4 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 190 



These descriptions picture a Northern Iroquoian group relatively 

 unaffected by European civilization (probably the Huron even at 

 this early date had been affected by French trade, as Europeans had 

 been trading with Indians to the east for some years previously). 

 French traders probably had met Hurons and knew a little of their 

 customs, but such material is fairly inaccessible, if available. The 

 interest of merchants often precludes an interest in writing of the 

 common customs of a people. It is rather the professional explorers 

 and missionaries who write of strange lands and peoples for publi- 

 cation at home. 



The most extensive data on the Huron is that contained in the 

 Jesuit Relations. Each year the Jesuit missionaries working in New 

 France sent back to their Superior in France a rej)ort, or relation, of 

 their activities, and each year these reports were edited and printed 

 in France with the intent of gaining support for the missions. Simi- 

 larly, Sagard's account was written and published to obtain support 

 for the Recollets, a reformed Franciscan order. Champlain, who 

 worked closely with the missionaries, asking them to aid him in New 

 France, wrote to justify his explorations. Such motivations should 

 not blind us to the value of these documents, as one is impressed with 

 the amount of ethnographic detail in them and the extent to which 

 the data are consistent, both internally and with what is known of 

 other Iroquoian and North American Indian cultures. 



There are available two shorter works based on these documents, 

 but neither is completely satisfactory for anthropological purposes. 

 Kenton (1927) republished only extracts of the Relations, and, 

 although Kinietz (1940) uses some of the material in the Jesuit Rela- 

 tions and in Champlain's and Sagard's accounts, he omits much that is 

 of interest to anthropologists. 



suggested, on the basis of a tradition recorded by Pyrlaeus, that the league was formed 

 between 1559 and 1570. Using this statement of the Mohawks to Pyrlaeus, a similar 

 statement of the Onondagas to Ephraim Webster (both to the effect that the Iroquois 

 League was founded a length of a man's life before the Europeans came to trade in the 

 country), and the statement of some Senecas that the league was formed about 4 years 

 before Hudson's voyage up the river named after him, Beauchamp (1891 a : 297-298) 

 concluded that the probable date for the founding of the league was about 1600. Fenton 

 (1961 : 271) agrees with Beauchamp, and ends Ms discussion, "Let us fashionably say, 

 1600 plus or minus 30 years !" 



Although confederations of Indian tribes were common in post-contact times, they 

 do not seem to have been a feature of pre-Columbian North American cultures. Most of 

 the Indian confederacies were formed to combat the superior strength of European in- 

 trusions through greater numbers. A similar reaction may have strengthened the Iroquoian 

 leagues, but their formation prior to first contact with Europeans requires another expla- 

 nation. The Indians along the Atlantic coast who were trading with the Europeans in 

 the 16th century may have formed a kind of alliance with them and caused the more 

 interior tribes, the Iroquoians, to confederate to gain superiority and thus take part in 

 this trade. Further, as alliances serve to make communication easy and to facilitate 

 trade between their members, the various Indian confederacies directed the trade that 

 became important. These considerations support the suggestion that the Iroquoian con- 

 federacies were founded (or at least strengthened) in the latter part of the 16th century 

 rather than at an earlier date. 



