Quotes About Iroquois

in the late 1970s, the controversial "Iroquois influence theory" posits that the Longhouse People's divinely given Great Law of Peace so inspired Franklin and others among the founding fathers that it served as the model for the Articles of Confederation, the governing document of the United States for the first decade of its existence, and the precursor of the Constitution ratified in 1787.

In 1768, at Fort Stanwix in New York's Mohawk Valley, British Americans negotiated a treaty with the Six Nations which placed most of the Iroquois land off-limits to white settlement. In return, the Iroquois ceded all rights to the land south and east of the Ohio River—land which was inhabited by other groups of Native Americans, not themselves.

Most of the Iroquois, however warlike, suspected it was in their own best interests to sit this one out. But that was not easily done, for the pressures to become involved only intensified.

In 1776 the wording in the Declaration of Independence—"the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions"—played well to a white audience, but it did not win any friends among Native Americans. Even as the patriots tried to convince the Iroquois to remain neutral, they pushed many into the enemy camp through hostile actions and attitudes.

Iroquois had shed the blood of their brothers; the League of the Six Nations had been torn apart by the white man's war. Iroquois warriors were no longer observers to the contest, nor incidental participants. Senecas and Oneidas alike suddenly embraced the war as their own and sought revenge for their losses.

In Iroquois society, leaders are encouraged to remember seven generations in the past and consider seven generations in the future when making decisions that affect the people.

the Iroquois take dreams very seriously. They see them as the secret wishes of the soul--the heart's desire, so to speak. Not all dreams, maybe, but the important ones. [p.254]

I tell the story of eight forgotten founders, people like Canassatego, an Iroquois Indian Chief, who taught Benjamin Franklin about federalism, about the idea that you can form a confederacy in which the central power has only limited powers and local control is retained.

a full-blooded Seneca Iroquois sachem, Ely S. Parker, who grew up on an Indian reservation in upstate New York and was a chief of the Six Nations. Trained as a civil engineer, he was a man of giant girth with jet-black hair, penetrating eyes, and exceptional strength who styled himself a "savage Jack Falstaff of 200 [pound] weight.

Many of the Iroquois and Huron houses were of similar construction, the partitions being at the sides only, leaving a wide passage down the middle of the house.

Mohawk Indians are part of the large Iroquois nation. And the Iroquois Indians lived in longhouses, not teepees.

Given the profound alienation of modern society, when combat vets say that they miss the war, they might be having an entirely healthy response to life back home. Iroquois warriors did not have to struggle with that sort of alienation because warfare and society existed in such close proximity that there was effectively no transition from one to the other.

Winston Churchill was not entirely British. His mother was American, making Sir Winston part Iroquois Indian.

The Huron and Iroquois forests are peopled by my friends; with me, the despots of Europe and their courts are the savages.

The women tended the crops and took general charge of village affairs while the men were always hunting or fishing. And since they supplied the moccasins and food for warring expeditions, they had some control over military matters. As Gary B. Nash notes in his fascinating study of early America, Red, White, and Black: "Thus power was shared between the sexes and the European idea of male dominancy and female subordination in all things was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society.

Thus power was shared between the sexes and the European idea of male dominancy and female subordination in all things was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society.

Children in Iroquois society, while taught the cultural heritage of their people and solidarity with the tribe, were also taught to be independent, not to submit to overbearing authority. They were taught equality in status and the sharing of possessions. The Iroquois did not use harsh punishment on children; they did not insist on early weaning or early toilet training, but gradually allowed the child to learn self-care.

He said the Iroquois was "completed and OK." Neither of those things were true.

And that was when the massive crowd in the Iroquois Theater auditorium began to panic.

the model for the U.S. Constitution was not ancient Greece but the Iroquois Confederacy. Then

In my own college life, I got through four years as a government major without learning that women were not just "given" the vote, that the real number of slave rebellions was suppressed because rebelling was contagious, or that the model for the U.S. Constitution was not ancient Greece but the Iroquois Confederacy.

As a symbol of the new United States, Americans chose the eagle clutching a bundle of arrows. They knew that both the eagle and the arrows were symbols of the Iroquois League. Although one arrow is easily broken, no one can break six (or thirteen) at once. John

Catherine Tekakwitha, who are you? Are you (1656-1680)? Is that enough? Are you the Iroquois Virgin? Are you the Lily of the Shores of the Mohawk River? Can I love you in my own way?

had no notion how much resemblance there was between what he was doing, and the original beliefs of the Iroquois