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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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