War For the Haudenosaunee, grief for a loved one who died was a powerful emotion. They believed that if it was not attended to, it would cause all sorts of problems for the grieving who would go mad if left without consolation. Rituals to honor the dead were very important and the most important of all was the
condolence ceremony to provide consolation for those who lost a family member or friend. Since it was believed that the death of a family member also weakened the spiritual strength of the surviving family members, it was considered crucially important to replace the lost family member by providing a substitute who could be adopted, or alternatively could be tortured to provide an outlet for the grief. Hence the "mourning wars". One of the central features of traditional Haudenosaunee life were the "mourning wars", when their warriors would raid neighboring peoples in search of captives to replace those Haudenosaunee who had died. War for the Haudenosaunee was primarily undertaken for captives. They were not concerned with such goals as expansion of territory or glory in battle, as were the Europeans. They did, however, go to war to control hunting grounds, especially as the fur trade became more lucrative. A war party was considered successful if it took many prisoners without suffering losses in return; killing enemies was considered acceptable if necessary, but disapproved of as it reduced the number of potential captives. Taking captives were considered far more important than scalps. Additionally, war served as a way for young men to demonstrate their valor and courage. This was a prerequisite for a man to be made a chief, and it was also essential for men who wanted to marry. Haudenosaunee women admired warriors who were brave in war. In the pre-contact era, war was relatively bloodless, as First Nations peoples did not have guns and fought one another in suits of wooden armor. In 1609, the French explorer
Samuel de Champlain observed several battles between the Algonquin and the Haudenosaunee that resulted in hardly any deaths. This seemed to be the norm for First Nations wars. At a battle between the Algonquin and the Haudenosaunee by the shores of Lake Champlain, the only people killed were two Haudenosaunee warriors hit by bullets from Champlain's musket, in a demonstration to his Algonquin allies. The clan mothers would demand a "mourning war" to provide consolation and renewed spiritual strength for a family that lost a member to death. Either the warriors would go on a "mourning war" or would be marked by the clan mothers as cowards forever, which made them unmarriageable. At this point, the warriors would usually leave to raid a neighboring people in search of captives. The captives were either adopted into Haudenosaunee families to become assimilated, or were to be killed after bouts of ritualized torture as a way of expressing rage at the death of a family member. The male captives were usually received with blows, passing through a kind of gantlet as they were brought into the community. All captives, regardless of their sex or age, were stripped naked and tied to poles in the middle of the community. After having sensitive parts of their bodies burned and some of their fingernails pulled out, the prisoners were allowed to rest and given food and water. In the following days, the captives had to dance naked before the community, when individual families decided for each if the person was to be adopted or killed. Women and children were more often adopted than were older men. If those who were adopted into the Haudenosaunee families made a sincere effort to become Haudenosaunee, then they would be embraced by the community, and if they did not, then they were swiftly executed. Those slated for execution had to wear red and black facial paint and were "adopted" by a family who addressed the prisoner as "uncle", "aunt", "nephew" or "niece" depending on their age and sex, and would bring them food and water. The captive would be executed after a day-long torture session of burning and removing body parts, which the prisoner was expected to bear with stoicism and nobility (an expectation not usually met) before being scalped alive. Hot sand was applied to the exposed skull and they were finally killed by cutting out their hearts. Afterward, the victim's body was cut and eaten by the community. The practice of ritual torture and execution, together with cannibalism, ended some time in the early 18th century. By the late-18th-century, European writers such as
Filippo Mazzei and
James Adair were denying that the Haudenosaunee engaged in ritual torture and cannibalism, saying they had seen no evidence of such practices during their visits to Haudenosaunee villages. In 1711, Onondaga chief
Teganissorens told Sir
Robert Hunter, governor of New York: "We are not like you Christians, for when you have prisoners of one another you send them home, by such means you can never rout one another". The converse of this strategy was that the Haudenosaunee would not accept losses in battle, as it defeated the whole purpose of the "mourning wars", which was to add to their numbers, not decrease them. The French during their wars with the Haudenosaunee were often astonished when a war party that was on the verge of victory over them could be made to retreat by killing one or two of their number. The European notion of a glorious death in battle had no counterpart with the Haudenosaunee. Death in battle was accepted only when absolutely necessary, and the Haudenosaunee believed the souls of those who died in battle were destined to spend eternity as angry ghosts haunting the world in search of vengeance. For this reason, those who died in battle were never buried in community cemeteries, as it would bring the presence of unhappy ghosts into the community. The Haudenosaunee engaged in tactics that the French, the British, and the Americans all considered to be cowardly, until the Americans adopted similar guerrilla tactics. The Haudenosaunee preferred ambushes and surprise attacks, would almost never attack a fortified place or attack frontally, and would retreat if outnumbered. If Kanienkeh was invaded, the Haudenosaunee would attempt to ambush the enemy, or alternatively they would retreat behind the wooden walls of their villages to endure a siege. If the enemy appeared too powerful, as when the French invaded Kanienkeh in 1693, the Haudenosaunee burned their villages and their crops, and the entire population retreated into the woods to wait for the French to depart. The main weapons for the Haudenosaunee were bows and arrows with flint tips and quivers made from corn husks. Shields and war clubs were made from wood. After contact was established with Europeans, the Native Americans adopted such tools as metal knives and hatchets, and made their tomahawks with iron or steel blades. It has been posited that the tomahawk was not used extensively in battle, but instead became associated with the Haudenosaunee through European depictions that sought to portray natives as savage and threatening. Before taking to the field, war chiefs would lead ritual purification ceremonies in which the warriors would dance around a pole painted red. European infectious diseases such as smallpox devastated the Five Nations in the 17th century, causing thousands of deaths, as they had no acquired
immunity to the new diseases, which had been endemic among Europeans for centuries. The League began a period of "mourning wars" without precedent; compounding deaths from disease, they nearly annihilated the Huron, Petun and Neutral peoples. By the 1640s, it is estimated that smallpox had reduced the population of the Haudenosaunee by least 50%. Massive "mourning wars" were undertaken to make up these losses. The American historian Daniel Richter wrote it was at this point that war changed from being sporadic, small-scale raids launched in response to individual deaths, and became "the constant and increasing undifferentiated symptom of societies in demographic crisis". The introduction of guns, which could pierce the wooden armor, made First Nations warfare bloodier and more deadly than it had been in the pre-contact era. This ended the age when armed conflicts were more brawls than battles as Europeans would have understood the term. At the same time, guns could only be obtained by trading furs with the Europeans. Once the Haudenosaunee exhausted their supplies of beaver by about 1640, they were forced to buy beaver pelts from Indians living further north, which led them to attempt to eliminate other middlemen to monopolize the fur trade in a series of "beaver wars". Richter wrote From 1640 to 1701, the Five Nations was almost continuously at war, battling at various times the French, Huron, Erie, Neutral, Lenape, Susquenhannock, Petun, Abenaki, Ojibwa, and Algonquin peoples, fighting campaigns from Virginia to the Mississippi and all the way to what is now northern Ontario. Despite taking thousands of captives, the Five Nations populations continued to fall, as diseases continued to take their toll. French Jesuits, whom the Haudenosaunee were forced to accept after making peace with the French in 1667, encouraged Catholic converts to move to mission villages in the St. Lawrence river valley near Montreal and Quebec. In the 1640s, the Mohawk could field about 800 warriors. By the 1670s, they could field only 300 warriors, indicating population decline.
Melting pot The Haudenosaunee League traditions allowed for the dead to be symbolically replaced through captives taken in "mourning wars", the blood feuds and vendettas that were an essential aspect of Haudenosaunee culture. As a way of expediting the mourning process, raids were conducted to take vengeance and seize captives. Captives were generally adopted directly by the grieving family to replace the member(s) who had been lost. This process not only allowed the Haudenosaunee to maintain their own numbers, but also to disperse and assimilate their enemies. The adoption of conquered peoples, especially during the period of the
Beaver Wars (1609–1701), meant that the Haudenosaunee League was composed largely of naturalized members of other tribes.
Cadwallader Colden wrote, Those who attempted to return to their families were harshly punished; for instance, the French fur trader
Pierre-Esprit Radisson was captured by an Haudenosaunee raiding party as a teenager, was adopted by a Mohawk family, and ran away to return to his family in
Trois-Rivières. When he was recaptured, he was punished by having his fingernails pulled out and having one of his fingers cut to the bone. But Radisson was not executed, as his adoptive parents provided gifts to the families of the men whom Radisson had killed when he escaped, given as compensation for their loss. Several Huron who escaped with Radisson were recaptured and quickly executed. as did the Catholic Mohawk in settlements outside Montreal. This tradition of adoption and assimilation was common to native people of the Northeast.
Settlement At the time of first European contact the Haudenosaunee lived in a small number of large villages scattered throughout their territory. Each nation had between one and four villages at any one time, and villages were moved approximately every five to twenty years as soil and firewood were depleted. These settlements were surrounded by a
palisade and usually located in a defensible area such as a hill, with access to water. The main woods used by the Haudenosaunee to make their utensils were oak, birch, hickory and elm. Bones and antlers were used to make hunting and fishing equipment.
Food production The Haudenosaunee are a mix of
horticulturalists, farmers, fishers, gatherers and hunters, though traditionally their main diet has come from farming. For the Haudenosaunee, farming was traditionally women's work and the entire process of planting, maintaining, harvesting and cooking was done by women. Gathering has also traditionally been the job of women and children. Wild roots, greens, berries and nuts were gathered in the summer. During spring, sap is tapped from the
maple trees and boiled into
maple syrup, and herbs are gathered for medicine. After the coming of Europeans, the Haudenosaunee started to grow apples, pears, cherries, and peaches. Historically, the main crops cultivated by the Haudenosaunee were
corn,
beans, and
squash, which were called the
three sisters () and in Haudenosaunee tradition were considered special gifts from the Creator. These three crops could be ground up into
hominy and soups in clay pots (later replaced by metal pots after contact with Europeans). Besides the "Three Sisters", the Haudenosaunee diet also included artichokes, leeks, cucumbers, turnips, pumpkins, a number of different berries such blackberries, blueberries, gooseberries, etc. and wild nuts.
Ramson, a species of wild onion, is also a part of traditional Haudenosaunee cuisine, as well as
northern redcurrant,
American groundnut, and
broadleaf toothwort. Using these ingredients they prepared meals of boiled
cornbread and
cornmeal sweetened with maple syrup, known today as
Indian pudding. Cornmeal was also used to make
samp, a type of
porridge with beans and dried meat. Reports from early American settlers mention Haudenosaunee extracting
corn syrup that was used as a sweetener for cornmeal
dumplings. The Haudenosaunee hunted mostly deer but also other game such as wild turkey and migratory birds. Muskrat and beaver were hunted during the winter. Archaeologists have found the bones of bison, elk, deer, bear, raccoon, and porcupines at Haudenosaunee villages. Fishing was also a significant source of food because the Haudenosaunee had villages mostly in the St.Lawrence and Great Lakes areas. The Haudenosaunee used nets made from vegetable fiber with weights of pebbles for fishing. They fished salmon, trout, bass, perch and whitefish until the St. Lawrence became too polluted by industry. In the spring the Haudenosaunee netted, and in the winter fishing holes were made in the ice. Starting about 1620, the Haudenosaunee started to raise pigs, geese and chickens, which they had acquired from the Dutch.
Clothing In 1644
Johannes Megapolensis described Mohawk traditional wear. On their feet the Haudenosaunee wore
moccasin, "true to nature in its adjustment to the foot, beautiful in its materials and finish, and durable as an article of apparel." Men wore a cap with a single long feather rotating in a socket called a
gustoweh. Later, feathers in the gustoweh denote the wearer's tribe by their number and positioning. The Mohawk wear three upright feathers, the Oneida two upright and one down. The Onondaga wear one feather pointing upward and another pointing down. The Cayuga have a single feather at a 45-degree angle. The Seneca wear a single feather pointing up, and the Tuscarora have no distinguishing feathers. Writing in 1851 Morgan wrote that women's outfits consisted of a skirt () "usually of blue broadcloth, and elaborately embroidered with bead-work. It requires two yards of cloth, which is worn with the selvedge at the top and bottom; the skirt being secured about the waist and descending nearly to the top of the moccasin." Under the skirt, between the knees and the moccasins, women wore leggings (), called
pantalettes by Morgan, "of red broadcloth, and ornamented with a border of beadwork around the lower edge ... In ancient times the gise'-hǎ was made of deer-skin and embroidered with porcupine-quill work." An over-dress () of
muslin or
calico was worn over the skirt, it is "gathered slightly at the waist, and falls part way down the skirt ... In front it is generally buttoned with silver broaches." The blanket () is two or three yards of blue or green broadcloth "it falls from the head or neck in natural folds the width of the cloth, as the
selvedges are at the top and bottom, and it is gathered round the person like a shawl." or "curing societies", played an important role in Haudenosaunee social organization.
Lewis H. Morgan says that each society "was a brotherhood into which new members were admitted by formal initiation." Originally the membership seems to have been on the basis of moiety, but by 1909 all societies seems to have been open to all men regardless of kinship. It is believed that "most of the societies are of ancient origin and that their rituals have been transmitted with little change for many years." "Each society has a legend by which its origin and peculiar rites are explained." The False Face Company conducts rituals to cure sick people by driving away spirits; the Husk Face Society is made up of those who had dreams seen as messages from the spirits and the Secret Medicine Society likewise conducts rituals to cure the sick. There are 12 different types of masks worn by the societies. The types of masks are: •
The Secret Society of Medicine Men and the Company of Mystic Animals: • Divided mask that painted half black and half red; • Masks with exaggerated long noses; • Horn masks; • Blind masks without eye sockets. •
Husk Face Society: • Masks made of braided corn. •
False Face Society: • Whistling masks; • Masks with smiling faces; • Masks with protruding tongues; • Masks with exaggerated hanging mouths; • Masks with exaggerated straight lops; • Masks with spoon-lips; • Masks with a disfigured twisted mouth. The "crooked face" masks with the twisted mouths, the masks with the spoon lips and the whistling masks are the "Doctor" masks. The other masks are "Common Face" or "Beggar" masks that are worn by those who help the Doctors. The Husk Face Society performs rituals to communicate with the spirits in nature to ensure a good crop, the False Face Society performs rituals to chase away evil spirits, and the Secret Medicine Society performs rituals to cure diseases. The grotesque masks represent the faces of the spirits that the dancers are attempting to please. Those wearing Doctor masks blow hot ashes into the faces of the sick to chase away the evil spirits that are believed to be causing the illness. The masked dancers often carried turtle shell rattles and long staffs.
Medicine Both male and female healers were knowledgeable in the use of herbs to treat illness, and could dress wounds, set broken bones, and perform surgery. Illness was believed to have a spiritual as well as a natural component, so spells, dances, ceremonies were used in addition to more practical treatments. There are three types of practitioners of traditional medicine: The "Indian doctor" or healer, who emphasizes the physical aspect of curing illness, the fortune-teller, who uses spiritual means to determine the cause of the patient's ailments and the appropriate cure, and the witch. It was believed that knowledge of healing was given by supernatural creatures in the guise of animals. In recent times, traditional medicine has co-existed with western medicine, with traditional practices more prevalent among followers of the
Gaihwi:io (Longhouse Religion). People may resort to traditional practices for certain types of ailments, and to western medicine for other types, or they may use both traditional and western medicine to treat the same ailment as a form of double security. The Haudenosaunee societies are active in maintaining the practice of traditional medicine. The chief of a clan can be removed at any time by a council of the women elders of that clan. The chief's sister has historically been responsible for nominating his successor. The clan mothers, the elder women of each clan, are highly respected. The Haudenosaunee have traditionally followed a
matrilineal system, and hereditary leadership passes through the female
line of descent, that is, from a mother to her children. The children of a traditional marriage belong to their mother's
clan and gain their social status through hers. Her brothers are important teachers and mentors to the children, especially introducing boys to men's roles and societies. If a couple separates, the woman traditionally keeps the children. Moreover, several other factors influenced the position of Haudenosaunee women. The exhaustion of the beavers' population led to men traveling for longer distances; this resulted in women having a more influential role in their societies because of the long absence of men. Another factor that influenced women's position shift was the reorganization of the political structure. The changes were influential as elected representatives instead of women-appointed sachems. The status of Haudenosaunee women inspired and had an impact on the early Feminist American movement. This was seen in the Seneca Fall Convention of 1848, the first feminist convention. For example,
Matilda Gage, a prominent member of the convention, wrote extensively about the Haudenosaunee throughout her life.
Elizabeth Cady lived in close proximity to the Seneca tribe of the Haudenosaunee and had a relative and a neighbor who was adopted by the Seneca tribe as well. Women also held an important position as Agoianders. The Agoianders were named for their perceived good qualities. They served a wide variety of social, political and diplomatic functions. Historically women have held the dwellings, horses and farmed land, and a woman's property before marriage has stayed in her possession without being mixed with that of her husband. The work of a woman's hands is hers to do with as she sees fit. Historically, at marriage, a young couple lived in the longhouse of the wife's family (
matrilocality). A woman choosing to divorce a shiftless or otherwise unsatisfactory husband is able to ask him to leave the dwelling and take his possessions with him.
Spiritual beliefs Like many cultures, the Haudenosaunee's spiritual beliefs changed over time and varied across tribes. Generally, the Haudenosaunee believed in numerous deities, including the
Great Spirit, the Thunderer, and the Three Sisters (the spirits of
beans, maize, and
squash). The Great Spirit was thought to have created plants, animals, and humans to control "the forces of good in nature", and to guide ordinary people.
Orenda was the Iroquoian name for the magical potence found in people and their environment. The Haudenosaunee believed in the
orenda, the spiritual force that flowed through all things, and believed if people were respectful of nature, then the
orenda would be harnessed to bring about positive results. There were three types of spirits for the Haudenosaunee: 1) Those living on the earth 2) Those living above the earth and 3) the highest level of spirits controlling the universe from high above with the highest of those beings known variously as the Great Spirit, the Great Creator or the Master of Life. Sources provide different stories about Haudenosaunee creation beliefs. Brascoupé and Etmanskie focus on the first person to walk the earth, called the Skywoman or Aientsik. Aientsik's daughter Tekawerahkwa gave birth to twins, Tawiskaron, who created vicious animals and river rapids, while Okwiraseh created "all that is pure and beautiful". After a battle where Okwiraseh defeated Tawiskaron, Tawiskaron was confined to "the dark areas of the world", where he governed the night and destructive creatures. Other scholars present the "twins" as the Creator and his brother, Flint. The Creator was responsible for game animals, while Flint created predators and disease. Saraydar (1990) suggests the Haudenosaunee do not see the twins as polar opposites but understood their relationship to be more complex, noting "Perfection is not to be found in gods or humans or the worlds they inhabit." Descriptions of Haudenosaunee spiritual history consistently refer to dark times of terror and misery prior to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, ended by the arrival of the
Great Peacemaker. Tradition asserts that the Peacemaker demonstrated his authority as the Creator's messenger by climbing a tall tree above a waterfall, having the people cut down the tree, and reappearing the next morning unharmed. The Peacemaker restored mental health to a few of the most "violent and dangerous men", Ayonhwatha and Thadodaho, who then helped him bear the message of peace to others. After the arrival of the Europeans, some Haudenosaunee became Christians, among them the first Native American Saint,
Kateri Tekakwitha, a young woman of Mohawk-Algonquin parents. The Seneca sachem
Handsome Lake, also known as Ganeodiyo, introduced a new religious system to the Haudenosaunee in the late 18th century, which incorporated Quaker beliefs along with traditional Iroquoian culture. Handsome Lake's teachings include a focus on parenting, appreciation of life, and peace. A key aspect of Handsome Lake's teachings is the principle of equilibrium, wherein each person's talents combined into a functional community. By the 1960s, at least 50% of Haudenosaunee followed this religion. Dreams play a significant role in Haudenosaunee spirituality, providing information about a person's desires and prompting individuals to fulfill dreams. To communicate upward, humans can send prayers to spirits by burning tobacco. Condolence ceremonies are conducted by the Haudenosaunee for both ordinary and important people, but most notably when a hoyane (sachem) died. Such ceremonies were still held on Haudenosaunee reservations as late as the 1970s. After death, the soul is thought to embark on a journey, undergo a series of ordeals, and arrive in the sky world. This journey is thought to take one year, during which the Haudenosaunee mourn for the dead. After the mourning period, a feast is held to celebrate the soul's arrival in the skyworld. "Keepers of the faith" are part-time specialists who conduct religious ceremonies. Both men and women can be appointed as keepers of the faith by tribe elders.
Haudenosaunee thanksgiving address The Haudenosaunee thanksgiving address is a central prayer in Haudenosaunee tradition recited daily in the beginning of school days as well as social, cultural, and political events. The address gives thanks to the parts of nature necessary to ecosystem sustainability and emphasizes the ideology that all animals and plants within an ecosystem are connected and each plays a vital role in it. The phrasing of the address may vary depending on the speaker but is usually composed of 17 main sections and ends with a closing prayer. The 17 main sections are: 1) The people, 2) The Earth Mother, 3) The waters, 4) The fish, 5) plants, 6) food plants,7) medicine herbs, 8) animals, 9) trees, 10) birds, 11) four winds, 12) The Thunderers, 13) The Sun, 14) Grandmother Moon, 15) The stars, 16) The Enlightened Teachers, and 17) The Creator. Within each section, gratitude is given for the gifts that section provides to humanity. The address serves as a pledge of gratitude as well as a "scientific inventory of the natural world". By describing living and non-living elements of the ecosystem and their functions, uses and benefits, the pledge instills early concepts of
traditional ecological knowledge within grade school children and onward. After asking permission from
Oren Lyons, a spiritual leader of the
Onondaga Nation,
Robin Wall Kimmerer included the Haudenosaunee thanksgiving address in her book
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.
Festivals The Haudenosaunee traditionally celebrate several major festivals throughout the year. Haudenosaunee ceremonies are primarily concerned with farming, healing, and thanksgiving. Key festivals correspond to the agricultural calendar, and include Maple, Planting, Strawberry, Green Maize, Harvest, and Mid-Winter (or New Year's), which is held in early February. The ceremonies were given by the Creator to the Haudenosaunee to balance good with evil. In the 17th century, Europeans described the Haudenosaunee as having 17 festivals, but only 8 are observed today. The most important of the ceremonies were the New Year Festival, the Maple Festival held in late March to celebrate spring, the Sun Shooting Festival which also celebrates spring, the Seed Dance in May to celebrate the planting of the crops, the Strawberry Festival in June to celebrate the ripening of the strawberries, the Thunder Ceremony to bring rain in July, the Green Bean Festival in early August, the Green Corn Festival in late August and the Harvest Festival in October. Of all the festivals, the most important were the Green Corn Festival to celebrate the maturing of the corn and the New Year Festival. During all of the festivals, men and women from the False Face Society, the Medicine Society and the Husk Face Society dance wearing their masks in attempt to humor the spirits that controlled nature. The most important of the occasions for the masked dancers to appear were the New Year Festival, which was felt to be an auspicious occasion to chase the malevolent spirits that were believed to cause disease. An important ritual in the New Year Festival was the White Dog Sacrifice. During this ritual a pure white dog would be strangled before being decorated with ribbons, spots of red paint, and a collar of wampum. The dog would then be hung up on a long pole for a few days. Afterwards, it would be taken down and thrown in a fire with tobacco while speeches were read. The White Dog Sacrifice may have had varying religious significance among the tribes of the Haudenosaunee, with the Seneca viewing the ritual as sending the dog to the Great Creator as a messenger.
Art Haudenosaunee art includes a wide range of visual forms, including wood carving, pottery, quillwork, beadwork, basketry, husk work, silverwork, clothing, jewelry, and wampum. Historically, Haudenosaunee artists used animal, human, and geometric imagery on wood, bowls, pottery, and clay pipes, while later beadwork and related arts often featured floral designs. In the 19th century, the Haudenosaunee Realist School adapted Haudenosaunee subjects and stories to watercolor and other flat media, and in the 20th and 21st centuries Haudenosaunee artists worked across painting, sculpture, assemblage, video, and site-specific installation. Modern Haudenosaunee art often addresses history, colonialism, cultural continuity, innovation, and resilience.
Games and sports The favorite sport of the Haudenosaunee is
lacrosse ( in Seneca). The poles were about high and placed about apart. A goal was scored by carrying or throwing a deer-skin ball between the goal posts using netted sticks—touching the ball with hands was prohibited. The game was played to a score of five or seven. The modern version of lacrosse remains popular among the Haudenasaunee to this day. The
First Nations Lacrosse Association is recognized by
World Lacrosse as a sovereign state for international lacrosse competitions. It is the only sport in which the Haudenosaunee field national teams and the only
Indigenous people's organization sanctioned for international competition by any world sporting governing body. A popular winter game was the
snow-snake game.
Cannibalism Although the Haudenosaunee are sometimes mentioned as examples of groups who practiced
cannibalism, the evidence is mixed as to whether such a practice could be said to be widespread among the Six Nations, and to whether it was a notable cultural feature. Some anthropologists have found evidence of ritual
torture and cannibalism at Haudenosaunee sites, for example, among the
Onondaga in the sixteenth century. However, other scholars, such as anthropologist William Arens in his controversial book,
The Man-Eating Myth, have challenged the evidence, suggesting the human bones found at sites point to
funerary practices, asserting that if cannibalism was practiced among the Haudenosaunee, it was not widespread. Modern anthropologists seem to accept the probability that cannibalism did exist among the Haudenosaunee, with Thomas Abler describing the evidence from the Jesuit Relations and archaeology as making a "case for cannibalism in early historic times ... so strong that it cannot be doubted." The missionaries Johannes Megapolensis,
François-Joseph Bressani, and the fur trader
Pierre-Esprit Radisson present first-hand accounts of cannibalism among the Mohawk. A common theme is ritualistic roasting and eating the heart of a captive who has been tortured and killed. "To eat your enemy is to perform an extreme form of physical dominance."
Slavery Haudenosaunee peoples participated in "mourning wars" to obtain captives. Leland Donald suggests that captives and slaves were interchangeable roles. There have been archaeological studies to support that Haudenosaunee peoples did in fact have a hierarchical system that included slaves. The term 'slave' in Haudenosaunee culture is identified by spiritual and revengeful purposes, not to be mistaken for the term in the
African slave trade. However, once African slavery was introduced into North America by European settlers, some Haudenosaunee, such as Mohawk chief Joseph Brant, owned African slaves. Slaves brought onto Haudenosaunee territory were mainly adopted into families or kin groups that had lost a person. Even so, if that person had been vital for the community, they "were usually replaced by other kin-group members" and "captives were ... adopted to fill lesser places". During adoption rituals, slaves were to reject their former life and be renamed as part of their "genuine assimilation". The key goal of Haudenosaunee slavery practices was to have slaves assimilate to Haudenosaunee culture to rebuild population after one or many deaths. Children and Indigenous peoples of villages neighbouring the Haudenosaunee are said to have been good slaves because of their better ability to assimilate. In any case the role of a slave was not a limited position, and whenever slaves were available for capture they were taken, no matter their age, race, gender etc. Once adopted, slaves in Haudenosaunee communities had some potential to move up in society. Since slaves were replacing dead nation members, they took on the role of that former member if they could prove that they could live up to it. Their rights within the aforementioned framework were still limited though, meaning slaves performed chores or labor for their adoptive families. Also, there are a few cases where slaves were never adopted into families and their only role was to perform tasks in the village. These types of slaves might have been used solely for exchange. Slaves were often tortured once captured by the Haudenosaunee. Torture methods consisted of, most notably, finger mutilation, among other things. Slaves endured torture not only on their journey back to Haudenosaunee nations, but also during initiation rituals and sometimes throughout their enslavement. Finger mutilation was common as a sort of marking of a slave. In "Northern Iroquoian Slavery", Starna and Watkins suggest that sometimes torture was so brutal that captives died before being adopted. Initial torture upon entry into the Haudenosaunee culture also involved binding, bodily mutilation with weapons, and starvation, and for female slaves: sexual assault. Starvation may have lasted longer depending on the circumstance.
Louis Hennepin was captured by Haudenosaunee peoples in the 17th century and recalled being starved during his adoption as one of "Aquipaguetin's" replacement sons. Indigenous slaves were also starved by their captors, as Hennepin was. The brutality of Haudenosaunee slavery was not without its purposes; torture was used to demonstrate a power dynamic between the slave and the "master" to constantly remind the slave that they were inferior. Language played another role in Haudenosaunee slavery practices. Slaves were often referred to as "domestic animals" or "dogs" being equivalent to the word for "slave". This terminology suggests that slaves were dehumanized, "domesticated" or perhaps even eaten as Haudenosaunee peoples ate dogs.
Jacques Bruyas wrote a dictionary of the
Mohawk language where the word is defined as (English: "domestic animal, butler, slave"). There are also more accounts of slaves being compared to animals (mostly dogs), composed in the
Oneida and
Onondaga languages. This nomenclature serves as a proof not only that slavery did exist, but also that slaves were at the bottom of the hierarchy. Haudenosaunee slavery practices changed after European contact. With the arrival of European-introduced infectious diseases, came an increase in Haudenosaunee peoples taking captives, as their population kept decreasing. During the 17th century, Haudenosaunee peoples banded together to stand against settlers. By the end of the century, Haudenosaunee populations were made up mostly of captives from other nations. Among the Indigenous groups targeted by the Haudenosaunee were the
Wyandot, who were captured in such large numbers that they lost their independence for a long period of time. "Mourning wars" became essential to rebuilding their numbers, while at the same time Haudenosaunee warriors began launching raids on European colonial settlements. Similarly to Indigenous slaves, European slaves were tortured by the Haudenosaunee using finger mutilation and sometimes cannibalism. European captives did not make good slaves because they resisted even more than Indigenous captives, and did not understand rituals such as renaming and forgetting their past. For this reason most European captives were either used as ransom or murdered upon arrival to Haudenosaunee territory. Many Europeans who were not captured became trading partners with the Haudenosaunee. Indigenous slaves were now being traded among European settlers, and some slaves even ended up in Quebec households. Eventually, European contact led to adoptees outnumbering the Haudenosaunee in their own communities. The difficulty of controlling these slaves in large numbers ended Haudenosaunee slavery practices. ==Government==