206 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



spoils of the chase only wild fruits and roots. The Iroquois had 

 passed into the agricultural stage. They had settled habitations 

 and cultivated fields. They had extensive orchards of the apple, 

 made sugar from the maple and raised corn and beans and squash 

 and pumpkins. The surrounding tribes had only the rudimentary 

 political institution of chief and followers. The Iroquois had a 

 carefully devised constitution well adapted to secure confederate 

 authority in matters of common interest, and local authority in 

 matters of local interest. 



Each nation was divided into tribes, the Wolf tribe, the Bear 

 tribe, the Turtle tribe, etc. The same tribes ran through all the 

 nations, the section in each nation being bound by ties of con- 

 sanguinity to the sections of the same tribe in the other nations. 

 Thus a Seneca Wolf was brother to every Mohawk Wolf, a Seneca 

 Bear to every Mohawk Bear. The arrangement was like that of 

 our college societies with chapters in different colleges. So there 

 were bonds of tribal union running across the lines of national 

 union, and the whole structure was firmly knit together as by the 

 warp and woof of a textile fabric. 



The government was vested in a council of fifty sachems, a fixed 

 number coming from each nation. The sachems from each nation 

 came in fixed proportions from specific tribes in that nation; the 

 office was hereditary in the tribe ; and the member of the tribe 

 to fill it was elected by the tribe. The sachems of each nation 

 governed their own nation in all local affairs. Below the sachems 

 were elected chiefs on the military side and Keepers of the Faith 

 on the religious side. Crime was exceedingly rare ; insubordination 

 was unknown ; courage, fortitude and devotion to the common good 

 were universal. 



The territory of the Long House covered the watershed between 

 the St Lawrence basin and the Atlantic. From it the waters ran 

 into the St Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware, the Susquehanna 

 and the Ohio. Down these lines of communication the war parties 

 of the confederacy passed, beating back or overwhelming their ene- 

 mies until they had become overlords of a vast region extending 

 far into New England, the Carolinas, the valley of the Mississippi 

 and to the coast of Lake Huron. 



They held in subjection an area including the present states of 

 New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, 

 Kentucky, West Virginia, Northern Virginia and Tennessee, and 

 parts of New England, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ontario. 

 Of all the inhabitants of the New World they were the most terrible 



