered numerous additional fatalities

due to disease than those reported. Unfortunately, we have

mortality data from just a few Iroquoian villages and from

this must extrapolate the full extent of introduced disease

among these people.

A combination of several factors augmented the sever­

ity of smallpox among Iroquoians during the seventeenth

41

TABLE 2 -- Major Smallpox Epidemics among Iroquoians, 1634-1696

Year{s) Tribe

1634 Mohawk

163.5-40 Huron

1637 Wenro

1640 Mohawk Seneca

1647 Iroquois

16.56 Iroquois

1662 Iroquois

1663 Iroquois

1664-6.5 Iroquois

1669 Iroquois

1676 Iroquois

1678 Iroquois

1679 Iroquois

rr687 Iroquois

P-689-94 Iroquois

tl696 Iroquois

Estimated Mortality

"a good. many" .

.50%(9000/18,000)

63%(1000/1600)

?

"a great number"

?

60%{120/200)in one village

300 children

over 1,000

?

67%(390/580)in one village

"hundreds"

"an immense number"

430 cases, 130 children dead

ca. 1,000 \

?

Source

Jameson ed.l909:141

JR 11:9,13,17

JR 17:29

JR 20:189

JR 30:273

JR 42:14.5,147

JR 47:193

JR 48:83

JR .50:63

Heagerty 1928:28

JR 60:175

JR 66:20.5

DRCHNY 9:129

DRCHNY 9:354

DRCHNY 3:727,778 9: 460-461 ,490

DRCHNY 4:194-195

42

century. First, because of the prior absence of smallpox

in these populations, they had high susceptibility and low

resistance to the disease. Secondly, it is likely that

the virulence of the variola strain introduced to these

Indians via colonial trading centers was on the rise in

Europe during that period. Cultural factors such as the

imprudent use of the sweat bath, a favorite Iroquois

therapy, may have contributed to an unusually high death

rate for smallpox(Stearn and Stearn 1945:16). The Indians'

crowded, unsanitary living conditions and ineffective medi­

cal technology have also been cited, although it is doubt­

ful that the Iroquoian longhouse was any more crowded or

any less clean than a London tenement in 1650. However, it

is also true that the Iroquoians' gregarious nature and hab­

it of relatives visiting the sick en masse helped to spread

the earliest epidemics rapidly through a village(JR 8:87-89).

Furthermore, group healing rituals, which will be discussed

in the next chapter, probably contributed at first to the

spread of smallpox among the Iroquois and Huron. Finally,

it was partly due to an attraction to European traders and

their goods that the Huron and Iroquois, among others,

were first infected with smallpox.

Smallpox continued to be a serious proble1.1 throughout

the 1700s for the Iroquois, with major epidemics occurring

in 1721, 17)0, 1746, 1755, and 1776(Duffy 1951:334-)41).

Even Bostonians and New Yorkers suffered greatly during

4J

the epidemics of 1721 and 1730. However, after 1800, the

introduction of Jenner's technique of vaccination in the

United States gradually ended the threat of smallpox to

both Indian and non-Indian in the East. By 1900, smallpox

epidemics in North America were both few and mild, and in

1979, modern medical teams wrote the epitaph for smallpox,

hopefully for good.

Unfortunately, neither Europeans nor Iroquoians had the

medical technology capable of treating smallpox in the

1600s, since vaccines did not exist anywhere until the

time of Jenner. Even variolation, a controversial early

preventive medicine, was not used in North America until

the 1721 epidemic(Winslow 1974). The Iroquois and Huron

naturally responded to smallpox with a variety of tradi­

tional medical therapies, all of which failed. The Iro­

quoians were quite successful in treating most traditional

ailments and utilized some fairly sophisticated psychother­

apeutic techniques. They were certainly not unique in their

inability to treat smallpox.

44

CHAPTER THREE -- IROQUOIAN HEALING AND HEALTH CARE

Despite the general disdain with which Iroquoian

medical practitioners were described by writers of the

seventeenth century, there is reason to believe that these

native healers were equal if not superior to colonial doc­

tors in North America. Jesuit writers took particular

offense to the "heathen" shamanistic rites of the Iroquois

and Huron, since these customs both represented and legit­

imized the Indians' allegedly false belief system. Ironi­

cally, medicine in England as well as in the colonial

Northeast was not yet a distinct profession but was often

practised as a side line by the clergy, who were among the

best educated people in Europe(Woodward 1932:1183). The

same was true of the French Jesuits who tried to convert,

and at times heal the Huron and Iroquois. Not until the

mid-eighteenth century were there more than a handful of

European medical specialists in colonial America, and

these early doctors had little more healing skill than did

the Indian healer.

The Iroquois and Huron of the seventeenth century be­

lieved in three basic sources of disease: 1) natural injur­

ies, such as common fevers, wounds and fractures; 2) sor­

cery or witchcraft, a major feature of which is the prac­

tise of object intrusion and object extraction; and

45

J) mental or physical stress attributed to unfulfilled

subconscious desires usually suggested in a dream(JR 33:

199; Tooker 1964:82-84; Wallace 1969:62). This etiological

system emphasized the power of witchcraft and the interpre­

tation of dreams and was shared by Iroquoians in general

and by other northeastern Indian groups, including the

St. Lawrence Algonkins and Algonquians of New England.

According to Fenton(l941:507),

The seventeenth century Huron and Iroquois distin­

guished among them shamans who cast and removed

spells, clairvoyants who diagnosed disease or

foretold weather and future events or recovered

lost objects, and herbalists or apothecaries who

administered remedies. Frequently, several roles

were combined in a single individual.

Thus, unlike many other Amerindian cultures, Iroquoian

shamans and sorcerers were not necessarily different indiv­

iduals. Sagard(l935:193), describing the multi-talented

nature of Huron healers in 1624, wrote that:

(Huron healers) were great magic workers, great

soothsayers and devil raisers ••• They perform the

functions of physicians and surgeons, and always·

carry with them a bag full of herbs and drugs, to

doctor the sick. They also have an apothecary,

46

cheap enough .... who trails after them with his

drugs, and the tortoise shell which is used in

their incantations •• &.

Here the Huron shaman apparently did administer some herbal

remedies to patients as needed, but it must haYe been a.

secondary aetivi ty compared to sorcery and divinatic.:n .•

The Huron also had separate herbal specialists(apothecar~

ies) who assisted the shaman with "drugs and tortoise

shell 111 -·- that is •. in both a medical and ceremonial capa-

city.

Like the Huron healer, the Iroquois shaman usually \'las

gifted with several quasi-magical powers such as object

extraction, dream interpretation and various kinds of

clairvoyance. Judging from .Lafitau's observations of

Iroquois life in the late 1600's{in Morgan 1904:285, Appen-·

dix B), the major differentiation in their healers was

between shamans and herbal curers, but neither apr1ea.r to

~ave been mutually exclusive categories.

For purely physical distress, sweat house' ther;:tpy wa.s a

.favorite treatment oi' the Iroquois and Huron and was common

throughout the Eastern Woodlands cultural_ .area(Fenton 1941:

413). Sweating might accompany other curing procedures or

non-healing rituals such as pr~~parations .f'or the hunt.

Indian sweat houses were built adjacent to a river and, in

principle, closely resembled a modern sauna or steam room.

Water was poured over hot stones to produce steam in the

sweat house. Indians would sit inside until they worked

up a good sweat, then would plunge into the nearby river,

thereby expelling, in their view, "noxious humors." Sing­

ing, drumming and other noisemaking accompanied the sweat­

ing and, in the Iroquoian's mind, ensured the healing power

of the treatment(Kenton, ed.l898;1:8,115; Sagard 1935:197-

198).

Iroquoians firmly believed in the power o.f the shaman

to inflict and cure mystical ailments, which were usually

symbolized by a foreign object or "evil spirit" which the

healer removed through many incantations and gestures.

Colonial writers of the seventeenth century have recorded

numerous examples of object extraction rituals(Kenton, ed.

1898:1:45-47,114; Jameson, ed.l909:145-146,152-153; Sagard

1935:193). Though viewed disdainfully as "jugglery" or

communion with the devil by ethnocentric reporters like

Champlain, Sagard, and LeJeune, Iroquoian sorcery seems to

fit a world-wide behavioral pattern known as object intru­

sion and object extraction(Cf. Whiting, in Landy 1977:214-

215) 0

Characteristically, such healing rituals were seen as

spectacular displays by the pious and rather staid European

observors. Sagard(l935:193) described a Huron healing

ritual in 1624:

48

(the shaman)calls upon his demon, blows upon the

place where the pain is, makes incisions, sucks

out the corrupt blood and applies all the rest of

his devices, never forgetting to order feasts and

~usement as a preliminary.

Singing, chanting, music, dancing, and generally frenzied

behavior by the participants characterized these rites

(Sagard 1935:201-203). Object extraction by similar means

was recorded among the Montagnais in 1616 and Oneida in

1635(Kenton, ed.l898:1:47; Jameson, ed.l909:177). Accord­

ing to a Dutch colonist in 1644, the Mohawks attributed

some sicknesses to the fact that "the Devil sits in their

body, or in the sore places, and bites them there"(Jameson,

ed.l909:177). Amid singing by the women and the rattling

of the turtle shell by the men, the "Devil" was exorcised

from the victim's body(Jameson, ed.l909:152-153). It

should be noted that these objects extraction rituals, if

held during smallpox epidemics, would surely have spread

the disease to any or all of the participants.

The chief diagnostic function of the Iroquoian shaman

was to interpret the dreams of the psychologically troubled.

Such psychic reportedly originated:

••• in the mind of the patient himself, which

desires some thing and will vex the body of the

sick man until it possesses the thing desired.

For they think that there are in every man certain

inborn desires, often unknown to themselves, upon

which the happiness of individuals depends. For

the purpose of ascertaining desires and innate

appetites of this character, they summon sooth­

sayers •••• (JR 1:159,161).

Once the unfulfilled "dream wish" was revealed by the

shaman, he or she would then prescribe, often guided by a

dre·a.m of his own, the proper ritual for relieving the

ailment.

Anthropologists(Wallace 1969:62-63) now recognize that

the seventeenth century Iroquois and Huron had attained a

degree of psychoanalytical sophistication that was superior

to that of most educated contemporary Europeans. The Iro­

quois' use of dream interpretations to determine what sub­

conscious desire should be satisfied to effect a cure calls

to mind the work of Freud and his associates in the late

nineteenth century.

They recognized conscious and unconscious parts of

the mind. They knew the great force of unconscious

desires, were aware that the frustration of these

desires could cause mental and physical(psychosomatic)

illness. They understood that these desires were ex­

pressed in a symbolic form, by dreams, but that the

individual could not always properly interpret these

50

dreams himself. They had noted the distinction

between the manifest and latent content of dreams,

and employed what sounds like the technique of free

association to uncover the latent meaning. And

they considered that the best method for the relief

of psychic and psychosomatic distress was to give

the repressed desire satisfaction, either directly

or symbolically(Wallace 1969:63; see also JR 39:17-19).

It is difficult to determine how important the role of

apothecary was compared to that of shaman in Iroquoian

healing systems. Evidently, Montagnais shamans(called

autmoins) in 1616 were powerful enough to demand "many and

valuable presents" in exchange for their medical services

(Kenton, ed.l898:1:47). Similarly, Iroquois and Huron

shamans observed by Champlain, Sagard, and LeJeune ordered

that feasts be held prior to the healing session(Grant, ed.

1907:322; Sagard 1935:193; JR 15:179; 17:119). These

"curing banquets" were sponsored by the family of the sick

person. The family usually gave separate gifts directly to

the shaman. As to the role of apothecary, their services

were supposedly bought·"cheap enough" by Hurons.

Despite what Fenton(l941:503-504) has term9d "fear and

cultural conservatism and perhaps lack of interest" regard­

ing the use of medicinal plants, Iroquoian herbology was

not ignored as a healing art in the early 1600s. Sagard

51

(1935sl95) listed three medicinal plants, identified by

Wrong as wild sarsaparilla, water-hemlock, and Indian

turnip. By 1642, the Dutch at Fort Orange had added a

number of Iroquois medicinal herbs to their materia medica

(Jameson, ed.l909:298), including sassafras and snake root.

Sassafras was known by the Iroquois as "universal plant"

and its flowers, leaves, and berries were used to treat

ailments and wounds of all kinds(Kenton, ed.l898:2:532;

Beauchamp 1902:93).

When most of Cartier's crew of 110 became incapacitated

with scurvy at the Indian village of Stadacone in 1536, a

Laurentian Iroquois(see the following chapter) showed the

French an effective herbal remedy for the disease, which

had already killed 25 sailors(Burrage, ed~l906:73-76;

Grant, ed.l907:53; Fenton 1941:506; Morison 1971:419).

Relief was provided by a decoction of the bark and needles

of hemlock{Tsuga canadensis), white pine(Pinus strubus L.),

sassafras(S. albinum), or arborvitae. Cartier wrote that

this decoction also had cured cases of venereal disease

among his crew.

With the arrival of large numbers of European colonists

in the Northeast after 1620, a long standing practise of

botanical exchange between whites and Indians began. The

use of herbal medicine was an ancient tradition in Europe,

and colonists were eager to learn of medicinal plants used

by northeastern Indians. As Europeans learned of Iroquoian

52

herbal remedies, they started to trade for plants and herbs

such as sassafras, maidenhair fern, and ginseng in large

quantities(Fenton 1941:515-521). Among other uses, sassa­

fras was used as a blood purifier and as a remedy for

venereal disease. Maidenhair fern was recommended by

Mohawk and Seneca midwives for women's disorders and labor

pains. Ginseng, recognized by the Mohawk as an "ordinary

remedy, .. was highly prized by European traders who knew of

its reputation as an efficacious healing drug in China.

The Iroquois reportedly also had a powerful herbal anti­

dote for rattlesnake bites. The Seneca called this plant

snake root, but there still is some debate on the actual

plant species involved(Fenton 1941:521). Iroquois herbal­

ists also used hemlock in remedies for boils and venereal

disease in the mid-nineteenth century.

According to a Dutch writer, the above five plants were

used by the Iroquois for medicinal purposes in 1650, in

addition to at least JO other plants, including laurel,

violet, wild indigo, Solomon's seal, dragon's blood, wild

leek, priest's shoe, polypody, mallow, blue flag, agrimony,

and prickly pear(Jameson, ed. 1909:298; Fenton 1941:515).

Fenton lists over 80 medicinal plants utilized by the Iro­

quois, only one-fourth of which were added to their materia

medica after contact(Fenton 1941:523-526; see also Beau­

champ 1902; Stone 1932; Vogel 1970). Thus, Iroquois herb­

ology, whether administered by shaman or apothecary, has

53

made significant contributions to the general well-being

of the people, and modern herbalists have been encouraged

to preserve this ethnobotanical lore.

Using herbal applications to bandages and poultices,

the seventeenth century Iroquois reportedly effected many

miraculous cures of war wounds, sores, bruises, dislocations

and fractures(Fenton 1941:511-512). The Wenro were said to

possess great skill at extracting arrowheads and curing the

wound itself(JR 17:213). Iroquois healers learned early to

remove bullets as well(JR 49:121).

Like the shaman, the Iroquoian herbalist always perform­

ed his treatments within the constraints of prescribed rit­

ual and taboo. Indeed, ritual seemed to be the common

denominator of all Iroquoian healing techniques. Among the

war-related ceremonies witnessed by Jesuits in 1657 was an

annual winter rite in which the strength of the shaman's

drugs used in dressing war wounds was increased symbolical­

ly by incantations and dancing(JR 42:173). Songs, in part­

icular, accompanied all forms of Iroquoian healing, from

object extraction to sweating.

Set in opposition to the unchanging social proscrip­

tions inherent in Iroquois life was the frenzied, often

crazed behavior exhibited by the healer, his assistants,

and other participants in the healing ritual. One such

ritual was the Honnonouaroria, or Iroquois Dream Festival,

a dance and mock war exercise held every winter(Tooker

54

1964:110-114). The festival represented a wholesale exer­

cise in dream fulfillment in which the entire village took

part. The Jesuit Jean deQuens witnessed the Dream Festival

in 1656 and described the general behavior as follows:

••• men, women, and children, running like maniacs

through the (village) streets and cabins ••• some •••

run thus half-naked through all the cabins, but

others are mischievous ••• Others march about in com­

panies and perform dances with contortions of body

that resemble of men possessed(JR 42:151-155).

The mischief witnessed included people splashing water

about, strewing ashes and coals around, breaking household

belongings and generally wreaking havoc throughout the

village, according to European writers. The Dutch wit­

nessed similar behavior in summer rituals in southern New

York state(then New Netherlands) in 1626:

In the month of August a universal torment seizes

them, so that they run like men possessed, regarding

neither hedges nor ditches, and like mad dogs rest­

ing not till exhausted(Jameson, ed.l909:85-86).

The general purpose of the Honnonouaroria ritual was the

acting out of the dreams of all people in the.village.

In effect, the Dream Festival gave the Iroquois people an

opportunity to act out their dreams and fantasies, to give

55

vent to their collective joys and frustrations in a cultur­

ally sanctioned psychodrama, which generally promoted

group mental health.

This Iroquois ritual of turning the village topsy-turvy

perhaps was closely related to a similar Huron ceremony

observed by Sagard in 1624(Sagard 1935:20)). The Dream

Festival tradition could have been imported to the Five

Nations by Huron refugees who joined the confederacy in the

1650s or may have been a regional variation of the "univer­

sal torment" described in the annals of New Netherlands.

Whatever the origin or cause, "running like maniacs through

the streets" seems to serve as a needed psychological re­

lease from conflicts and tensions pent up in a changing

society like that of the mid-seventeenth century Iroquois.

The early colonial writers, though dubious of the effi­

cacy of the aboriginal healing arts, nonetheless marvelled

at the physical health and well-being of the Iroquois in

the early postcontact period. Still, the Iroquois were not

completely free of chronic diseases prior to contact with

Europeans. Common ailments were digestive problems, rheu­

matism, neuralgia, pleurisy, pneumonia, conjunctivitis,

asthma, and anemia(Fenton 1941:509). War wounds, disloca­

tions, and fractures also were prevalent. It is not known

if childhood diseases were present among them before 1620.

Until the arrival of Old World infections in the Northeast,

traditional Iroquois healing therapies were more than ade-

56

quate for maintaining the good health of the group.

Iroquoian shamans and herbalists did not always meet

with success in their healing rituals. Usually, the pat­

ient would either know a natural remedy, or dream that his

soul had some ungratified desire or that he was under the

evil spell of a sorcerer(Tooker 1964:83; JR 33:219). When

patients did not respond to traditional treatments, the

healer might declare that the illness was untreatable and/

or terminal and the patient would be left to die. Some­

times Iroquoian healing rituals hastened the death of the

seriously ill. Champlain wrote that Iroquois healing rit­

ual "does nothing for those that are dangerously ill and

reduced by weakness, but causes their death rather than

their cure"(Grant, ed.l907:325). Often in severe cases,

diagnosticians would .. deny the possibility of ascertaining

what the patient desires; then ••• bewail him ••• and cause the

relatives to put him out of the way"(JR 1:259,261). Cauc•

asians often ignorantly attributed this kind of behavior

either to the Iroquoians' intrinsically savage nature or to

a lack of interest in medicine, but it was not an uncommon

practise among many North American Indian tribes to forsake

those that were elderly or seriously ill in order to better

feed the rest of the group during stressful periods.

With the arrival of white settlers in New England, New

Netherlands, and New France, there also came microbial in­

fections from the Old World, diseases for which the Iroquois

57

and Huron were in no way prepared. Although the Iroquoian

healers were familiar with treating chills and fever, and

some Amerindian tribes claimed to have had herbal treatments

for smallpox(Heagerty 1928:63; Stone 1932:58), nothing

short of biological immunity could have prevented the

disease from spreading through native populations. Because

of the factors outlined above{pp. 41-43), the smallpox

epidemics of the seventeenth century swept through much of

the Iroquois lands and through all of Huronia, profoundly

affecting the fate of both nations. To see one's people

killed by the hundreds{in some cases thousands) by a maim­

ing disease which seemed to spare most whites{actually only

those with immunity) would have been a severe test for any

Amerindian population. In a sense, the Huron failed this

test, and the Five Nations passed, at least for a time.

The survival of the Five Iroquois Nations in the 1600s

was due primarily to their military successes against enemy

tribes, which will be discussed next in Chapter Four, but

was also aided by the their comparatively strong resistance

to smallpox, which is the subject of Chapter Five.

58

CHAPTER FOUR -- IROQUOIAN POLITICAL ORIGINS AND THE IROQUOIS WARS

The establishment of the Iroquois confederacy has been

a much discussed subject in American ethnographies. Oral

traditions, some of which are conflicting, indicate that

the League was founded between 1400 and 1600 A.D.(Tooker

1978:418-422; Cf. Morgan 1904:3-9; Hunt 1940:66). Hewitt

(19f5:J22) argued that the founding date was closer to

1600. According to tribal legend, the function of the

League was mainly defensive. Within the confederacy, the

peaceful act of paying wampum to an injured party replaced

blood feuding which previously had led to a state of perpet­

ual warfare among all the Iroquoian peoples and many of

their Algonquian neighbors. By declaring a moratorium on

warfare within the League, each of the Iroquois nations

freed themselves to act as one in military campaigns

against external enemies. However ancient its origins,

the Iroquois League had no common policy for dealing with

their neighbors and did not become a true force in the

Northeast until 1642(Hunt 1940:14; Trigger 1976:98). In

that year, the two most powerful Iroquois nations, the

Seneca and Mohawk, joined together to escalate their at­

tacks on the opposing Huron-Algonkin military alliance.

Iroquois legends say that the League was the product

of the splitting and regrouping of eight original Iroquois

59

"tribes" or clans into the Five Nations of the seventeenth

century(Morgan 1907:81). In theory, each of the Iroquois

Nations was united to the rest by "tribal" ties cross-

cutting the confederacy. It is difficult to envision the

actual split and reamalgamation of Iroquois tribes or clans

into the modern Five Nations. More likely, this tradition­

al explanation for the Iroquois League was of symbolic im­

port rather than factual, perhaps serving as a reminder of

the internal solidarity which the League represented. In

addition, this explanation might reflect the merging of

small Iroquois villages into large, palisaded towns in the

late prehistoric period{Tuck 1978:326-327). In reality,

with a system of marriage exogamy and matrilocal residence,

the Iroquois League was united by ties of sisterhood within

tha clan, and by brotherhood among the clans.

Certainly the need for a peacekeeping system among

neighboring Iroquoian peoples was quite old in the North­

east. Archaeological evidence indicates that intensive

warfare may have developed among Iroquoians as early as

1200 A.D. (Whallon 1968:242). Fortified village sites with

headless bodies and detatched skulls have been found in

fourteenth century sites in southern and upstate New York 4

(Trigger 1976:144-155). In general, we see an increase in

the size of both Iroquoian villages and residential units,

and a trend toward more defensible sites throughout the

fourteenth century(Trigger 1976:148-153). Excavations in

60

the Onondaga subarea of New York indicate that a model of

village fusion and convergence, probably for reasons of

internal defense, may be applicable for the Iroquois as a

whole(Tuck 1978:326). By the late sixteenth century,

Iroquoian-speaking peoples were spread out in a series of

tribal clusters, each with several thousand people living

in a few large, fortified villages. These tribal clusters

were separated by extensive tracts of hunting and fishing

territory(Trigger 1976:344). The five tribal clusters

Iroquois, Huron-Tionnontate, Neutral-Wenro, Erie, and

Susquehannock -- were all self-sufficient economic units

and except for the Huron, long distance trade was of minor

importance.

Though nominally at peace internally, the Iroquois

nations were constantly at war with their neighbors from

the time of Champlain until about 1680. With the coming of

Europeans and their trade goods, the Iroquois military

format of small raiding parties escalated into major battles

with up to 1800 Iroquois warriors laying seige to and des­

troying major towns of the Huron, Neutral Nation, and Erie.

Mortality in war increased markedly as firearms began to

replace the traditional bow and arrow and war club in Iro­

quoian battles and war parties increased in size.

Fenton(l940:17J,l99) and Hewitt(l915:322) agree that

the Iroquois League had not been established when Cartier

explored the St. Lawrence River and visited two villages

61

o'£ the so-called Laurentian Iroquois in 1535. This was the

.first recorded contact between Iroquoians(known from the

brie'£ dictionary published by Cartier) and Europeans in

the Northeast. Wintering at the palisaded Indian village

of Stadacone near modern Quebec, Cartier learned from his

hosts that considerable intertribal hostilities existed in

the area, not only between the river Indians and those from

the interior but also among the river groups themselves.

The people of Stadacone and Hochelaga, a second Laurentian

village visited by Cartier on Montreal Island, sought to

outdo each other by striking up an exclusive trading alli­

ance with the French captain. Cartier also learned that

both villages were enemies with and fearful of a powerful

Indian group living a month's journey upriver from Hoche­

laga(Burrage ed. 1906; Morison 1971). The river Indians

told Cartier that these people, who may have been either

the Iroquois or Huron, were constantly plagued by internal

warfare. If this group was the Iroquois, they probably

were in a pre-confederacy political state, judging from

the implied lack of internal peace.

From the time of Champlain's voyage in 1608 until 1642,

the League of the Iroquois was on the defensive militarily

against the more powerful alliance of Hurons, Montagnais,

and St. Lawrence Algonkins. Champlain found that these

latter two groups had replaced the Laurentian Iroquois that

Cartier had seen in 1535. The Laurentian Iroquois had

62

apparently either died off or withdrawn westward to be

incorporated by the Iroquois or Huron(Fenton 1940:174-177).

Aware that the Algonkins had recently suffered a deci­

sive defeat at the hands of the Five Nations in 1603{Colden

1922:2-4), Champlain joined forces with the Algonkins and

later with the Montagnais and Huron, in a series· of success­

ful retaliatory raids against the Iroquois(Grant, ed.l907)

between 1609 and 1615. By supplying a few of the Indians

with firearms, Champlain helped to turn the tide in these

early battles. In one campaign, Champlain and 200 Indians

defeated a band of 100 Iroquois, killing several and taking

15 prisoners. In another battle, 12 Iroquois were captured

and subsequently tortured(Grant, ed.l907:165,180-185).

These figures suggest that warfare in the Northeast was at

that time small-scale compared to later campaigns. Nominal

revenge, effected by a few deaths and the ritual torture of

prisoners, rather than a lot of killing, typically was the

purpose of such battles.

In 1624, Sagard(l935:152) wrote that Huron war parties

of 500 warriors each were sweeping across Iroquois terri­

tory in an extended raid and that such raids occurred on an

annual basis. Like Champlain, Sagard witnessed the ritual

torture of Iroquois war captives, but he gave no figures

on how many prisoners had been taken that year. Apparently

the Iroquois were not safe from the Huron even in their

own lands.

63

A rare victory for the Iroquois during this period of

solid Huron domination occurred in 1634. That spring an

aborted attack by a band of 500 Hurons on a Seneca village

resulted in the death of 200 Huron warriors and the capture

of an additional 100 (Trigger 1976:489; JR 7:213-215; 8:69,

139,149,151).

Despite this defeat coupled with the smallpox outbreaks

in Huronia in the 1630s, the Huron did not consider the

Iroquois to be a serious threat to their regional trade

empire. In 1637, a Huron war party captured 124 Iroquois

and tortured and burned to death all but 12(Hunt 1940:73).

In a series of raids the following year, Huron war parties

killed about 20 Iroquois and took 100 captives, presumably

to be tortured. Forty two Iroquois were captured by the

Huron in other raids in the years 1637 and 1638(Trigger

1976:58). Perhaps those raids gave the Hurons some measure

of revenge for the 1634 disaster. Meanwhile, the St. Law­

rence Algonkins continued to harass the Iroquois in smaller

raids and they killed 28 and captured five Iroquois in 1638

(Trigger 1976:552).

This was to be the last hurrah for both the Hurons and

Algonkins against the Five Nations. In 1641, the Mohawks

received their first guns in trade from the Dutch and by

1643, they had ammassed 300 of the slow-firing arquebuses

(Trigger 1976:631; JR 21:35-37). In 1642, the Mohawks

also actively began to coordinate their military actions

64

with Seneca war parties. Both actions radically altered

the balance of Indian military power in the Northeast.

With their newly acquired weaponry, Mohawk and Seneca

raiding parties increased on the St. Lawrence River and

for the first time, Huron and Algonkin trading convoys,

canoe-bound for Quebec, were not safe from Iroquois snipers

(Trigger 1976:604-605).

European firearms used by Iroquoians did have some

psy~hological impact on those unfamiliar with their use,

but superior firepower was probably not the most decisive

factor in the Iroquois Wars. The primitive gun types

available to the seventeenth century Iroquois -- the

matchlock, arquebus, and musket -- were so difficult to

reload that an opponent could fire off several arrows

between the sniper's shots. The use of these early fire­

arms did have some effect upon Iroquois warfare, however.

Otterbein(l964:59) argues that Iroquois warriors armed

with guns were more mobile and capable of engaging in long

distance warfare. Traditional Iroquois warriors armed

with the bow wore a kind of crude armor made with slats of

wood(Trigger 1976:70), which protected the wearer from

arrows, but which considerably hindered his movements.

Thus, traditional raiding parties did not venture far from

home and there were few fatalities in battle. Without

armor, Iroquois snipers gained mobility and often the

element of surprise but also became more vulnerable

65

' themselves to arrows or bullets.

Naturally, all Iroquois warriors in a given party were

n.ot armed with guns: perhaps half carried bows and arrows

for shooting at close range. Certainly the arquebus did

have its advantages at times. When functioning properly,

which was often easier said than done, the arquebus could

be fired farther and more accurately than most Indian arch­

ers could shoot. At any rate, the greatest advantage that

an arquebus or musket carried over the bow and arrow was

its superior killing power. Also, it has been suggested

that arquebuses were most effective for hunting game, thus

enabling a war party to sustain itself longer while fight­

ing away from home(Richard 0. Clemmer, personal communica­

tion). In actual battles, the ultimate Iroquois successes

were probably more the result of strategy, greater numbers

(given the collaboration of several Iroquois nations), and

staying power than superior firepower.

With increased raiding by the Mohawks and Senecas on

Huron traders in the early 1640s, the latter's fears of a

major Iroquois attack grew. The first known invasion of

Huron territory, probably by a Seneca war party, occurred

in 1642 when an Arendaronon village was burned and looted

(Trigger 1976:660-661: 1978:355). In the same year, the

Iroquois defeated a band of 100 Huron warriors and killed

every man. In a 1643 raid, the Iroquois killed an unknown

number, and captured 100 Hurons(Trigger 1976:661; JR 28:45;

66

2?:65). Already weakened by serious factionalism between

Christianized and traditional Hurons(Trigger 1976:748-750),

the Huron confederacy clearly was headed for destruction

in 1648.

1In the next two years, Huron fears came to pass in a

big way as a war party of 1000 Senecas and Mohawks swept in

and burned four Huron villages in a decisive series of

raids. At least 2,000 Hurons were killed outright in this

first attack and many thousands more fled the remaining

villages by the end of 1649 to seek refuge with the Tionnon­

tate, Neutrals, or Erie. Several hundred Huron were taken

prisoner in 1648 and 1649, and several times that many

eventually surrendered to the Iroquois over the next

decade. About 3,000 Huron refugees withdrew to spend the

winter of 1649-1650 on Christian Island in Georgia Bay

(Trigger 1976:751-784). Only 600 Hurons were found there

the following spring. According to Trigger(l976:789), no

more than 500 of the Hurons who fled to the surrounding

Iroquoian nations survived to 1650. Of the J,OOO Christian

Island refugees, 2,400 either starved to death over the

winter or fled to nearby tribes, and most of these latter

survivors were finally. captured or killed in subsequent

raids. In less than two years, the once inviolate Huron

territory was invaded, the people driven from their homes,

many of whom later became "Iroquois" through adoption, and

the confederacy quickly eradicated as a political force

67

in the Northeast.

In 1649, after the Iroquois had routed the Huron from

their villages, they destroyed the Tionnontate nation in

one major battle(Parker 1926:42-43). The Tionnontate had

harbored Huron refugees and their warriors attempted to

challenge the Seneca-Mohawk war parties returning from

Huronia. The Iroquois, however, eluded the Tionnontate

and burned the latter's main village and captured all of

th~ir women and children. The Tionnontate men later were

ambushed by the Iroquois and, having seen their village

in ruins, put up little resistance. A few Tionnontate

survivors fled west across Lake Huron while the rest sub­

mitted to captivity.

The Iroquois' next adversary was the Neutral Nation,

which had taken in several hundred Huron refugees, includ­

ing all of the surviving Tahontaenrat tribe(Trigger 1978:

354). Ostensibly because of anti-Iroquois sentiment

stirred up by these Hurons, 1,000 Iroquois warriors attack­

ed and destroyed one of the larger Neutral villages in 1650

(Trigger 1976:791; JR 36:119,121). Two hundred Iroquois

were killed or captured in the Neutral counterattack, but

the following winter, 1,200 Iroquois returned to destroy

the last major Neutral village. The Tahontaenrat Huron

surrendered as a group to the Iroquois and settled among

the Seneca in a town of their own, to be joined later by

Arendaronon Huron, Neutrals and other Iroquoian survivors

68

{Trigger 1978:355). Like the Huron, the Neutral Nation

was dispersed and thereby eliminated as a political rival.

Besides harboring Huron refugees, the Erie tribe was a

long-time trading partner with the Susquehannock nation and

together these two groups had kept the Seneca from hunting

and raiding in the Ohio Valley. In 1654, a force of 1,500

Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas attacked the Erie. Although

the Erie force of 2,000 to J,OOO warriors was much larger

th~n that of the Iroquois, the latter prevailed after three

battles and quickly dispersed the Erie(Trigger 1976:795;

JR 43:179,181). Some Erie fled south toward Chesapeake

Bay. Again, some Erie survivors were taken back by the

Iroquois, some of whom were tortured and executed. The

Five Nations, however, eventually adopted a large block of

Erie survivors. Thus, the northern and western border

regions of the Iroquois were nearly depopulated and all

barriers to hunting and raiding in those directions were

removed.

The Susquehannock withstood attacks in 1651 and 1653

before finally submitting to the Iroquois in 1675(Parker

1926:49-50; Hunt 1940). In'l67J, the Mahican tribe, an

Algonquian group with whom the Mohawks had been warring

since the early 1600s, finally were subdued, By 1675, the

League's eastern and southern borders were cleared of hos­

tile tribes, and although increased numbers of colonial

settlers soon stepped in to occupy much of the vacated

lands, intertribal warfare ceased in the Northeast for the

fi-rst time since Champlain.

Much has been said and written about the causes and

consequences of the Iroquois Wars(Hunt 1940; Otterbein 1964;

Trigger 1976; 1978). Hunt(l940:54) favors an economic ex­

planation for these wars: namely, that the Iroquois had

depleted the beaver supply in their own lands and so they

attacked the Huron to obtain all of the latter's pelts.

The ernie explanation seems to be that each individual cam­

paign was provoked by an alleged "injury" inflicted on the

Iroquois by another Iroquoian nation. The Iroquois consid­

ered actions such as past raids and killings or harboring

fugitives of dispersed tribes and refusing to give them up

to be a casus belli in the wars from 1648 to 1675. Thus,

according to the ernie view, the Iroquois war parties initi­

ally were little more than massive revenge squads. For

several reasons, after 1649, they went far beyond the

bounds of traditional retribution in their military

campaigns.

One of the factors behind these prolonged wars had to

be economic. The Iroquois did desire large amounts of

beaver pelts and, encouraged by their successes in raiding

Huron-Algonkin trading parties, the Seneca and Mohawk saw

the opportunity to seize all of the furs amassed by their

northern enemies. Evidently, the Iroquois decided that it

was easier to seize pelts in raids than to trade for them

?0

or catch the beaver themselves. Questioning why the Five

Nations neither reoccupied southern Ontario nor took ov~

the old Huron trade routes, Trigger(l978:353) believes that

the Iroquois were simply better warriors than traders. Of

course, the Mohawks needed to conduct trade with the Dutch

and English at Fort Orange(later Albany), but the Iroquois

confederacy as a whole apparently had no inclination to

conduct as much long-distance trade as in the old Huron­

Algonkin trading complex. Given the need for beaver pelts,

it was probably not difficult for the Seneca to induce the

Mohawk to join them in escalated raiding with the promise

of many furs as booty.

Parker(l926:25)suggests an additional socio-political

explanation for the enmity between the seventeenth century

Iroquois and Huron:

••• the Huron were jealous of the rising power of the

confederated Iroquois, whom they considered a subord­

inate, defective and inferior people. The Huron

were willing, however, to ally themselves with outer­

nations, such as groups of the Algonkian, and use

them in fighting their own kinsfolk. To the Iroquois

this was a fatal and unforgivable transgression.

Once the Huron tribes had been defeated and dispersed,

the Seneca-Mohawk coalition acted swiftly to disperse the

remaining Iroquoian tribes in southern Ontario so that they

71

would be free to raid the Nipissing and Ottawa peoples to

the north in the future(Trigger 1978:354). Similarly, the

Iroquois campaigns against the Erie and Susquehannock

-nations ultimately opened up their western and southern

frontiers. The short term gain for the Iroquois in this i

outward push was great enough -- the accumulated furs of

the defeated tribes, which promised the return of many

trade goods -- but in the long run, the Five Nations also

gained added hunting territory, free access for raiding

more distant tribes, and perhaps most important of all,

a major boost to their much beleaguered population through

the massive adoption of war captives. This population in­

stability which threatened Iroquois and Iroquoians alike,

no doubt contributed greatly to the failure of the Iroquois

to physically expand into conquered lands.

For the tribal enemies of the Iroquois, these actions

brought terminal consequences. The territories of the

Huron, Tionnontate, Neutrals, Erie, Susquehannock, and a

few Algonquian groups were completely depopulated within a

30 year period. For the Iroquois, the wars brought three

consequences. First, the Iroquois suffered an especially

high mortality rate for men, which was compounded by the

overall mortality from epidemics. Secondly, with men away

from home on extended military campaigns, women began to

play greater roles in village management and tribal poli­

tics(Trigger 1976:356). Third, with the increased adoption

72

of surviving Iroquoian war captives, the resultant composi­

tion of the Iroquois nations became quite mixed in a rela­

tively short period of time. This adoptive pQlicy and the

concomitant demographic state of flux among the seventeenth

century Iroquois will be discussed next.

?3

CHAPTER FIVE THE DEMOGRAPHIC EFFECTS OF SMALLPOX AMONG THE IROQUOIS

The combined effects of warfare and epidemic diseases

in the seventeenth century were devastating to all of the

Iroquoian nations except for the Iroquois themselves.

On the following page, Table 3 documents the 86 percent

decline for the combined Iroquoian populations during the

100 year period. This reduction is comparable to the 87

percent decrease in New England Algonquian populations

during a similar period from 1610 to 1680(Cook 1973; 1976;

Clark 1978). However, there were remnants of nine New

England tribes that survived past 1700, while remnants of

only two Iroquoian tribes besides the Iroquois survived

the seventeenth century. From 1630 to 1700, the population

of the Five Nations declined about 40 percent, which seems

small only when compared to the estimated 97 to 100 percent

decline of all other Iroquoian nations. Other than 1,500

Hurons living in the vicinity of Quebec and in Michigan

(Wyandots)and about 200 Susquehannocks, there were no

other non-Iroquois Iroquoians.

The overall mortality which Table 3 represents is

broken down as follows -- deaths due to epidemics, warfare,

and natural causes. The latter category includes chronic

illness, traditional ailments, and accidental injuries.

Of course, many Iroquoians emigrated to Algonquian tribes

74

TABLE 3 - Population Changes Among Iroquoian Nations in the Seventeenth Century

16301 % % % cum 1640 deer 1660 deer 1680 deer 1700 deer Sources

Iroquois 20,000? 16,000 20? 14,000 13 10,000 29 12,000 40 Morgan 1904:227-228 Tooker 1978:421 Trigger 19?6:98

Huron 20,000- 9,000- 55- 500 98 800 -- 1,500 99 Heidenreich 1978: 30,000 10,000 70 369-370, Table 1

Tionnon- 8,000 2,000-tate 3,000 75 0 100 0 0 100 JR 19:127

Garrad and Heiden-reich 1978:395

Neutral 16,000? 12,000 25? 0 100 0 0 100 JR 20:103-105 Grant,ed.l907:304 White 1978:410

Erie 20,000? 14,.500 28? 1,000 93 600 40 0 100 Hodge 1907-10:431 JR 62:71 i

Wenro 1,600 600 63 0 100 0 0 100 Hodge 1907-10:934 JR 17:29

Susque- 8,000? 6,000 2.5? 2,.500 .58 .500 80 200 97 Jennings 1978:362 hannock

Total Iroquoian 93,600-Populatiopl08,600 57,100 tl-49 18,000 68 12,000 33 13,700 86

1-Figures for Iroquois, Neutral, Erie, and Susquehannock in 1630 are author's estimates.

....., \..1\

south and west of their old territories. Also, much of the

reduction in the populations of the Huron, Neutral, Erie,

and Susquehannock nations after 1640 is due to the absorp­

tion of large numbers of prisoners of war captured by the

Iroquois. Assuming that Iroquoian deaths from natural

causes remained constant during the century, the variables

related to this decline are disease mortality, mortality in

war, population movements out of the area, and prisoner

adoptions. Despite the relative paucity of data on disease

mortality for Iroquoians, we can estimate these figures in

most cases by reviewing the statistics on warfare-related

deaths and prisoner adoptions.

It should be noted that the 1630 figures for the Iro­

quois, Neutral Nation, Erie, and Susquehannock are the

author's estimates of the population sizes of these groups

prior to the introduction of smallpox in the Northeast in

16JJ. Since we know that smallpox afflicted all of these

people to some degree prior to 1640, I have assumed that

their population declined from 20 to JO percent during the

previous seven years. Given the known reduction of the

Huron, Tionnontate, and Wenro populations, as well as that

of the St. Lawrence Algonkin and Montagnais, at least 20

to JO percent of the other Iroquoian populations must have

died off in the same period. If this assumption is correct,

then the Huron-Tionnontate, Neutral-Wenro, Erie and Iro­

quois population clusters all ranged in size from 18,000

76

to 28,000 persons in 1630. It does not seem likely that

any group other than the Huron-Tionnontate exceeded 20,000

persons prior to 1630.

Although there were several major inter-Iroquoian

battles during the 1630s, the vast majority of Iroquoian

deaths during the decade were caused by introduced epidem­

ics. At most, only a few hundred of these deaths can be

attributed to warfare(see page 64). For the Huron alone,

at least 9,000 people must have died in smallpox epidemics

from 1634 to 1640. Complete mortality figures are not

available, but a guess of 9,000 deaths is not only reason­

able but probably is understated. Most early writers(Cham­

plain, Grant, ed.l907:314~ Sagard 1935:92; Heidenreich

1978:370)agree that the Huron population numbered about

30,000 prior to 1630, but Heidenreich(l978:369)argued

recently that the figure was closer to 20,000. Champlain,

Sagard et al. may have erred because they considered the

Huron and Tionnontate to be one group. An extensive Jesuit

census of Huron villages in 1640 indicated a 1640 popula­

tion of.9,000 to 10,000 persons{JR 17:223). Smallpox and

other "pestilential fevers" had plagued Huronia repeatedly

in the previous seven years and clearly was the primary·

reason for this sudden reduction in population. Warfare

was a small factor in the decline, but not to a significant

degree, since there were no recorded raids on Huronia in

those years.

7?

The Jesuits also took censuses of the populations of

the Neutral Nation in 1640 and Iroquois in 1643. Much of

the Iroquois' assumed 20% decline must have been due to

smallpox since, like the Huron, only at most 500 deaths

could have been attributed to warfare(see page 64). The

mortality rate suffered by the Five Nations in the 1630s

clearly was much less than for the Huron, 20 percent com­

pared to 55 percent, if the assumption of 20,000 Iroquois

in .1630 is correct. At any rate, suddenly the Iroquois

found themselves numerically superior to the Huron and

they were more than willing to exploit this edge in battle.

Furthermore, the Huron's traditional allies, the St. Law­

rence Algonkin and Montagnais, were so reduced by smallpox

that they were unable to assist the Huron in future warfare.

Between 1640 and 1660, Iroquoian population losses

were mainly the result of the Five Nations' campaign to

weaken, disperse, and/or incorporate their neighbors. To

be sure, there were brief outbreaks of smallpox among the

Iroquois in 1647 and 1656, but there is no evidence of

major waves of the disease as in the 1630s. Most of the

numerical decline of Iroquoian peoples from 1640 to 1660

is traceable to deaths in warfare, forced migrations, and

prisoner adoptions by the Iroquois. For example, in the

raids of 1648-1649 on Huronia, Iroquois warriors killed

at least 2,000 Hurons outright, captured perhaps another

2,000, and caused the remainder to flee their villages

78

for the ill-fated Christian Island refuge(Trigger 1976:

751-754,763-767; JR 34:99,123,125,133,135). Of the 3,000

surviving Hurons to reach Christian· Island, only 600 lived

through the first winter on the island(Trigger 1976:783-

784); the rest starved or fled to other tribes. By 1660, ' ;

the Iroquois had adopted and incorporated about 3,500 Hurons.

Some refugee groups, such as the remnant Arendaronon and

Tahontaenrat tribes, settled with the Iroquois in groups

of 500 to 1,000, enabling them to retain some cultural

integrity in their new environment(Trigger 1976:826).

For the Mohawk at least, Trigger(l976:805-806) attri-

butes this persistant campaign to track down and capture

or kill all Huron survivors to their:

long-term ambition to incorporate all of the Huron

who had come to Quebec into their own society, or

failing this, to kill them. This would rob the

French of allies who were skilled in guerilla-warfare

and would neutralize the desire of Huron prisoners

among the Iroquois to join relatives who were living

with.the French. It also provided a means by which

the Mohawk, who were hard-pressed by spiralling losses

from disease and warfare, could augment their numbers

(Emphasis mine; see also Fenton 1940:207).

Similarly, the Five Nations, after they had defeated

and dispersed the Neutrals(l651), Eries(l654)and Susquehan-

79

nocks(l675), relocated and incorporated several hundred

captives from each of the latter nations into the League.

An indeterminate number of Neutrals settled with the Seneca,

while others reportedly fled into the Michigan, Wisconsin,

and Ohio areas(Trigger 1978:355). Though not decisively

beaten until 1675, some 500 to 600 Susquehannocks, mostly

males, were captured by the Iroquois and were adopted as a

group after a 1652 battle(Jennings 1978:362). Finally,

the last Erie survivors, about 600 men, women, and children

who had been temporarily living in the area of Chesapeake

Bay, surrendered to the Iroquois in 1680(JR 62:71; White

1978:416). Thus, between 1648 and 1680, at least 5,000

(estimate based on 3,500 Hurons and 500 each of the Neutrals,

Eries, and Susquehannocks) surviving Iroquoians were adopted

into Iroquois families. Most of these additions were made

in the 1650s and 1670s, that is, roughly following the

first two waves of smallpox in the Northeast in the 1630s

and 166os.

Like the 1630s, the decade of the 1660s was a time in

which Iroquoian mortality from smallpox far exceeded that

caused by warfare. There was a hiatus in the large-scale

raids carried on by the Iroquois, because after 1656, they

had subdued and dispersed all but a few remnant Iroquoian

populations. By 1680, only 17 percent of all Iroquoians

were living outside of the Five Nations of the Iroquois.

During this peaceful period, smallpox repeatedly plagued

80

{

the Iroquois, particularly in 1664, when epidemics killed

more than 1,000 persons.

While the stepped-up program of adopting war captives

and incorporating them into the Iroquois social system may

have been a by-product of an escalated pattern of warfare,

it also was clearly related to the great stress on the

native population caused by disease mortality. Even with

the addition of 5,000 or more Iroquoian captives, the over­

all population of the Five Iroquois Nations dropped from

20,000 in 1630 to 10,000 in 1680, a 50 percent reduction

in 50 years.

The Iroquois responded to this stress by consciously

and imaginatively applying the traditional practise of

adopting prisoners of war into the confederacy on an unpre­

cedented scale(Trigger 1976:826). Although the Iroquoian

custom of torture and ritual execution is well known(see

pp. 28-29), the Huron and Iroquois were not averse to

sparing those prisoners of war who could be put to some

good use as an adopted captive.

There is some confusion in the literature over which

prisoners were the most desirable to adopt. Sagard(l935:

159)wrote that the Huron in 1624 usually would torture and

execute male captives, but that:

••• they make exception of the women, girls, and

children, seldom putting them to death, but saving

81

and keeping them for themselves or to make presents

of them to others, who have previously lost some of

their own in war and make much of these substitutes,

just as if they were actually their own children.

Although cognizant of this passage(since he cites other

statements from the same page in Sagard's journal), Trigger

(1969:47-48)disagrees:

Women and children who were captured were usually

tortured and killed on the spot. If they were taken

back to Huronia, it was to be adopted into Huron

fa.-·nilies to replace relatives who had been slain

by the Iroquois. Able-bodied men were rarely slain

at once, unless the Huron had captured too many of

them or found that they endangered their own secur­

ity(emphasis mine).

Regardless of whom they preferred to adopt, men, womentor

children, the Huron clearly considered adoption to be a

viable, albeit infrequent, alternative to the immediate

torture and execution of some prisoners.

Sagard's journal makes it clear that this adoptive

custom existed in Huronia prior to the period of demogra­

phic stress brought on by the epidemics of the 16JOs.

Despite their apparent differences, the above passages from

Sagard and Trigger agree that adopted prisoners frequently

82

were given to families that had lost members in war. Thus,

the adoption alternative was as much an outcome of Iroquoi­

an warfare as it was a means of alleviating the debilitat­

ing effects of wars.

Adoption did not, however, signify immediate accept­

ance into the Huron family. The captive gradually had to

win the respect of his new family, which was no easy task.

The captive knew that he would be tortured and killed if he

ever showed disloyalty to the Huron or displeased his new

family in any way(Trigger 1976:49). One test of the

Huron captive's loyalty was to send him to war against

his own people, but he would be made to do this only after

he had lived with the Huron for a year or so. Trigger(l969:

49) stresses that "happy adoptions" into the Huron confed­

eracy were "quite rare." Usually the adopted prisoner was

spared only for a short period of time before the Huron

tortured and killed him.

Similarly, the custom of adopting war captives to re­

place deceased tribal members existed in Iroquois culture

prior to the onset of the Iroquois Wars in 1648(Jameson, ed.

1909:179). According to Megapolensis, a Dutch colonial

writer, the 1644 Mohawks would "spare all (captive) child­

ren from ten to twelve years old, and all the women whom

they take in war, unless the women are very old, and then

they kill them too"(Jameson, ed.l909:175). This seems to

agree well with Sagard's observations noted above.

83

There were other similarities in the traditional

treatment of prisoners by the Iroquois and Huron. Captives

adopted by the Five Nations were given a grace period of

about one year to please their adoptive family and demon­

strate their loyalty to the Iroquois. At almost any time ' '

aft~r adoption, the captive could be killed, even "at the

whim of their sponsors"(Parker 1926:50). Frequently, the

prisoner was formally adopted and treated well for days or

even weeks before being suddenly tortured and put to death

(JR 43:193; Wallace 1969:31-32). Because of this power to

spare or kill adopted prisoners, high-ranking Iroquois and

Huron families often vied for the privilege of making the

adoptions(Trigger 1969:49).

The assimilation of captives into both the Iroquois

and Huron confederacies was expedited not only by the

threat of torture and death, but also by the promise of

strong positive rewards for acquiescence(Trigger 1976:827).

Once the adopted captive had proved conclusively that he

was loyal, he might take over the name, title, and social

privileges of the individual replaced(Trigger 1969:49), or

even become chief(Parker 1926:51).

Since the important role of Iroquois women in village

and tribal affairs seems to grow out of this half-century

of dramatic demographic change, it is not unlikely that

women hadthechief responsiblity of acculturating these

captives into Iroquois society(Trigger 1976:827). Accord-

ing to Wallace(l969:29), Iroquois women were "entitled to

demand publicly that a murdered kinsman or kinswoman be

replaced by a captive from a non-Iroquois tribe, and her

male relatives .•• were morally obligated ••• to secure cap­

tives •••• " The most important matrons of the Iroquois

clans must have had some power to declare that certain

prisoners should live or die. Such powers of acculturation

no doubt contributed to the rise of women in the socio-pol­

itical structure of the Iroquois League in the late 1600s.

The main difference between the adoptive customs of

the Iroquois and Huron was one of degree. In the period of

small raids and battles with few casualties, successful

adoptions probably were rare, and the adopting families

could afford to discriminate over prisoners very carefully.

However, as the balance of Indian military power swung

heavily to the side of the Iroquois in the 1640s, the Iro­

quois found themselves with hundreds of displaced war

captives on their hands at any one time. Certainly it was

cumbersome and even undesirable to torture and execute a

large number of prisoners at one time. Because of popula­

tion losses suffered in the epidemics of the 1630s, after

1640 the Iroquois, especially the Mohawks, were eager to

adopt large numbers of captives in order to replenish their

fading numbers. This need clearly did not exist before the

introduction of smallpox to the Northeast. The Huron and

many other northeastern tribes had a similar need, of course,

85

but due to the decisive military triumphs of the Iroquois,

this expansion in adoptive policy was not possible for the

other Iroquoian nations. As the Iroquois Wars continued,

so did the mortality rate for Iroquois men and the concomi­

tant· need for replenishing the population.

The increased number of prisoner adoptions by the

Iroquois was reflected by certain changes in the treatment

of adoptees. Parker(l926:5l)writes, "Captives were not

asked to fight against their own people, but were expected

to volunteer on war parties any other nation." One excep­

tion to this was a group of six Hurons who were adopted by

the Iroquois and who joined a raiding party against a Huron

trading convoy in 1642(Trigger 1976:615).

The Iroquois made additional adjustments to accomodate

these numerous adoptees. During the Iroquois Wars, the Five

Nations often encouraged their Iroquoian enemies to join

them rather than suffer defeat. The Huron contingent com­

prised of the united Arendaronon and Tahontaenrat refugees

surrendered after such a plea and voluntarily resettled as

a group among the Seneca in· the town of Gandougarae. They

were joined by a few Neutral, Erie, and other non-Iroquois

captives and were allowed to keep many of their own customs

in their new residence. Thus, the Iroquois after 1650 began

to accept captives for adoption in groups as well as by

individual. Moreover, the Iroquois permitted some refugee

families to join the clans of the Five Nations as a group.

86

If family members joining the Iroquois were too independent­

minded, however, the refugee family would be adopted separ­

ately and relocated in different villages(Trigger 1976:828-

829). The "adoption" in 1721 of the entire Tuscarora

nation, an Iroquoian-speaking tribe from North Carolina

that was culturally similar to the Iroquois, might be con­

sidered the ultimate example of group adoption, although

the Five Nations did not militarily force them into such

a move.

It should be emphasized that the adoption of these

5,000 or so Iroquoian captives was not accomplished by the

Iroquois during the brief period of the actual Iroquois

Wars. The process of adopting and assimilating such a num­

ber of prisoners no doubt took many years to complete.

From 1648 to 1680, excepting the epidemic ridden years from

1662' to 1665, Iroquois war parties regularly scoured the

St. Lawrence Valley-Lake Ontario area for refugee groups,

intent on relocating as many Iroquoians as possible into

New York state(Trigger 1976:804-820). The demographic

consequences of this extended are partially reflected by

the trends shown in Table 3.

As a result of all of these epidemics, wars, and

wholesale tribal relocations, each of the Five Nations

became so fully reconstituted with non-Iroquois peoples

that the Jesuits wrote in 1657 that "they(the Iroquois)

have so depopulated their own villages that these now

87

contain more Foreigners than natives •••• "(Kenton, ed.l898:

2:88). The Seneca nation reportedly adopted refugees from

as many as eleven different tribes. Similarly, the Onon­

daga became composed of the refugees from seven non-Iro- ·

quais nations. In 1660, the Jesuits estimated that 1,000

(45%)of the 2,200 Iroquois warriors were adopted war cap­

tives, and in 1668, Father Bruyas wrote that two-thirds of

the Mohawk and Oneida nations were adopted Huron and Algon­

kin captives(JR 45:207; 51:123). According to Fenton(l940:

218), "As early as 1677, the 1,000 Oneidas were largely

composed of captive Hurons and Algonkins."

As the above indicates, an unknown number of non-Iro­

quoians(i.e. Algonkin or Algonquian)from tribes previously

decimated by disease or warfare also sought refuge with or

were captured by the Iroquois. Probably the major portion

of Algonquian adoptees came from the St. Lawrence Algonkins

whose lifestyle was shattered by a combination of smallpox,

Iroquois raids, and economic malaise due to the breakdown

of their trading relationship with the Huron and French.

The advantages of infusing this "new blood" into the

Five Nations were considerable. The large-scale prisoner

adoptions were primarily a much-needed population boost,

but especially important was the influx of potential new

warriors which enabled the Iroquois to maintain a ready

reserve of at least 2,000 warriors throughout the last half

of the seventeenth century(Otterbein 1964:60; Tooker 1978:

88

42l,Table 1). Equally important was the fact that the Iro­

quoian refugees were often survivors of smallpox epidemics.

Any Iroquoian that survived such an epidemic and later

joined the Iroquois must have acquired active immunity or

nonimmunologic resistance to smallpox and so their adoption

would be a boon to the general health of the Iroquois popu­

lation.

If the adopted individual had high nonimmunologic

re~istance or non-specific immunity(i.e. natural antibodies)

to smallpox, then it was possible that this genetic trait

might be passed on to future generations of Iroquois. In

fact, the Iroquois reportedly killed captives if they were

sickly(although we do not know against which diseases they

selected), so they must have been aware of the benefits of

adding healthy stock to the population(Trigger 1976:829-830;

JR 4J:295,JOJ). The presence of these survivors reduced

the mortality rate among the Iroquois during the epidemics

of the 1660s, but some of this effect was temporary since

succeeding generations would have had to build up their own

level of immunity. Any captive born before 1640 was very

likely exposed to smallpox at least once, and if they were

infected and survived, then they carried lifetime immunity

to their new home with the Iroquois. Of course, active

immunity can only be acquired and cannot be genetically

transmitted. Considering that about half of the 10,000

members ofthe Five Nations in 1680 were not originally

89

Iroquois, the resulting heterogeneity of population may

have left the League less vulnerable to introduced disease,

both in terms of group immunity and hybrid vigor, than

other more homogeneous Amerindian groups.

The overall picture for the Iroquois in 1680, follow­

ing a half-century of epidemics and wars, was an Iroquois

confederacy internally composed of a mixture of Iroquoian

and Algonquian peoples. Although their external pressures

we~e temporarily neutralized, these demographic changes

created internal problems for the Iroquois as well. Much

of the potential difficulty of incorporating former enemies

into the confederacy could be mitigated by the successful

conditioning of captives to accept their new home. For

those captives who survived the first few years of life

with the Iroquois, there was probably little difficulty

in adjusting to their new environment. The full ramifica­

tions of this incipient tribal heterogeneity are too numer­

ous to elaborate on here, but some sociocultural effects of

these demographic changes will be briefly discussed in the

next chapter.

90

CHAPTER SIX -- THE SOCIOCULTURAL EFFECTS OF Sr~LLPOX AMONG THE IROQUOIS

Smallpox epidemics of the seventeenth century had a

great impact, both directly and indirectly, on the economy,

society, and culture of the Iroquois. Some of the direct

effects are obvious the nearly complete disruption of

economic activities in Iroquois villages where smallpox had

incapacitated or killed many or most of the food producers.

During the epidemics of 1663, the Jesuit Relation(JR 48:79)

reported that some Iroquois villages were abandoned alto­

gether and others were so depleted of agricultural workers

that their fields were left half-tilled. Trading activit­

ies with the French, English, and Dutch usually ceased

during smallpox outbreaks because very often the white

man's trading posts were the points of origin of the

infections. On several occasions, Iroquois military raids

aborted when smallpox broke out among the warriors(JR 30:

273; DRCHNY 9:129,877). The Five Nations did conduct raids

during some of the epidemic periods, but their main cam­

paign~ against the Huron, Neutral, Erie, and Susquehannock

occurred a decade after the smallpox epidemics of the 1630s,

at a time when there were no major smallpox epidemics in

New York state.

Nevertheless, these kinds of disruptions were tempor­

ary for the Iroquois. The precise mechanism of redistribu-

91

tion is not well known for this early period, but there

were apparently enough healthy, productive Iroquois in

each of the Five Nations at any one time to feed the more

needy members of the group. Similarly, traders and raiding

parties resumed their activities in full force as soon as

possible after the infections had subsided.

One side effect of the demographic changes outlined in

the previous chapter was the probable necessity of increas­

ed !lexibility in the Iroquois social system. Although

Iroquois kinship during the seventeenth centu~J is poorly

documented, Lewis Henry Morgan(l904:8l-86)wrote in 1857

that the Iroquois had been relaxing their old marriage

exogamy rules, and that the once-matrilineal kinship system

had become strikingly bilateral. Comparing our western

familial nomenclature with that of the Iroquois, Morgan

explained that Ego's mother was equivalent to Ego's

mother's sisters, father equal to father's brothers, mat­

ernal grandmother equal to grandmother's sisters, father's

sister's children equal to cousin, cousin's children equal

to brother's or sister's children, and so on. In essence,

the collateral line had merged into the lineal line in the

Iroquois matrilineal system, very likely an indirect, and

perhaps much later in terms of chronology, response to the

voids created in clan hierarchies by the steep mortality

of the 1600s. In a period when more and more Iroquois

extended family members were dying off due to disease and

92

in war, such "horizontal" flexibility in kinship nomencla­

ture would have helped to maintain clan traditions and

family structural stability.

Perhaps the most permanent qualitative impacts of

smallpox among the Iroquois were the resultant changes in

their perception of disease and healing. There is no

doubt that the Indians of the Northeast recognized that

infectious diseases like smallpox, measles, influenza, and

typhus were fundamentally different from natural ailments

and traditional psychological ills from which they normally

suffered. One unidentified northeastern Indian group(prob­

ably the Huron)reacted to smallpox as follows(JR 39:131;

Heagerty 1928:58):

This disease, said many, has not been engendered

here; it comes from without; never have we seen

demons so cruel. The other maladies lasted two or

three moons; this has been persecuting us more than a

year. Ours(native diseases)are content with(killing)

one or two in a family, this, in many, has left no

more than that number--and, in many, none at all.

The loss from the old ones was repaired in a few

years ••• ; this would require ages to repeople us.

Moreover, the Hurons realized that this disease attacked

themselves much more seriously than it did the French, and

seemed to kill many of the former and few of the latter.

93

While the Jesuits attributed their own relative good health

to "a singular grace of God," most of them were undoubtedly

immune to smallpox and thus unable to catch it(JR 39:127).

The abandonment of disease-stricken homes and the

interruption of normally gregarious social relations by

the Narragansett tribe of Rhode Island during the 1634

smallpox epidemic indicates that some New England tribes

also had a rudimentary notion of the infectivity of the

disease. Roger Williams(l643:137)wrote that the Narragan­

setts often visited sick friends:

unlesse it be in infectious diseases, and then

all forsake them and flie, that I have often seen

a poor House left all alone ••. all being fled, the

living not being able to bury the dead, so terrible

is the apprehension of an infectious disease, that

not only persons, but houses and whole towns take

flight.

Thus, the policy of avoidance of the sick discussed prev­

iously(see page 57) may have amounted to a kind of quaran­

tine developed by Iroquoians and other northeastern Indians

to hinder the spread of infection. Alternatively, this

avoidance may simply have been an extension of the tradi­

tion of abandoning the aged and infirm when there was no

hope for their survival.

While many of the Iroquoian healing practises were

94

group activities, Sagard{l935:198)noted that Huron shamans

would sometimes isolate their patient from the rest of the

village:

Sometimes the medicine-man orders one of the sick

people to leave the town and encamp in the woods

or in some place apart, so that he may practise

upon him there during the night his devilish cont­

rivances ••• usually this is done only for those who

are infected with some unclean or dangerous disease,

and such persons only.

This passage suggests that, as early as 1624, the Huron had

learned about the dangers of infectious disease and the

need for isolation, although Sagard did not mention any

specific contagion afflicting Huronia at the time(Cf. JR

11:197). The patient observed by Sagard in this case was

suffering from a disease in "his private parts," perhaps

some kind of venereal disease. Evidently the Hurons knew

of other infections prior to the spread of smallpox after

1634. Nonetheless, this concept apparently was not put

into effect fast enough, if at all, to prevent the severe

epidemics in Huronia from 1634 to 1640. Perhaps the two

week incubation period for smallpox enabled the disease to

spread before the Huron were aware of the fatal consequences.

From the Jesuit Relations, we know that Huron shamans

met with continual failure at treating smallpox in the 1630s,

95

and the same was true for the Iroquois then and during

later epidemics, although it should be said that the

Jesuits naturally exaggerated such failures. Huron and

Iroquois healers responded inventively if not successfully,

attempting every traditional remedy at their disposal,

including emetics(JR 42:167), sweat baths(JR 14:65), the

tortoise shell and song ritual(JR 42:149), clairvoyant

dreaming of the epidemic's end(JR 13:213,233,235), and

communal feasting(JR 14:63). All of these treatments fail­

ed, which is hardly surprising since smallpox is untreat­

able once a patient is infected. Prior to the development

of vaccines, variolation was somewhat effective in reducing

the mortality rate in smallpox epidemics in colonial New

England in 172l{Winslow 1974), but even this was not avail­

able to the Iroquois in the 1600s.

In 1638, LeJeune(JR 15:7l)reported that a Huron shaman

was unable to divine a cure for smallpox and refused to

treat the patient. There were other examples of such nega­

tive diagnoses(JR 19:171,243,245), including cases where

the Huron shaman, realizing that the patient's recovery

was unlikely, declared that the victim's dream wish was

some unattainable item(JR 33:205). At times, the shaman

lost some degree of his community standing and prestige

if he could not treat the disease(JR 14:223). Of course,

many Iroquoian healers must have died attempting to treat

smallpox and other contagious diseases.

96

Many of the gravely ill Hurons were tended by the

French missionaries. CUriously, the Jesuits did manage to

nurse some Indians back to health, and in their own words, 5

performed several medical "miracles"{JR 1:213,21.5; 20:23-35;

Trigger 1976:505,593), but most of these must have been

mild smallpox cases if smallpox at all. Temporary relief

might be gained by feeding Indians who had been neglected

by their own tribe, but in the end, most of the Jesuits'

Hurpn patients died. As mentioned previously, the Jesuits

made sure to report on the number of Hurons(and other Ind­

ians}who, having been baptized prior to death, represented

souls won for heaven.

The concomitant arrival of smallpox and the Jesuits in

Huronia in the 1630s clearly put the medico-religious sys­

tem of the Huron nation to a severe test and helped to en-

courage the subsequent factionalism between conservative

and Christianized Hurons. More than 1,000 Hurons were

baptized by the Jesuits during the epidemics from 1634 to

1640, although only a handful remained faithful to Christ­

ianity once the smallpox attacks abated(Trigger 1976:702}.

These temporary converts included several shamans, one of

whom publicly renounced his leadership in a curing society,

burned his hunting charms and submitted to baptism(Trigger

1976:702; JR 20:15; see also JR 16:149; 17:169). Apparently

this shaman was convinced that the Jesuits possessed better

"medicine."

97

Many Huron converts were won because the diagnostic

dream of the patient or healer indicated that baptism would

effect a cure(Tooker 1964:88; JR 15:73; 17:137; see also

JR 10:13; 13:191; 23:171). However, there was little

agreement among the Huron on this score. Some believed

that the catholic ceremony of baptism was a bona fide

ritual, not unlike some of their own(JR 10:13). The major­

ity preferred to believe that the Jesuits were evil shamans

who could bring smallpox and other contagions among them at

will, and whose means of transmitting the disease was the

rite of baptism(JR 11:15; 13:225; 16:53; 17:97; 19:213,215;

20:20; Tooker 1964:88). Part of this ideological confusion

stemmed from the fact that the Jesuits had healed a few

patients, but mostly had ministered to the dying. Ironical­

ly, the Huron majority view was not far from the truth,

since the French colonial population did in fact introduce

smallpox into the southern Ontario area.

The Iroquois also accused the Jesuits of spreading

smallpox among them in l645(JR 50:229; 31:121). Despite

threats not to return to Iroquois lands, the missionaries

did so in 1656 and visited and reported on the Iroquois

sporatically for the rest of the century. Cramoisy(JR 42:

145,147; see also JR 51:37)wrote in 1656 that the Iroquois

were stricken by "severe fevers" that caused many people to

"waste away." After the native healers had failed to pro­

duce a cure, the Jesuits, as they had done twenty years

98

earlier in Huronia, stepped in and managed to nurse a few

Indians back to health(JR 42:145; 47:187). On the other

hand, out of 580 Iroquois baptized during the smallpox

epidemic of 1676, 390 died(see Table 2). The Jesuits could

not be considered miracle workers any more than the shamans

in treating smallpox. Probably these outbreaks ultimately

sabotaged the Jesuit mission among the Huron and Iroquois

more than it discredited the Iroquoian medical system.

On the persistance of traditional medicai practitioners

among the Onondaga Iroquois in the 1960s, Blau(l966:565)

writes:

Clairvoyants or native diagnosticians (called

fortunetellers by Shimony 1961) find their skills

required by the people and herbalists retain

ancient ethnobotanical knowledge, which they

utilize in curing local residents.

Among the early twentieth century Seneca, the sick tended

to consult the herbalist first. If the cure could not be

produced by the herbalist, then the shama~ or diagnostic

specialist would be consulted for an appropriate ritual or

medicine society cure. If the illness lingered, sorcery

might be suspected(Parker 1909:184).

Modern Iroquois medicine societies and traditionally­

oriented shamans, in particular, have wielded a strong

influence in social affairs. Traditional dances and

99

6 ceremonies prescribed for appropriate ailments have

tended to reinforce the importance of remembering the old

ways, even while the people recognize the efficacy of west­

ern medicine in treating infectious diseases. Not even

Handsome Lake, the Seneca leader whose religious visions

laid the groundwork for numerous socioeconomic changes

among the early nineteenth century Iroquois, could disband

the medicine societies as part of his campaign to eradicate

the practise of witchcraft and magic (Wallace 1969:239,

252-253).

Finally, it should be noted that the diverse origins

of these medicine societies reflect the growing heterogene­

ity of Iroquois society due to the massive prisoner adop­

tions of the seventeenth century. For example, the False

Face curing society, whose chief healing ritual is a variant

of the Iroquois-Huron Dream Festival, was probably intro­

duced to the Five Nations by Huron refugees in the 1650s

and continues to be among the most important Iroquois heal­

ing rituals. Rather than enabling individuals to enhance

their mental health by dream fulfillment as in the Honnon-

ouaroria ritual, the semiannual False Face ceremony has

become little more than a ritual housecleaning exercise

in which epidemics or other group ailments might be symbol­

ically swept away(Morgan 1904:159; Fenton 194la).

100

CHAPTER SEVEN -- CONCLUSIONS

The population figures documented in Table 3 clearly

show that the Five Nations of the Iroquois were the only

Iroquoian group to adapt successfully to the changing

living conditions of early colonial North America. In the

70 year period from 1630 to 1700, the population of the

Iroquois declined by about 40 percent, considerably less

than the 97 to 100 percent shrinkage suffered by the other

six Iroquoian nations. In the cases of the Huron, Tionnon­

tate, Neutral Nation, and Erie, the populations first were

ravaged and seriously weakened by smallpox in the years

1634 to 1640 and left vulnerable to conquest by the Iroquois.

The Wenro, the smallest Iroquoian nation to begin with and

holders of a tenuous territory just west of the Seneca

lands, did not wait to conquered by the latter and vacated

their lands in 1638 after smallpox epidemics reduced the

population by almost two-thirds to a small contingent of

600 individuals. The Susquehannock were weakened both by

epidemics and warfare, although they did not submit to the

Iroquois until 1675.

The Huron and Tionnontate suffered far wo:cse during

the first wave of smallpox than the Iroquois, losing from

55 to 75 percent of their people compared to an estimated

20 percent drop for the Five Nations. By 1640, the Iroquois

101

represented the largest Iroquoian population cluster in the

Northeast, and within the next few years, they became the

best armed and best organized group as well. About 60 per­

cent more Iroquois than Huron survived the decade of the

1630s, and smallpox was the key variable accounting for this

difference. The disease killed about 9,000 Hurons but far

less Iroquois(a good guess would be 3,000)in these first

outbreaks in the Northeast.

It is tempting to speculate why the mortality rate

from smallpox was apparently so much greater for the Huron

than for the Iroquois. Four factors must have contributed

heavily to this disparity. First, the Huron suffered six

straight years of fairly constant epidemics, while from the

limited data we have, smallpox was reported among the Iro­

quois in two years only, 1634 and 1640. Secondly, the

Huron territory was much more compact than that of the

Iroquois(50 miles wide compared to 200 miles wide--see

Figure 1); population density was therefore greater for

the Hurons and epidemics theoretically could have spread

more rapidly through Huronia. Thirdly, the smallpox epi­

demics in Huronia were complicated by secondary outbreaks

of measles in 1634(JR 7:22l)and later, influenza(Trigger

1976:526), two more Old World diseases for which these

Indians had no immunity. There is no evidence that the

early smallpox outbreaks among the Iroquois were accompan­

ied by any secondary infections. Finally, we can say that

102

the Huron paid the price for their close contact with the

French, since they were infected repeatedly by traders and

missionaries alike. Until the 1650s, all of the Iroquois

nations except for the Mohawk were completely isolated from

the European colonials.

After 1640, the Iroquois utilized their newly found

advantages both in manpower and gunpower to embark on an

extended military campaign that led to the defeat, disper­

sal, and partial absorption of the Huron, Neutral, Erie,

and Susquehannock peoples into the Five Nations. The re­

sulting heterogeneity in the Iroquois population increased

their chances of surviving future waves of disease both

because of the sheer numbers of prisoners adopted(at least

5,000 in a JO year period)and the fact that many of the

prisoners had survived prior smallpox epidemics. That the

Iroquois were known to kill sickly prisoners suggests that

they conceived of a kind of biological engineering process

through incorporating those Iroquoians with acquired immun­

ity to smallpox or nonimmunologic resistance to disease in

general.

Whether the Iroquois' increased policy of adopting war

captives was a conscious response to population stress from

epidemics and indirectly a cause of the Iroquois Wars, or

simply was a side effect of those wars is problematical.

At any rate, these adoptions enabled the Five Nations to

maintain an adequate population base, both of horticultural

103

producers and warriors, to sustain their economic stability

and regional hegemony until the mid-eighteenth century.

Without the several thousand adoptees to augment the popu­

lation, the Iroquois might not have survived the seventeenth

century at all.

The demographic evidence presented herein clearly sup­

ports Hypothesis A, that smallpox was a key variable in the

rise of the Iroquois at the expense of the Huron, in part­

icu~ar. Hypothesis B, the contention that prisoner adop­

tions served as the key stabilizing mechanism for the Iro­

quois population, is strongly supported as well. Hypothes­

is A is perhaps less certain regarding the demise of the

Neutral, Erie, and Susquehannock nations because there are

no available smallpox mortality figures for any of these

groups. It has been assumed that each of these three

nations were decimated to various degrees in the epidemics

of 1634 to 1640, though not to the extent of the Huron.

Even without making such an assumption, however, we can

conclude that the smallpox epidemics which weakened the

Huron confederacy constituted an indirect catalyst to the

set of events which ultimately resulted in the destruction

of the Huron-Tionnontate, Neutral, Erie, and Susquehannock

nations.

To test Hypothesis A archaeologically will be diffi­

cult until pathogenic signs related to smallpox can be iso­

lated for osteological material. However, investigators

104 p •

in the traditional Iroquois subarea of New York state

should look for seventeenth century sites with mass inter­

ments or skeletal remains left without funerary treatment.

Such sites could be indicative of epidemic-related or

warfare-related deaths, but the difference between the two

should be obvious. It should be noted that this methodol­

ogy might not be applicable to Huron-Tionnontate sites,

since these people held yearly rites in which they disinter­

red and reburied in a massive grave all people who had died

during the previous year(Trigger 1969:106~112).

The demographic changes posited in Hypothesis B should

be reflected by corresponding changes in Iroquois material

culture and settlement patterns after 1650. To test Hypo­

thesis B, archaeologists should look for the incorporation

of non-Iroquois cultural features -- village layout, mater­

ial technology, design motifs -- into Iroquois sites, using

European trade goods to date post-1650 sites. A good exam­

ple of such a site would be the town of Gandougarae, possi­

bly located about 20 miles east of the Genesee River. This

village was inhabited by adopted Hurons ru1d other refugee

groups after 1651. Compared to sites with lesser degrees

of non-Iroquois intrusiveness due to the presence of fewer

refugees, the Gandougarae site, if found, should display

material and structural features that are diagnostic of the

blending of Huron, Neutral, Erie, and Iroquois cultures

and should be distinct from other seventeenth century

105

Seneca sites in the area. Such a study would assume that,

although the Iroquois methods of acculturating war captives

were largely successful, all manifestations of non-Iroquois

culture would not have been eradicated in the new community

admixtures. A modern model of such cultural intrusiveness

was provided by the persistance of Huron ethnicity at the

Iroquois Grand River Reservation in the nineteenth century.

This thesis postulates that disease mortality and

changes in adoption customs were key elements in the surviv­

al of the Iroquois and the retention of their ethnic ident­

ity during a time of rapid cultural change. Traditional

ethnographic studies previous to this have emphasized the

military dominance of the Iroquois, largely through the

acquisition of firearms and improved coordination of large­

scale raids, to explain their rise at the expense of their

Iroquoian and Algonquian neighbors.

However, a careful study of seventeenth century ethno­

historical documents, mainly the journals of explorers and

missionaries, indicates that epidemiological data must not

be over~ooked in assessing this critical period in the

history of the Iroquois League. By utilizing a medical

perspective in this ethnohistory, the significance of the

introduced disease factor has become apparent, not only in

contributing to the Iroquois' military successes against

the Huron but also in elucidating the vast overhaul in

Iroquois demography after 1650. In short, this medical

106

ethnohistory has demonstrated the interdependence of epi­

demiology and warfare in Iroquoian culture history and the

demographic development of the Iroquois League. Also, I

have tried to portray this Iroquois adaptation to disease

as a sharp contrast to the all too prevalent image of the

American Indian as helpless victim to the onslaught of

European colonial conquest.

107

NOTES

Acknowledgments. I would like to thank Lynn Mason for

stimulating my interest in this study and a similar epidem­

iological paper on the Algonquians of New England in his

seminar on medical anthropology. I thank Richard Clemmer

for his timely criticism and comments in the area of Iro­

quoian culture history. I thank navid Hayano for helping

me to keep in proper perspective key issues in the study

of Iroquois shamanism and folk healing. Finally, I would

like to thank George and Louise Spindler of Stanford Univ­

ersity, whose introductory anthropology class first sparked

my interest in the cultures of the seventeenth century

Iroquois and Huron.

1. (p.J) The Iroquois were known as the Six Nations

after the admission of the Tuscarora nation in 1721, and

later as the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee(after Morgan

1904).

2. (p.J) All of the Indian nations whose territory is

depicted in Figure 1 were Iroquoian-speakers, including the

Five Nations of the Iroquois, the Huron tribal confederacy

(composed of five tribes, the Attignaouantan, Ataronchron-

non, Attingneenongnahac, Arendaronon, and Tahontaenrat),

Tionnontate(Petun or Tobacco Nation), Neutral Nation, Erie,

108

Wenro, and Susquehannock. In this thesis, Iroquois refers

only to the Five Nations -- Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga,

Oneida, and Mohawk -- while Iroquoian may refer to any or

all of the above nations, but usually refers to non-Iro­

quois groups.

J. (p.?) This first known contact between the Iroquois

and Europeans was with the French explorer Champlain in

1609. Although Jacques Cartier made contact with Iroquoian­

spe~kers(known from the short dictionary recorded and pub­

lished by Cartier)on Montreal Island and near Quebec in

1635, the relationship between these tribes and the Iroquois

League of the seventeenth century is not clear.

4. (p.60) Judging from what may be the largest prehist­

oric burial site ever found in North America north of Mexico,

the Initial Coalescent cultures of the northern Great Plains

were developing from 900 to 1400 A.D. along lines very sim­

ilar to the Iroquois. The prehistoric ancestors of the

Arikara tribe, the people who originally inhabited the site

at Crow Creek, North Dakota were housed in large, permanent

fortified towns and their economy was based on the cultiva­

tion of maize. In this mass grave, site #39BF11, there

were found the dismembered skeletons of 486 people, appar­

ently the victims of a large-scale raid(Zimmerman and Whit­

ten 1980:100~109). Thus, the people of Crow Creek seem to

have been caught up in a network of regional warfare that

rivalled the system of warfare that would develop among

109

Iroquoians of the seventeenth century.

). (p.97) One such example recently brought to light

in the Sacramento Bee(UPI Release, June 23, 1980:3)involved

a yotmg Mohawk woman who survived a 1660 smallpox epidemic

and ,'this year was made the first North American Indian

candidate for sainthood and beatification. BacUy scarred

by smallpox in 1660, the woman, Kateri Tekakwitha, fled

the Iroquois to live in a Christian Indian village in

Canada, became baptized and swore an oath of chastity to

the Jesuits. Upon her death in 1680 at the age of 24,

Tekakwitha was miraculously transformed, according to the

story, into a flawless feauty. As an interesting illustra­

tion of the heterogeneity of the Mohawks in 1660, Tekak­

witha's father was Mohawk and her mother Algonquian.

). (p.lOO) According to Shimony(l961:208), Iroquois

healing rituals performed by modern shamans involve some

"patterned responses to characteristic symptoms, such as

False-Face rites for facial paralysis, ••• , Otter rites for

sore red eyes, and Bear rites for hysteria."

110

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