Almost half of the tribes in the United States used to employ "bride-prices" when it came to matrimony. This bride-price, which was set by the potential bride's father, was paid by the potential groom or his family or both, to the family of the potential bride, and usually came in the form of horses, blankets, clothing, cowrie or Dentalia shells, bison meat, deer meat and other foods, animal pelts and skins, physical labor, or hard-to-get textiles, like cotton calico. The higher the bride-price, the higher the value of the bride. And in most of these tribes, it is not as though the potential bride was being bought and paid-for and had nothing to say about it. She could nix the entire agreement at any time.
The bride-price showed several things:
1.) It proved to the daughter how much she was valued by her father and by her mother as a contributing member of the family and the value of those contributions.
2.) It proved to the groom how much his intended was valued by her father and her mother as a contributing member of the family and the value of those contributions.
3.) Provided that the price was met, it proved to the bride how much the groom loved her, wanted her, and how much he would be willing to sacrifice on her behalf.
4.) Provided that the price was met, it proved to the bride's father that the groom was perfectly capable of supporting her and their children.
Because most Native American tribes did not engage in arranged marriages, the first thing that the potential couple had to do was meet each other. This wasn't easy, because in most tribes, he wasn't even allowed to speak to her without a chaperone present lest he compromise her reputation. In fact, Native American women were traditionally treated with great respect as the Givers and Sustainers of Life, and every effort was made to insure that their reputations remained intact. For this reason, in traditional Native American families, couples were not allowed to date. They might notice each other at a tribal dance or ceremony, but the impetus was on him to prove himself worthy of her attention and admiration, and not on her to prove herself worthy of him. So, like the preening birds or other animals in which the male is more attractively plumed and furred, he had to look good and be in excellent physical shape. He also had to show off his hunting, fishing and horsemanship skills, be a brave warrior, be good at sports like Lacrosse, be a good dancer, be a good flutist, drummer, or whistler, and know how to compose beautiful love-songs because she had absolutely nothing to lose by turning him down. After all, she could live in her mother's house or her grandmother's house forever, or move to her own house, and a woman who owned her own fully-furnished house had and still has power.
Once the potential groom had set his sights on a particular young woman and had managed to win her heart, and even before the subject of a bride-price had come up, he would have to run the gauntlet set up by her sisters, her mother, her aunts, her grandmother and her great-grandmother. These women would have known him for all of his life and so they knew all of his foibles, for there are no secrets in small towns, villages or reservations. They would know if he was kind, intelligent, courageous, noble, honest, decent, hard-working, disciplined, wise, spiritual, circumspect and good with children. They would also know if he was rude, brutal, arrogant, dumber than a box of rocks, cowardly, base, dishonest, lazy, short-sighted, greedy, sneaky, mean, sickly, a lousy shot, did not keep his weapons in good repair, was weak, a drunk or a womanizer. And since they were not in love with him, they could be completely objective about him, so it's unlikely that he could successfully pull the wool over their collective and skeptical eyes.
If the potential groom-in-question had managed to win the heart of yon fair maiden and had lived through her female relatives' inquisition, then the issue of the bride-price would come up. And how did the father calculate the value of his daughter? Well, it wasn't just her sentimental value to him as his daughter, or based purely on how pretty she was. Instead, traditional Native American women had many practical domestic skills and those skills determined her worth. Furthermore, those skills had monetary value, and could be used for purchasing other goods, horses, slaves, land, or acquiring cold hard cash which would benefit herself and her family, and by extension, her husband and their children. And the more skills she brought to the negotiating table, the higher her value to her family, and the higher her value to her family, the greater the bride-price to be paid by the groom as compensation for her loss.
So, just to have a little fun with what is otherwise a very serious subject, I thought that I would devise a Bride-Price Calculator. This is in no special order of importance. Please note that these are pre-European-contact, old-fashioned, traditional skills that in no way reflect modern life. Obviously, the higher the number of "Yes" answers, the higher the bride-price to be paid.
1.) Cooking Skills:
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to grow or gather fruit, ripe nuts, berries and the right greens?
Yes____ No ____ Is she a good cook?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to dry, pound and possibly acorns, tree bark, corn, mesquite seeds, water-lily seeds, or other seeds, pods or nuts into pulp and make them into tasty mush or bread?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to dry berries, fruits, vegetables and herbs?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to dry or smoke different kinds of meat?
Yes____ No _____ Does she know how to make edible pemmican if this is a food eaten by your tribe?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to plant and tend a garden and orchard?
Yes____ No _____ Does she have a "green thumb?"
2.) Parenting Skills:
Yes____ No ____ Does she want children?
Yes____ No _____ Is there a good chance that she's fertile?
Yes____ No ____ Is she maternal, protective, hard-working, wise, even-tempered, patient, and nurturing?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to use a bow and arrow and throw a tomahawk or spear in case she needs to protect the children or the tribe from attack?
3.) Sewing Skills:
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to scrape the hair off of hides, separate the sinew for use as thread, soften the hides with the animal's brains, stretch the hide, wash the hide, how long to let it dry in the sun, and how to cut it into appropriate shapes if this is a tradition of your tribe?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to separate fibers from various plants for use as thread and how to prepare said fibers for weaving into clothing or blankets if this is a tradition of your tribe?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to card wool, spin it into yarn and weave it into clothing or blankets, if this is a tradition of your tribe?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to sew tunics, shirts, breechcloths, trousers, vests, dresses, skirts and blankets?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to make moccasins out of deer or elk skin, or sandals out of rush or leather?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to do beading, make fringes, and do quill-work?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to make head-dresses, pouches, saddlebags and other accessories out of animal skins?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to weave baskets and mats?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to make pottery?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to make platters and spoons out of wood or clay?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to make jewelry out of beads, shells, feathers, teeth and/or claws?
4.) Homemaking Skills:
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to make and erect a teepee, a wigwam or wickiup out of wood, bark, branches, or skins?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to keep her home clean, aerated and comfortable?
Yes____ No _____ Does she know how to make and keep a fire burning in the hearth?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to decorate beautifully, efficiently and cost-effectively?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to pack a travois?
5.) Personal Skills:
Yes____ No ____ Does she bathe every day?
Yes____ No ____ Does she brush her teeth, get dressed and brush her hair every day?
Yes____ No ____ Does she know how to shave her husband's beard or head of hair, if that is the custom of your tribe?
Yes____ No ____ Does she have or know how to apply tattoos or war paint if that is the custom of your tribe?
Yes____ No ____ Is she reasonably pleasant, intelligent, wise, honest and kind?
Yes____ No ____ Is she pretty?
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Saturday, June 20, 2015
An Aside on Native American Religions
Just as there are hundreds of Native American tribes, there are probably hundreds of Native American religions with their own special touches, and hundreds of thousands of papers have been written about them in order for white grad students to try to understand them. I won't attempt to try to do that here, at least not fully and certainly not to the depth that they deserve. The best that I can do is to continue to paint Native American religions with a very broad brush to give you a very, very general idea.
The Sweat Lodge:
First, those who wish to avail themselves may visit the sweat lodge, which represents the womb. It used to be that only men could enter and participate in the sweat lodge rituals, but lately, it's been open to women who aren't in "their time of the moon." Sweat lodges can be used by men and women separately or together, but they are only for the truly serious and not for those interested in picking up a date. Nudity is not allowed; Native Americans are very modest and resent their rituals being taken lightly, just as we would.
The sweat lodge itself is usually a circular east-facing lodge, plank house, wickiup or teepee big enough to fit one to twenty people, and is very specific in design. Only specially-trained people are allowed to set one up lest the participants die of exploding rocks, smoke inhalation or heat exhaustion. Those within it are closely supervised and guided on their sacred path by someone called the "Fire-keeper." The Sweat Lodge is, after all, a place for Native Americans to purify and renew themselves, obtain enlightenment, healing, and peace, and find a spiritual refuge in an otherwise discordant and Euro-centric (White Man's) world.
Before participants can enter the sweat lodge, he or she should have fasted for the day and abstained from coffee, tea, drugs or alcohol. Then the participant is smudged. This means that a bundle of leaves and twigs is lit and the smoke is directed toward the participant with an eagle feather because eagles bring prayers to God/the Great Spirit/the Creator and God/the Great Spirit/the Creator sends him back with blessings, peace, happiness and love. Smudge bundles are made of one of the following: sage for cleansing, strength and meaning; sweet-grass (Hierochloe odorata,) for truth and purity; and cedar for healing and comfort. Smudge bundles are also sometimes made of cannabis, lavender, juniper, peppermint, spearmint or a combination thereof, but sage, sweet-grass or cedar are preferred. Some sweat lodges then offer a peace pipe, and others offer the participant the opportunity to give a gift of tobacco or possibly tobacco plus cannabis, which is placed on the sacred fire in the lodge. The smoke of the offering is supposed to carry prayers and thoughts to God/the Creator/the Great Spirit, much like regular incense in Catholic or Episcopal churches or during certain Wiccan rituals.
Once everyone has been seated around the inside edge of the sweat lodge, red hot stones, called the "Stone People" are brought in and placed in a north, east, west, and south position in a pit which is in the middle of the sweat lodge. Introductions by the participants are given, and then the first of four sessions begins. Each session lasts about 30-45 minutes for a total of two to three hours.
If I understand this correctly, at the first session, water is poured on the western rock to create steam, and prayers are offered to recognize the spirit world of the black west, symbolically the unknown and mysterious world of the Afterlife. Next, water is poured on the red-hot northern rock to create steam and prayers are offered in recognition of the courage and strength of the white North, which is interesting because the courageous indigenous peoples from Siberia migrated to the "Turtle Islands" (North America) and then headed south from the snowy North without knowing what they were in for. After that, water is poured on the eastern rock to create steam and prayers are offered in recognition of the wisdom of the Red Road (the Indian Way) or sometimes in recognition of the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ. And finally, water is poured on the southern rock to recognize the healing and growth-potential that comes from the yellow sun. Then everybody leaves the hot, steamy sweat lodge to jump into the brisk water of the nearest river or lake, or to roll around in the snow or sand in order to get all of the oil and sweat off their bodies.
The Native American Church:
The Native American Church relies on weekly gatherings which seem to be held on Saturday nights and continue through to a communal breakfast on Sunday morning. During this time, they gather for prayer, the reading of Bible verses, place an emphasis on the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ, the End of Days, the Resurrection, and baptism by water and hymns. In this way, they aren't too different from most Pentecostal churches. However, many of them also incorporate distinctly Native American touches into their celebrations, depending on the church: The Birth (Blessing) Ceremony, the Sacred Breath Ceremony, The Laying on of Hands (which has mostly to do with herbal healing) Ceremony, the Marriage Blanket Ceremony, the Passing on of the Spirit Ceremony, the Potlatch (Redistribution of Wealth) Ceremony, the Sacred Prayer Pipe to express the unity of all people as Children of the Creator or Great Spirit or God, the Sacred Peyote Ceremony, the Sweat Lodge, the Ghost Dance, the Sun Dance, the Drum Dance, the Green Corn Dance and the Vision Quest, and the use of sacred water drums and the sacred gourd rattles as part of their services. There are approximately 250,000 members of the Native American Church.
Regarding the Sacred Peyote Ceremony: Their leader/medicine man/shaman/priest is called the "Roadman," and it is he who puts the spiritual travelers on the Peyote Road to enlightenment or spiritual awareness. (Please note, you cannot legally take the Peyote Road if you are not at least certifiably one-quarter Native American.) The Sacred Peyote, the use of which goes back 6,000 years, is either ingested as a dried pod or infused in a tea, and is said to allow for communion with the Creator and for healing of any kind. It is not clear at what point the Sacred Peyote is introduced into the service or if it is used in lieu of communion wafers or wine/grape juice, but its use has been linked to a reduction in alcoholism in Native Americans.
Colors also have sacred meaning in the Native American Church. Blue represents the sky and empowerment. Green represents the river and healing. Yellow represents the earth and the Road of Life. Red represents fire and either Jesus Christ or prayer or the Sacred Pipe which is made of red pipestone. Black represents water and purification, and white represents the smoke of tobacco. It should be noted that the meanings ascribed to the colors probably vary depending on the tribe or congregation.
Traditional Tribal Religions:
These vary tribe by tribe and healer by healer, but they usually contain a few, some, most or all of the Native American rituals: the Birth (Blessing) Ceremony, the Sacred Breath Ceremony, The Laying on of Hands (which has mostly to do with herbal healing) Ceremony, the Marriage Blanket Ceremony, the Passing on of the Spirit Ceremony, the Potlatch (Redistribution of Wealth) Ceremony, the Sacred Prayer Pipe to express the unity of all people as Children of the Creator or Great Spirit or God, the Sacred Peyote Ceremony, the Sweat Lodge, the Ghost Dance, the Sun Dance, the Drum Dance, the Green Corn Dance, storytelling and the Vision Quest. Their goal is to instruct, purify, renew, obtain enlightenment, healing, and peace, to find a Oneness with the Great Spirit or the Creator and with Nature, and a spiritual refuge in an otherwise discordant and Euro-centric (White Man's) world.
Certain tribes also have interesting ceremonies and religions. The Quapaw, for example, have a Half-Moon ceremony in which tobacco is used, but not the Bible, and a Big Moon ceremony in which the Bible is read, but no tobacco is used. Those who practice Midewiwin in the Algonquin tribes engage in very secret healing ceremonies concerning the Mystery of the Sacred Medicine and the transference of souls (at least as far as I can fathom.) Certain tribes in California, like the Pomo and the Miwok, have secret underground dances in celebration of Kuksu, a red-beaked supernatural healer who lives in a sweat-lodge at the southern end of the world.
The Iroquois Nations, especially the Seneca, follow the teachings of Handsome Lake, a Seneca recovering alcoholic who saw what has happening to his people after they had been consigned to reservations and preached an updated version of The Great Law of Peace in which he outlawed drunkenness, witchcraft, sexual promiscuity, wife-beating and quarreling, all by-products of excessive drinking. Some Siouan-speakers may not believe in a Great Spirit, per se, but they believe in "Wakan Tanka," which is the divine essence in every living and inanimate thing. The famous Kachina dolls of the tribes in the Southwest are said to represent powerful male and female spiritual beings who brought forth rain and provided other blessings, but then humans took them for granted, so the Kachina left, and the Kachina costumes worn by the male dancers allow the dancers to become one with the Kachina whom they are representing. And several indigenous religions predict the end of White Man's domination of this continent and a return to Native Americans ways.
White Man's Religions:
Only 4% of the Native Americans identify themselves as Christian, which is understandable, in light of the historically brutal, imperialist, and racist efforts to convert them, not that anyone has tried those methods in several years. These White Man's Religions include the Roman Catholic Church, the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church, the Episcopal Church, the many Pentecostal churches, and the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons.)
Unfortunately, it wasn't that long ago that Native American children were separated from their mothers and their fathers and forced to live in church-run boarding school in order to educate them, assimilate them into white society, and leech away their senses of tribal identity. Many of these boarding schools are still in operation today, but hopefully, with courses that recognize their tribal heritage.
The Sweat Lodge:
First, those who wish to avail themselves may visit the sweat lodge, which represents the womb. It used to be that only men could enter and participate in the sweat lodge rituals, but lately, it's been open to women who aren't in "their time of the moon." Sweat lodges can be used by men and women separately or together, but they are only for the truly serious and not for those interested in picking up a date. Nudity is not allowed; Native Americans are very modest and resent their rituals being taken lightly, just as we would.
The sweat lodge itself is usually a circular east-facing lodge, plank house, wickiup or teepee big enough to fit one to twenty people, and is very specific in design. Only specially-trained people are allowed to set one up lest the participants die of exploding rocks, smoke inhalation or heat exhaustion. Those within it are closely supervised and guided on their sacred path by someone called the "Fire-keeper." The Sweat Lodge is, after all, a place for Native Americans to purify and renew themselves, obtain enlightenment, healing, and peace, and find a spiritual refuge in an otherwise discordant and Euro-centric (White Man's) world.
Before participants can enter the sweat lodge, he or she should have fasted for the day and abstained from coffee, tea, drugs or alcohol. Then the participant is smudged. This means that a bundle of leaves and twigs is lit and the smoke is directed toward the participant with an eagle feather because eagles bring prayers to God/the Great Spirit/the Creator and God/the Great Spirit/the Creator sends him back with blessings, peace, happiness and love. Smudge bundles are made of one of the following: sage for cleansing, strength and meaning; sweet-grass (Hierochloe odorata,) for truth and purity; and cedar for healing and comfort. Smudge bundles are also sometimes made of cannabis, lavender, juniper, peppermint, spearmint or a combination thereof, but sage, sweet-grass or cedar are preferred. Some sweat lodges then offer a peace pipe, and others offer the participant the opportunity to give a gift of tobacco or possibly tobacco plus cannabis, which is placed on the sacred fire in the lodge. The smoke of the offering is supposed to carry prayers and thoughts to God/the Creator/the Great Spirit, much like regular incense in Catholic or Episcopal churches or during certain Wiccan rituals.
Once everyone has been seated around the inside edge of the sweat lodge, red hot stones, called the "Stone People" are brought in and placed in a north, east, west, and south position in a pit which is in the middle of the sweat lodge. Introductions by the participants are given, and then the first of four sessions begins. Each session lasts about 30-45 minutes for a total of two to three hours.
If I understand this correctly, at the first session, water is poured on the western rock to create steam, and prayers are offered to recognize the spirit world of the black west, symbolically the unknown and mysterious world of the Afterlife. Next, water is poured on the red-hot northern rock to create steam and prayers are offered in recognition of the courage and strength of the white North, which is interesting because the courageous indigenous peoples from Siberia migrated to the "Turtle Islands" (North America) and then headed south from the snowy North without knowing what they were in for. After that, water is poured on the eastern rock to create steam and prayers are offered in recognition of the wisdom of the Red Road (the Indian Way) or sometimes in recognition of the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ. And finally, water is poured on the southern rock to recognize the healing and growth-potential that comes from the yellow sun. Then everybody leaves the hot, steamy sweat lodge to jump into the brisk water of the nearest river or lake, or to roll around in the snow or sand in order to get all of the oil and sweat off their bodies.
The Native American Church:
The Native American Church relies on weekly gatherings which seem to be held on Saturday nights and continue through to a communal breakfast on Sunday morning. During this time, they gather for prayer, the reading of Bible verses, place an emphasis on the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ, the End of Days, the Resurrection, and baptism by water and hymns. In this way, they aren't too different from most Pentecostal churches. However, many of them also incorporate distinctly Native American touches into their celebrations, depending on the church: The Birth (Blessing) Ceremony, the Sacred Breath Ceremony, The Laying on of Hands (which has mostly to do with herbal healing) Ceremony, the Marriage Blanket Ceremony, the Passing on of the Spirit Ceremony, the Potlatch (Redistribution of Wealth) Ceremony, the Sacred Prayer Pipe to express the unity of all people as Children of the Creator or Great Spirit or God, the Sacred Peyote Ceremony, the Sweat Lodge, the Ghost Dance, the Sun Dance, the Drum Dance, the Green Corn Dance and the Vision Quest, and the use of sacred water drums and the sacred gourd rattles as part of their services. There are approximately 250,000 members of the Native American Church.
Regarding the Sacred Peyote Ceremony: Their leader/medicine man/shaman/priest is called the "Roadman," and it is he who puts the spiritual travelers on the Peyote Road to enlightenment or spiritual awareness. (Please note, you cannot legally take the Peyote Road if you are not at least certifiably one-quarter Native American.) The Sacred Peyote, the use of which goes back 6,000 years, is either ingested as a dried pod or infused in a tea, and is said to allow for communion with the Creator and for healing of any kind. It is not clear at what point the Sacred Peyote is introduced into the service or if it is used in lieu of communion wafers or wine/grape juice, but its use has been linked to a reduction in alcoholism in Native Americans.
Colors also have sacred meaning in the Native American Church. Blue represents the sky and empowerment. Green represents the river and healing. Yellow represents the earth and the Road of Life. Red represents fire and either Jesus Christ or prayer or the Sacred Pipe which is made of red pipestone. Black represents water and purification, and white represents the smoke of tobacco. It should be noted that the meanings ascribed to the colors probably vary depending on the tribe or congregation.
Traditional Tribal Religions:
These vary tribe by tribe and healer by healer, but they usually contain a few, some, most or all of the Native American rituals: the Birth (Blessing) Ceremony, the Sacred Breath Ceremony, The Laying on of Hands (which has mostly to do with herbal healing) Ceremony, the Marriage Blanket Ceremony, the Passing on of the Spirit Ceremony, the Potlatch (Redistribution of Wealth) Ceremony, the Sacred Prayer Pipe to express the unity of all people as Children of the Creator or Great Spirit or God, the Sacred Peyote Ceremony, the Sweat Lodge, the Ghost Dance, the Sun Dance, the Drum Dance, the Green Corn Dance, storytelling and the Vision Quest. Their goal is to instruct, purify, renew, obtain enlightenment, healing, and peace, to find a Oneness with the Great Spirit or the Creator and with Nature, and a spiritual refuge in an otherwise discordant and Euro-centric (White Man's) world.
Certain tribes also have interesting ceremonies and religions. The Quapaw, for example, have a Half-Moon ceremony in which tobacco is used, but not the Bible, and a Big Moon ceremony in which the Bible is read, but no tobacco is used. Those who practice Midewiwin in the Algonquin tribes engage in very secret healing ceremonies concerning the Mystery of the Sacred Medicine and the transference of souls (at least as far as I can fathom.) Certain tribes in California, like the Pomo and the Miwok, have secret underground dances in celebration of Kuksu, a red-beaked supernatural healer who lives in a sweat-lodge at the southern end of the world.
The Iroquois Nations, especially the Seneca, follow the teachings of Handsome Lake, a Seneca recovering alcoholic who saw what has happening to his people after they had been consigned to reservations and preached an updated version of The Great Law of Peace in which he outlawed drunkenness, witchcraft, sexual promiscuity, wife-beating and quarreling, all by-products of excessive drinking. Some Siouan-speakers may not believe in a Great Spirit, per se, but they believe in "Wakan Tanka," which is the divine essence in every living and inanimate thing. The famous Kachina dolls of the tribes in the Southwest are said to represent powerful male and female spiritual beings who brought forth rain and provided other blessings, but then humans took them for granted, so the Kachina left, and the Kachina costumes worn by the male dancers allow the dancers to become one with the Kachina whom they are representing. And several indigenous religions predict the end of White Man's domination of this continent and a return to Native Americans ways.
White Man's Religions:
Only 4% of the Native Americans identify themselves as Christian, which is understandable, in light of the historically brutal, imperialist, and racist efforts to convert them, not that anyone has tried those methods in several years. These White Man's Religions include the Roman Catholic Church, the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church, the Episcopal Church, the many Pentecostal churches, and the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons.)
Unfortunately, it wasn't that long ago that Native American children were separated from their mothers and their fathers and forced to live in church-run boarding school in order to educate them, assimilate them into white society, and leech away their senses of tribal identity. Many of these boarding schools are still in operation today, but hopefully, with courses that recognize their tribal heritage.
The Makah - The Whale Hunters
Tribe: The Makah, also spelled "Mukkaw." They call themselves the "Kwih-dich-chuh-ahtx."
Meaning of Name: "Kwih-dich-chuh-ahtx" means "People who live by the rocks and seagulls." The name "Makah" is a mispronunciation of a Salish word meaning, "generous with food." Nonetheless, the Salish were not wrong. The Makah were and probably still are very generous with food.
Location: They own their own reservation on Neah Bay in coastal Washington State. They have been at that location for at least 3,800 years and possibly as long as 9,600 years. There is some indication that they may be related to the Jomon and Ainu people of Japan, the early Polynesians, and therefore to the Valdivians of Ecuador and the Chumash and Kumeyaay of Southern California.
Original Language: Makah, a Nootkan dialect of the Wakashan language family. It is now extinct as a first language, but survives as a second language.
Tribal Affiliations: The Klallam (or Clallam) and the Quileute who live on the same peninsula.
Traditional Enemies: Malak families sometimes fought against other Malak families, especially when it came to fishing rights and family quarrels, but they got along well with their neighbors.
Traditional Style of Housing: The Makah lived during the winter months in villages on the islands of Waadah, Tatoosh, Ozette, Cannon Ball, Bodeltas, and on the island on Lake Ozette. These villages were comprised of multi-generational gabled longhouses that were made of cedar planks which could be removed to let in more light. These longhouses were divided into living quarters for each family, rather like duplexes, triplexes and four-plexes, with mats that hung from the ceiling to set apart the sections. The longhouses could be up to one hundred feet long and often had a totem pole out front in order to advertise the family's importance and history. During the warmer months, the Makah lived in camps in Achawat, Kiddekub and Tatoosh, so that they could be close to the Spring halibut and the Summer salmon, not to mention all of the berries, nuts, seeds and greens that could be gathered during the growing season. (See Traditional Foods.) The Makah also had sweat houses, but I don't know if they were sweat-lodges, per se. They probably also had longhouses that served as town halls, and smokehouses for smoking meats and fish, and menstrual lodges.
Tradition Attire: Because the weather in coastal Washington State was very mild due to the Japanese current, the Malak were not burdened with clothing through most of the year. The women wore skirts made of pounded and softened fibrous cedar bark lined with otter fur, or skirts made out of tule, went barefoot, and wore tunics, fur capes or cloaks, moccasins when it got cold. They wore their hair in one or two long braids, and wore basket-style woven hats. The men either went naked or wore breechcloths. During cold weather, they wore fur-lined cedar-bark tunics, moccasins and their hair coiled into a bun. Some of them wore beards and mustaches (which is unusual for Native Americans) and some of them wore headbands across their foreheads or basket-style woven hats.
Traditional Foods: The men hunted seals, grey whales, right whales, blue whales, fin whales, sperm whales, humpback whales, porpoises, sea otters, beavers and river otters. Seal blubber was used as a condiment, like mayonnaise, ketchup or butter. The Makah men also fished, speared or netted salmon, halibut, lingcod, rockfish, greenling, sea bass, Pacific whiting, anchovies, eels, flounders, herring, Pollock, ray, sand dabs, sea perch, smelt, shark, sculpin, cod, rockfish, steelhead, turtles, candlefish (so called because once dried and wick-ed, it could be used as a candle), whitefish, sole, and octopus. They ate sea snails, the meat from barnacles, King crab, Dungeness crab, other kinds of crab, mussels, scallops, shrimp, geoduck clams, razor clams, other kinds of clams, and oysters. They hunted quail, pheasant, turkeys, geese, bears, deer, elk, moose if necessary, ducks, loons, grebes, pelicans, puffins, swans, hares, rabbits, and other small game when times were lean.
The women, on the other hand, prepared and cooked the meat, fish, sea mammals or shellfish or preserved it by smoking or drying it. Because the land was not conducive to farming and there was so much food around anyway, the women didn't have to rely on gardens to feed their families. Instead, they gathered chokecherries, currants, elderberries, huckleberries, salal berries, gooseberries, wild grapes, Indian plums, raspberries, strawberries, salmonberries, wild blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, camas root, wild carrots, wild onions, dandelion greens, ferns, goosefoot for quinoa, hazelnuts, acorns, miner's lettuce, seaweed, watercress and nettle leaves. The Makah people didn't take more from the land or the sea than they could use or easily trade, and they ate only two big meals a day.
Position of Women: The Chief, or "Head Man" was always a rich man, but the family leaders could be either male or female. Descent was reckoned through the mother's line. The women did the food gathering, the cooking, the meat-smoking, the food-preserving which included making dried cakes out of pulverized berries, the pottery-making, the basket-weaving, pounded the cedar bark into soft fibers and made the clothing, netting and ropes, did the housework, did the childcare, took care of the old people, did the decorating, probably made the wooden platters, and did not seem to have participated much in tribal politics.
Makah Courtship: I could not find anything specific to the Makah people in terms of traditional forms of courtship, other than their preference for musically-complex courtship songs, and the enjoyment of the boy-and-girl Swan Dance and the all-girl Snipe Dance. It is, however, probable that young Makah men had to pay a substantial bride-price demanded by the potential bride's father before he would give up his daughter and her services to the family. It is also very unlikely that Makah girls fell for moonstruck werewolves or glimmering vampires. (The Makah were featured prominently in the "Twilight" books and movies.)
Interesting Tidbits:
The Makah are permitted to kill one baleen whale per year under very specific conditions. They are the only tribe with whaling rights in the United States. The harpoonist gets the saddle-cut, which is the choicest part, and the tribe divides the rest of the carcass according to designated areas, each family getting the same section every year. Every bit of the whale is utilized, prayers are offered for its spirit, and afterwards, there is a huge tribal party and potlatch. Even dead whales that wash up on shore are prayed for and processed for whale oil and bones, since the meat has usually already gone bad....
They used different sizes and types of painted cedar-wood dugout canoes, some with sails, for fishing, whaling, sealing, cargo and war. The larger canoes could hold up to sixty people, and could go twenty miles out to sea where the big whales were. Inflated seal carcasses were hooked up to the dead whale so that it would stay afloat while it was being towed to shore....
Sea otter fur was a valuable trading commodity, and was used to line their clothes. Whale oil was also a valuable trading commodity, and the bones of whales could be used to make a variety of items that were used on a daily basis....
Potlatches were big parties to celebrate different occasions, to boast about accomplishments, to relate oral history, to tell stories, to dance, to sing, to eat a lot of food, to redistribute wealth, and to acquire social status, because the host's social currency went up the more stuff he gave away or destroyed....
White people tried to get the Makah to assimilate by outlawing the Makah language, dances, ceremonies and potlatches and forcing them to move out of their multi-generational longhouses and into single-family dwellings, which did much to destroy the social fabric of the tribe....
The ancient Makah used to play Ping-Pong or table tennis with large paddles, and they took or take daily baths, which, again, made them different than the white people who rarely bathed at all....
While the Makah did not seem to have clans, the crow, the heron, the eagle, the kingfisher, the mink, the raven and the seal seemed to have a special place in their religious story-telling. They are often used in their wooden tribal masks and colorful totem poles....
The entire village of Biheda had to be abandoned because too many people died of smallpox and measles, diseases that did much to wipe out the Makah....
Traditional Religion: The Makah believed in guardian spirits, animals or people who had given special abilities to the living. On the other hand, when a homeowner died, his or her longhouse was either burned to the ground or sold to another family, for fear that his or her ghost would linger on the premises.
Slavery and the Makah: Those who had lost their fortune through bad habits or bad luck, or those who had been captured in war, were sometimes used as slaves to serve in the richer households where they could be made to do the smellier, more disgusting or more tedious jobs.
Current Population: There are over 1200 registered members of the Makah tribe, most of whom live on the reservation.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Fishing, tourism, small businesses, a museum, native arts and crafts, a fish hatchery, several resorts, a marina and sports-fishing, but the poverty-rate of the Makah is still at 51%.
Famous Makah: None.
Meaning of Name: "Kwih-dich-chuh-ahtx" means "People who live by the rocks and seagulls." The name "Makah" is a mispronunciation of a Salish word meaning, "generous with food." Nonetheless, the Salish were not wrong. The Makah were and probably still are very generous with food.
Location: They own their own reservation on Neah Bay in coastal Washington State. They have been at that location for at least 3,800 years and possibly as long as 9,600 years. There is some indication that they may be related to the Jomon and Ainu people of Japan, the early Polynesians, and therefore to the Valdivians of Ecuador and the Chumash and Kumeyaay of Southern California.
Original Language: Makah, a Nootkan dialect of the Wakashan language family. It is now extinct as a first language, but survives as a second language.
Tribal Affiliations: The Klallam (or Clallam) and the Quileute who live on the same peninsula.
Traditional Enemies: Malak families sometimes fought against other Malak families, especially when it came to fishing rights and family quarrels, but they got along well with their neighbors.
Traditional Style of Housing: The Makah lived during the winter months in villages on the islands of Waadah, Tatoosh, Ozette, Cannon Ball, Bodeltas, and on the island on Lake Ozette. These villages were comprised of multi-generational gabled longhouses that were made of cedar planks which could be removed to let in more light. These longhouses were divided into living quarters for each family, rather like duplexes, triplexes and four-plexes, with mats that hung from the ceiling to set apart the sections. The longhouses could be up to one hundred feet long and often had a totem pole out front in order to advertise the family's importance and history. During the warmer months, the Makah lived in camps in Achawat, Kiddekub and Tatoosh, so that they could be close to the Spring halibut and the Summer salmon, not to mention all of the berries, nuts, seeds and greens that could be gathered during the growing season. (See Traditional Foods.) The Makah also had sweat houses, but I don't know if they were sweat-lodges, per se. They probably also had longhouses that served as town halls, and smokehouses for smoking meats and fish, and menstrual lodges.
Tradition Attire: Because the weather in coastal Washington State was very mild due to the Japanese current, the Malak were not burdened with clothing through most of the year. The women wore skirts made of pounded and softened fibrous cedar bark lined with otter fur, or skirts made out of tule, went barefoot, and wore tunics, fur capes or cloaks, moccasins when it got cold. They wore their hair in one or two long braids, and wore basket-style woven hats. The men either went naked or wore breechcloths. During cold weather, they wore fur-lined cedar-bark tunics, moccasins and their hair coiled into a bun. Some of them wore beards and mustaches (which is unusual for Native Americans) and some of them wore headbands across their foreheads or basket-style woven hats.
Traditional Foods: The men hunted seals, grey whales, right whales, blue whales, fin whales, sperm whales, humpback whales, porpoises, sea otters, beavers and river otters. Seal blubber was used as a condiment, like mayonnaise, ketchup or butter. The Makah men also fished, speared or netted salmon, halibut, lingcod, rockfish, greenling, sea bass, Pacific whiting, anchovies, eels, flounders, herring, Pollock, ray, sand dabs, sea perch, smelt, shark, sculpin, cod, rockfish, steelhead, turtles, candlefish (so called because once dried and wick-ed, it could be used as a candle), whitefish, sole, and octopus. They ate sea snails, the meat from barnacles, King crab, Dungeness crab, other kinds of crab, mussels, scallops, shrimp, geoduck clams, razor clams, other kinds of clams, and oysters. They hunted quail, pheasant, turkeys, geese, bears, deer, elk, moose if necessary, ducks, loons, grebes, pelicans, puffins, swans, hares, rabbits, and other small game when times were lean.
The women, on the other hand, prepared and cooked the meat, fish, sea mammals or shellfish or preserved it by smoking or drying it. Because the land was not conducive to farming and there was so much food around anyway, the women didn't have to rely on gardens to feed their families. Instead, they gathered chokecherries, currants, elderberries, huckleberries, salal berries, gooseberries, wild grapes, Indian plums, raspberries, strawberries, salmonberries, wild blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, camas root, wild carrots, wild onions, dandelion greens, ferns, goosefoot for quinoa, hazelnuts, acorns, miner's lettuce, seaweed, watercress and nettle leaves. The Makah people didn't take more from the land or the sea than they could use or easily trade, and they ate only two big meals a day.
Position of Women: The Chief, or "Head Man" was always a rich man, but the family leaders could be either male or female. Descent was reckoned through the mother's line. The women did the food gathering, the cooking, the meat-smoking, the food-preserving which included making dried cakes out of pulverized berries, the pottery-making, the basket-weaving, pounded the cedar bark into soft fibers and made the clothing, netting and ropes, did the housework, did the childcare, took care of the old people, did the decorating, probably made the wooden platters, and did not seem to have participated much in tribal politics.
Makah Courtship: I could not find anything specific to the Makah people in terms of traditional forms of courtship, other than their preference for musically-complex courtship songs, and the enjoyment of the boy-and-girl Swan Dance and the all-girl Snipe Dance. It is, however, probable that young Makah men had to pay a substantial bride-price demanded by the potential bride's father before he would give up his daughter and her services to the family. It is also very unlikely that Makah girls fell for moonstruck werewolves or glimmering vampires. (The Makah were featured prominently in the "Twilight" books and movies.)
Interesting Tidbits:
The Makah are permitted to kill one baleen whale per year under very specific conditions. They are the only tribe with whaling rights in the United States. The harpoonist gets the saddle-cut, which is the choicest part, and the tribe divides the rest of the carcass according to designated areas, each family getting the same section every year. Every bit of the whale is utilized, prayers are offered for its spirit, and afterwards, there is a huge tribal party and potlatch. Even dead whales that wash up on shore are prayed for and processed for whale oil and bones, since the meat has usually already gone bad....
They used different sizes and types of painted cedar-wood dugout canoes, some with sails, for fishing, whaling, sealing, cargo and war. The larger canoes could hold up to sixty people, and could go twenty miles out to sea where the big whales were. Inflated seal carcasses were hooked up to the dead whale so that it would stay afloat while it was being towed to shore....
Sea otter fur was a valuable trading commodity, and was used to line their clothes. Whale oil was also a valuable trading commodity, and the bones of whales could be used to make a variety of items that were used on a daily basis....
Potlatches were big parties to celebrate different occasions, to boast about accomplishments, to relate oral history, to tell stories, to dance, to sing, to eat a lot of food, to redistribute wealth, and to acquire social status, because the host's social currency went up the more stuff he gave away or destroyed....
White people tried to get the Makah to assimilate by outlawing the Makah language, dances, ceremonies and potlatches and forcing them to move out of their multi-generational longhouses and into single-family dwellings, which did much to destroy the social fabric of the tribe....
The ancient Makah used to play Ping-Pong or table tennis with large paddles, and they took or take daily baths, which, again, made them different than the white people who rarely bathed at all....
While the Makah did not seem to have clans, the crow, the heron, the eagle, the kingfisher, the mink, the raven and the seal seemed to have a special place in their religious story-telling. They are often used in their wooden tribal masks and colorful totem poles....
The entire village of Biheda had to be abandoned because too many people died of smallpox and measles, diseases that did much to wipe out the Makah....
Traditional Religion: The Makah believed in guardian spirits, animals or people who had given special abilities to the living. On the other hand, when a homeowner died, his or her longhouse was either burned to the ground or sold to another family, for fear that his or her ghost would linger on the premises.
Slavery and the Makah: Those who had lost their fortune through bad habits or bad luck, or those who had been captured in war, were sometimes used as slaves to serve in the richer households where they could be made to do the smellier, more disgusting or more tedious jobs.
Current Population: There are over 1200 registered members of the Makah tribe, most of whom live on the reservation.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Fishing, tourism, small businesses, a museum, native arts and crafts, a fish hatchery, several resorts, a marina and sports-fishing, but the poverty-rate of the Makah is still at 51%.
Famous Makah: None.
Friday, June 19, 2015
The Powhatan of Virginia
Tribe: The Powhatan. They and other Native American tribes have lived in Virginia since 15,000 BC. In the late 1500's AD, a Powhatan Chief named Wahunsenacawh formed a Confederacy (more like an Empire) of more than thirty smaller chiefdoms. The chiefs of these smaller chiefdoms paid an annual tribute in the form of fish and game to Chief Wahunsenacawh as "The Mamanatowick," the Supreme Chief. Now there are only seven or so remnants of the once mighty Powhatan Confederacy: The Pamunkey, the Mattaponi, the Upper Mattaponi, the Chickahominy, the Eastern Chickahominy, the Nansemond, and the Rappahanock, none of whom have federal tribal recognition. The Pamunkey and the Mattaponi, who have state recognition, still live on ancestral land, but now, instead of sending annual tribute of fish and game to the Mamanatowick, they send fish and game as annual tribute to the Governor of Virginia in accordance with treaties written in 1646 and 1677.
Meaning of Name: "Powhatan" means "Waterfall" in Algonquin.
Location: Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The main chiefdom of the Powhatan was called "Tsenacommacah," (think "Camelot,") which was where the Mamanatowick and his family lived, specifically, in a longhouse large enough to need hallways.
Original Language: Powhatan-Algonquin, a dialect of Algonquin.
Tribal Affiliations: At one time, the Powhatan Confederacy included the Powhatan proper, the
Arrohateck, the Appamattuck, the Pamunkey, the Mattaponi, the Chiskiack, the Kecoughtan, the Youghtanund, the Rapahannocks, the Morgaughtecund, the Weyenoak, the Paspahegh, the Quiyoughcohannock, the Warraskoyack, the Nansemond, the Chickahominy, the Accawmacke, and some fourteen others. These tribes joined the Powhatan Confederacy either by choice, by conquest or because they had married into Chief Wahunsenacawh's family. The Wicocomoco were also their allies.
Traditional Enemies: The Iroquois-speakers, specifically the Tuscarora, the Susquehannock, the Cherokee, the Nottoway and the Meherrin. They also fought with the Monacan and the Manahoac, who spoke Siouan, and the British settlers who spoke English.
Traditional Style of Housing: The Powhatan lived in tall windowless longhouses, called "yehakins," of various sizes that were similar in design to those of the Iroquois, but covered in woven mats which could be removed when the weather got too hot and stuffy. The longhouses were made by the men as part of the bride-price, and were given to and owned by the brides. Their villages were of various sizes, some as small as two longhouses, and others as large as one hundred longhouses, and were set on the high ground to guard against flooding, and enclosed in a 10-to-12-foot tall wooden palisade to guard against wild animals and other tribes. Like the Iroquois, they also had farms, orchards, sweat-lodges, smokehouses, storehouses, and probably a menstrual lodge and a longhouse that was used as a town hall.
Traditional Attire: Virginia is very humid through much of the year, so the Powhatan usually went shirtless, and otherwise wore fringed deerskin skirts and moccasins. Both men and women wore earrings and necklaces, and the men wore a headband across their foreheads with one or two feathers in it. The women wore their hair long, or in braids with bangs, or cut all the same length, and the men wore their hair long and in a knot on the left side, and shaved on the right side so that their hair wouldn't get tangled in their bowstrings. In the cold weather, they wore fur-line or turkey-feather-line blankets and mantles, and when they were in the forest, they wore leggings to protect their legs against the forest undergrowth.
Traditional Foods: The Powhatan were a settled, agrarian people who had very large fields outside of their villages. There, the Powhatan women grew their own corn, beans, squash, gourds and pumpkins. They also gathered or grew their own hazelnuts, filberts, black walnuts, acorns, chestnuts, sunflowers, a wild grain called "chechinquarnins," mulberries, paw paws, persimmons, huckleberries, wild grapes, muskmelon, peaches, melons, cucumbers, peas, peanuts, Indian potatoes, goosefoot for quinoa, knotweed (tastes like rhubarb), wild barley and maygrass, a kind of grain. The men hunted, netted, speared or trapped oysters, crab, scallops, clams, flounder, stingray, skate, crayfish, bear, beaver, panther, skunk, wildcats, possums, rabbits, squirrels, deer, turtles, turtle eggs, water-fowl, and turkey. Once the Europeans arrived in the early 1600's, the Powhatan added beef, mutton, lamb, and pork to their diet. The Powhatan also cultivated tobacco and hemp for making cords and ropes, smoked their meats in smokehouses in order to preserve them, and saved the surplus food in separate longhouses for the lean times.
Position of the Women: The Powhatan women were incredibly busy. They were the barbers, the farmers, the gatherers, the food-producers, the meat processors, the mat-weavers, the tanners, the cooks, the home-owners, the midwives, the herbalists, the healers, the wood-gatherers, the water-carriers, the child-raisers, the clothing manufacturers, the basket-weavers, the potters, the rope-makers, and the carvers of wooden spoons, platters, mortars and pestles. Descent was matrilineal, but unlike the Iroquois, they did not seem to have had clans, Clan Mothers or an active voice in Powhatan government, and a Powhatan husband did not need to seek his wife's permission for anything, although it was advisable since divorces were easy to get and he could soon find himself homeless. The common men weren't terribly powerful either, since the Powhatan Chief seemed to have ruled as something of a tyrant, and his word was law. The common men kept themselves busy by hunting, fishing, making dugout canoes, clearing woodland, keeping their hunting and fishing equipment repaired, playing sports and waging war.
Powhatan Courtship:
Powhatan marriages, for commoners, were of two kinds: romantic or contractual. In a romantic marriage, when a young Powhatan man was interested in a young Powhatan woman, he would bring her family a gift of food, probably fish or game. If it was accepted by her and her family, the father of the prospective bride would discuss the bride-price with the suitor. The higher the bride-price, the greater the value of the bride. As part of the bride-price, the young Powhatan man would build his beloved her own longhouse and provide those things that they would need to start their lives together: a mortar and pestle, mats, pots and bedding. These things would be retained by his bride in the case of a divorce. Then, when everything was completed, the bride would be brought to the groom's father's house, and the groom's father or another male relative would join their hands and they were considered married. Adultery was not uncommon, but in an interesting quirk, the wife did need her husband's permission to take a lover.
In the Marriage by Contract, which was like the Half-Marriage of the Klamath, Modoc and the Yurok tribes on the other side of the continent, if the suitor couldn't meet the full price demanded by the bride's father, or provide the house and furnishing, her father allowed his daughter to marry him, anyway, and the groom moved into his in-laws' longhouse. This marriage was renewed on a year-to-year basis. If they stayed together and didn't renew their vows or get a divorce, their marriage was considered still in effect. This probably also gave the groom time to build his wife her house, and for her to get pregnant, since child-bearing was a large part of the reason to get married. And again, adultery was not uncommon, but the wife did need to have her husband's permission to take a lover.
The marriage of the Powhatan Chief, the Mamanatowick, was a little different. He could marry as many women as he wanted, from any village in his domain or from neighboring tribes if he wanted to form an alliance with the other tribe's chief. Chief Wahunsenacawh, Pocahontas' father, was said to have had as many as one hundred wives. The village girl or princess was joined in marriage to the Mamanatowick, lived in his longhouse until she delivered his child, and then the mother and the child were returned to the tribe from hence she had come. For the next few years, she and the baby were fully supported by the Mamanatowick, and then, when the child had come of age, said child was taken back to the Mamanatowick to be raised in his longhouse as his son or daughter. At that time, the Chief and the mother were considered divorced and she was free to marry again. The only requirement was that she could not take any lovers until she and the Chief were formally divorced.
Interesting Tidbits:
The English were not the first Europeans whom the Powhatan had met. Their land was "claimed for Spain" by Spanish explorer Esteban Gomez in 1525. Other Spaniards followed and a few of them managed to kidnap and enslave the young son of a Powhatan chief. Jesuit missionaries established a mission called "Ajacan" in 1570 which was burned to the ground by the Powhatan who were probably tired of their attempts to exploit them, enslave them, and convert them to Catholicism by using techniques advanced during the Spanish Inquisition.
The Powhatan bathed in the rivers in the morning, which was quite unlike the 16th Century Spanish Jesuits or the 17th Century Brits who rarely if ever bathed at all.
The Powhaitan recognized and celebrated five seasons: The Budding Season, the Earing of Corn Season, the Highest Sun Season, the Corn Harvest Season and "Cohonk," which was winter, when migrating geese made their "honking" sounds. They observed a lunar calendar and reckoned time by the sun's position: Rising, Power, and Lowering. This probably made the British a little crazy when it came to making appointments with the Powhatan.
Self-control and respect for other people were of paramount importance to the Powhatan. This led to problems with the British, because when they saw the Powhatan listening quietly to their demands, they took their silence as consent, and in reality, the Powhatan were merely being polite. The Powhatan also tended to retreat after an attack in order for their enemies to come to their senses and surrender or leave the territory, but the British tended to interpret this lull as an opportunity to counter-attack.
By the early 1700's, most of the Powhatan had died of diseases brought from by the British settlers. The population was partially increased by the addition of escaped African slaves and escaped white indentured servants whom the Powhatan welcomed into their tribe, and the end result was considerable mixing of ethnicities. This later resulted in the 'paper genocide" of the Powhatan people, since under the Racial Integrity Law of 1924, people were classified as either "White" or "Colored" (meaning having at least one drop of African blood). This deprived many Powhatan of their tribal heritage and benefits thereof, since they were now considered 100% black. The birth certificates, marriage licenses, census records, and death certificates of the Powhatan and other Native American tribes were destroyed to remove all traces of Native American blood in Virginia. This meant that Native American children who lived in Virginia could not get high school diplomas, and that young Native American adults could not marry whom they wanted until the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Loving vs. Virginia in 1967.
The Powhatan added many words to the American and English vocabulary: Caucus, chipmunk, hominy, moccasin, opossum, pecan, persimmon, Powwow, raccoon and tomahawk, to name a few.
Traditional Religion: Traditional tribal religion and Christianity.
Slavery and the Powhatan: The British, when they arrived in Virginia, followed in the footsteps of the brutal Spanish Jesuits and abused the hospitality that they were offered by the Native Americans. Captain John Smith informed his men to treat the natives badly, to compel them to drudgery, work and slavery, and to take by force that which they wanted. It is no wonder that Chief Wahunsenacawh wanted to have him executed, because after John Smith's life was saved by Pocahontas, the situation between the British and the Powhatan did not improve until she married John Rolfe, and after she died in 1617 and Chief Wahunsenacawh died in 1618, the hostilities resumed and then got worse.
As stated before, because escaped white indentured servants and escaped African slaves were welcomed on Powhatan land, there was considerable intermarriage. Unfortunately, racism was rampant, and an "Indian" was considered an "Indian" only as long as he or she were on the reservation. If they stepped off of it, or if the reservation was sold out from under them and they lost their tribal status, the Powhatan were considered "Colored" and liable to become enslaved and transported to the Deep South. Not surprisingly, the Powhatan fought on the side of the Union, probably in otherwise black companies, during the Civil War.
Current Population: There are currently over 3800 registered Powhatan.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Revenue gained from renting duck blinds and duck hunting on tribal land, museums, tourism, a fish hatchery, and a winery.
Famous Powhatan: Pocahontas, the favorite daughter of Chief Wahunsenacawh, who was the Mamanatowick of the Powhatan. She was actually married to Englishman John Rolfe, not John Smith, Disney movie notwithstanding, but is said to have been instrumental in saving John Smith from execution when she was eleven years-old. Her marriage at age eighteen to tobacco-planter John Rolfe was the first interracial marriage in Virginia, and possibly in the Colonies, and allowed peace to exist between the British and the Powhatan for at least three years. Her father, Chief Wahunsenacawh, gave the happy couple hundreds of acres of land as a wedding present which I believe John Rolfe turned into a tobacco plantation.
Meaning of Name: "Powhatan" means "Waterfall" in Algonquin.
Location: Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The main chiefdom of the Powhatan was called "Tsenacommacah," (think "Camelot,") which was where the Mamanatowick and his family lived, specifically, in a longhouse large enough to need hallways.
Original Language: Powhatan-Algonquin, a dialect of Algonquin.
Tribal Affiliations: At one time, the Powhatan Confederacy included the Powhatan proper, the
Arrohateck, the Appamattuck, the Pamunkey, the Mattaponi, the Chiskiack, the Kecoughtan, the Youghtanund, the Rapahannocks, the Morgaughtecund, the Weyenoak, the Paspahegh, the Quiyoughcohannock, the Warraskoyack, the Nansemond, the Chickahominy, the Accawmacke, and some fourteen others. These tribes joined the Powhatan Confederacy either by choice, by conquest or because they had married into Chief Wahunsenacawh's family. The Wicocomoco were also their allies.
Traditional Enemies: The Iroquois-speakers, specifically the Tuscarora, the Susquehannock, the Cherokee, the Nottoway and the Meherrin. They also fought with the Monacan and the Manahoac, who spoke Siouan, and the British settlers who spoke English.
Traditional Style of Housing: The Powhatan lived in tall windowless longhouses, called "yehakins," of various sizes that were similar in design to those of the Iroquois, but covered in woven mats which could be removed when the weather got too hot and stuffy. The longhouses were made by the men as part of the bride-price, and were given to and owned by the brides. Their villages were of various sizes, some as small as two longhouses, and others as large as one hundred longhouses, and were set on the high ground to guard against flooding, and enclosed in a 10-to-12-foot tall wooden palisade to guard against wild animals and other tribes. Like the Iroquois, they also had farms, orchards, sweat-lodges, smokehouses, storehouses, and probably a menstrual lodge and a longhouse that was used as a town hall.
Traditional Attire: Virginia is very humid through much of the year, so the Powhatan usually went shirtless, and otherwise wore fringed deerskin skirts and moccasins. Both men and women wore earrings and necklaces, and the men wore a headband across their foreheads with one or two feathers in it. The women wore their hair long, or in braids with bangs, or cut all the same length, and the men wore their hair long and in a knot on the left side, and shaved on the right side so that their hair wouldn't get tangled in their bowstrings. In the cold weather, they wore fur-line or turkey-feather-line blankets and mantles, and when they were in the forest, they wore leggings to protect their legs against the forest undergrowth.
Traditional Foods: The Powhatan were a settled, agrarian people who had very large fields outside of their villages. There, the Powhatan women grew their own corn, beans, squash, gourds and pumpkins. They also gathered or grew their own hazelnuts, filberts, black walnuts, acorns, chestnuts, sunflowers, a wild grain called "chechinquarnins," mulberries, paw paws, persimmons, huckleberries, wild grapes, muskmelon, peaches, melons, cucumbers, peas, peanuts, Indian potatoes, goosefoot for quinoa, knotweed (tastes like rhubarb), wild barley and maygrass, a kind of grain. The men hunted, netted, speared or trapped oysters, crab, scallops, clams, flounder, stingray, skate, crayfish, bear, beaver, panther, skunk, wildcats, possums, rabbits, squirrels, deer, turtles, turtle eggs, water-fowl, and turkey. Once the Europeans arrived in the early 1600's, the Powhatan added beef, mutton, lamb, and pork to their diet. The Powhatan also cultivated tobacco and hemp for making cords and ropes, smoked their meats in smokehouses in order to preserve them, and saved the surplus food in separate longhouses for the lean times.
Position of the Women: The Powhatan women were incredibly busy. They were the barbers, the farmers, the gatherers, the food-producers, the meat processors, the mat-weavers, the tanners, the cooks, the home-owners, the midwives, the herbalists, the healers, the wood-gatherers, the water-carriers, the child-raisers, the clothing manufacturers, the basket-weavers, the potters, the rope-makers, and the carvers of wooden spoons, platters, mortars and pestles. Descent was matrilineal, but unlike the Iroquois, they did not seem to have had clans, Clan Mothers or an active voice in Powhatan government, and a Powhatan husband did not need to seek his wife's permission for anything, although it was advisable since divorces were easy to get and he could soon find himself homeless. The common men weren't terribly powerful either, since the Powhatan Chief seemed to have ruled as something of a tyrant, and his word was law. The common men kept themselves busy by hunting, fishing, making dugout canoes, clearing woodland, keeping their hunting and fishing equipment repaired, playing sports and waging war.
Powhatan Courtship:
Powhatan marriages, for commoners, were of two kinds: romantic or contractual. In a romantic marriage, when a young Powhatan man was interested in a young Powhatan woman, he would bring her family a gift of food, probably fish or game. If it was accepted by her and her family, the father of the prospective bride would discuss the bride-price with the suitor. The higher the bride-price, the greater the value of the bride. As part of the bride-price, the young Powhatan man would build his beloved her own longhouse and provide those things that they would need to start their lives together: a mortar and pestle, mats, pots and bedding. These things would be retained by his bride in the case of a divorce. Then, when everything was completed, the bride would be brought to the groom's father's house, and the groom's father or another male relative would join their hands and they were considered married. Adultery was not uncommon, but in an interesting quirk, the wife did need her husband's permission to take a lover.
In the Marriage by Contract, which was like the Half-Marriage of the Klamath, Modoc and the Yurok tribes on the other side of the continent, if the suitor couldn't meet the full price demanded by the bride's father, or provide the house and furnishing, her father allowed his daughter to marry him, anyway, and the groom moved into his in-laws' longhouse. This marriage was renewed on a year-to-year basis. If they stayed together and didn't renew their vows or get a divorce, their marriage was considered still in effect. This probably also gave the groom time to build his wife her house, and for her to get pregnant, since child-bearing was a large part of the reason to get married. And again, adultery was not uncommon, but the wife did need to have her husband's permission to take a lover.
The marriage of the Powhatan Chief, the Mamanatowick, was a little different. He could marry as many women as he wanted, from any village in his domain or from neighboring tribes if he wanted to form an alliance with the other tribe's chief. Chief Wahunsenacawh, Pocahontas' father, was said to have had as many as one hundred wives. The village girl or princess was joined in marriage to the Mamanatowick, lived in his longhouse until she delivered his child, and then the mother and the child were returned to the tribe from hence she had come. For the next few years, she and the baby were fully supported by the Mamanatowick, and then, when the child had come of age, said child was taken back to the Mamanatowick to be raised in his longhouse as his son or daughter. At that time, the Chief and the mother were considered divorced and she was free to marry again. The only requirement was that she could not take any lovers until she and the Chief were formally divorced.
Interesting Tidbits:
The English were not the first Europeans whom the Powhatan had met. Their land was "claimed for Spain" by Spanish explorer Esteban Gomez in 1525. Other Spaniards followed and a few of them managed to kidnap and enslave the young son of a Powhatan chief. Jesuit missionaries established a mission called "Ajacan" in 1570 which was burned to the ground by the Powhatan who were probably tired of their attempts to exploit them, enslave them, and convert them to Catholicism by using techniques advanced during the Spanish Inquisition.
The Powhatan bathed in the rivers in the morning, which was quite unlike the 16th Century Spanish Jesuits or the 17th Century Brits who rarely if ever bathed at all.
The Powhaitan recognized and celebrated five seasons: The Budding Season, the Earing of Corn Season, the Highest Sun Season, the Corn Harvest Season and "Cohonk," which was winter, when migrating geese made their "honking" sounds. They observed a lunar calendar and reckoned time by the sun's position: Rising, Power, and Lowering. This probably made the British a little crazy when it came to making appointments with the Powhatan.
Self-control and respect for other people were of paramount importance to the Powhatan. This led to problems with the British, because when they saw the Powhatan listening quietly to their demands, they took their silence as consent, and in reality, the Powhatan were merely being polite. The Powhatan also tended to retreat after an attack in order for their enemies to come to their senses and surrender or leave the territory, but the British tended to interpret this lull as an opportunity to counter-attack.
By the early 1700's, most of the Powhatan had died of diseases brought from by the British settlers. The population was partially increased by the addition of escaped African slaves and escaped white indentured servants whom the Powhatan welcomed into their tribe, and the end result was considerable mixing of ethnicities. This later resulted in the 'paper genocide" of the Powhatan people, since under the Racial Integrity Law of 1924, people were classified as either "White" or "Colored" (meaning having at least one drop of African blood). This deprived many Powhatan of their tribal heritage and benefits thereof, since they were now considered 100% black. The birth certificates, marriage licenses, census records, and death certificates of the Powhatan and other Native American tribes were destroyed to remove all traces of Native American blood in Virginia. This meant that Native American children who lived in Virginia could not get high school diplomas, and that young Native American adults could not marry whom they wanted until the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Loving vs. Virginia in 1967.
The Powhatan added many words to the American and English vocabulary: Caucus, chipmunk, hominy, moccasin, opossum, pecan, persimmon, Powwow, raccoon and tomahawk, to name a few.
Traditional Religion: Traditional tribal religion and Christianity.
Slavery and the Powhatan: The British, when they arrived in Virginia, followed in the footsteps of the brutal Spanish Jesuits and abused the hospitality that they were offered by the Native Americans. Captain John Smith informed his men to treat the natives badly, to compel them to drudgery, work and slavery, and to take by force that which they wanted. It is no wonder that Chief Wahunsenacawh wanted to have him executed, because after John Smith's life was saved by Pocahontas, the situation between the British and the Powhatan did not improve until she married John Rolfe, and after she died in 1617 and Chief Wahunsenacawh died in 1618, the hostilities resumed and then got worse.
As stated before, because escaped white indentured servants and escaped African slaves were welcomed on Powhatan land, there was considerable intermarriage. Unfortunately, racism was rampant, and an "Indian" was considered an "Indian" only as long as he or she were on the reservation. If they stepped off of it, or if the reservation was sold out from under them and they lost their tribal status, the Powhatan were considered "Colored" and liable to become enslaved and transported to the Deep South. Not surprisingly, the Powhatan fought on the side of the Union, probably in otherwise black companies, during the Civil War.
Current Population: There are currently over 3800 registered Powhatan.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Revenue gained from renting duck blinds and duck hunting on tribal land, museums, tourism, a fish hatchery, and a winery.
Famous Powhatan: Pocahontas, the favorite daughter of Chief Wahunsenacawh, who was the Mamanatowick of the Powhatan. She was actually married to Englishman John Rolfe, not John Smith, Disney movie notwithstanding, but is said to have been instrumental in saving John Smith from execution when she was eleven years-old. Her marriage at age eighteen to tobacco-planter John Rolfe was the first interracial marriage in Virginia, and possibly in the Colonies, and allowed peace to exist between the British and the Powhatan for at least three years. Her father, Chief Wahunsenacawh, gave the happy couple hundreds of acres of land as a wedding present which I believe John Rolfe turned into a tobacco plantation.
Monday, June 15, 2015
The Sauk and Fox of the Upper Midwest
Tribe: The Sauk and Fox, also called the "Sac and Fox" and the "Sauk/Fox." There are three federally-recognized tribes: The Sakiwaki (the Sac and Fox Nation), the Meskwaki (the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa) and the Nemahahaki (the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska.)
Meaning of Names: The Sauk call themselves the "Osa'kiwug" which means "People of the Outlet," or "Sak," "Sac" or "Sauk" for short. They consider themselves the "People of the Yellow Earth." The Fox call themselves the "Muskwakiwug," which means "Red Earth People." The Fox were called "Outagamie" by their enemies, the Chippewa (Ojibwe), who were allies of the French. The Chippewa had told the French that the clan of the Muskwaskiwug that they were pointing to, the Fox Clan, was called the "Fox" and the French thought that they were talking about the entire tribe, so they called the Muskwaskiwug the "Renards," which is "Fox" in French. Apparently, the Chippewa didn't bother to correct them, so the name "Fox" stuck.
Location: The Fox tribe lived in the Michigan and Wisconsin side of the Great Lakes area for several thousand years as part of the Eastern Woodland/Algonquin culture. In the 1700's, over a period of several wars and several years, they were forced out by the French and their allies (see "Traditional Enemies), and took sanctuary with their neighborly allies, the Sauk, many of whom lived in the city of Saukenuk in Illinois. After that, both the Sauk and the Fox were shuffled around by white men to live in Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas and finally, Oklahoma. Most of the Sauk/Fox people now live in Oklahoma, but some live in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Canada. Those who had entered Canada following the French/Fox wars, had done so as slaves of the French colonists.
Original Language: Meskwaki-Sauk, a dialect of the Algonquin family tree.
Tribal Affiliations: The Sac and Fox people have been allies since the Sauk offered them sanctuary. Their other allies included or include the Mascoutens, the Kickapoo, the Winnebago and the British, who didn't like the French, either.
Traditional Enemies: The French, the Iroquois, the Ottawa, the Neutrals, the Miamis, the Sioux, the Ojibwe, the Huron, the Potawatomi, the Iowas, the Assiniboine and the Cree.
Traditional Style of Housing: Traditionally, the Sauk and Fox had a summer home, which was near the wives' parents and grandparents, and a winter home, which was near the husbands' parents and family. Their large dome-shaped buffalo-skin-covered wigwams, which were made and owned by the wives, were used as temporary housing during the winter, and their rectangular bark-covered lodges, which were also made and owned by the wives, and were in villages near their fields, were used in spring, summer and fall as their permanent homes. These homes and their contents were passed down to the oldest daughters when their mothers died. Within the villages were even larger lodges that were big enough for five fire-pits or hearths. These were probably used for meeting places and as tribal town halls. The Sauk and Fox also probably had sweat-lodges, menstrual huts, fields for crops and sports, and smokehouses in their villages.
Traditional Attire: The Sac and Fox seemed to have picked up whatever style of native clothing was adopted by the other tribes. The women historically wore wraparound skirts, and then long cotton dresses. The men went shirtless, and wore breechcloths, leggings, moccasins, beaded collars or yokes, face paint, and animal hides draped across their chests. They either shaved their heads into a Mohawk, or wore porky roaches, or wrap-around hats of otter-fur with feathers.
Traditional Foods: Once the Sauk and Fox moved out of the Great Lakes area and set up their villages and farms in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, the women grew corn, beans and squash, including pumpkins. They also gathered or grew whatever grew naturally in the area: Indian potatoes, sunflowers, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, elderberries, pecans, hickory nuts, paw paws, persimmons, crabapples, plums, wild grains, and wild roses. The men hunted or trapped geese, ducks, turkeys, pheasants, grouse, quail, loons, pelicans, brants, snipes, rails, woodcocks, partridges, gulls, teals, doves, pigeons, armadillos, otters, beaver, possums, bears, skunks, rabbits, elk, squirrels, groundhogs, deer and occasionally buffalo. They fished for or speared lampreys, pickerel, sturgeon, gar, eels, shad, paddlefish, shiners, chubs, suckers, buffalo-fish, catfish, trout, perch, sculpin, bass, sunfish, crappie and walleye. As always, they took what they needed from the land and left the rest unharmed, and shared with all members of the community. Even today, the Sauk and Fox have a generous food distribution program. They also grew tobacco.
Position of Women: Neither the Sauk and the Fox were completely patriarchal nor completely matriarchal. The women did the farming, made the clothes, did the childcare, did the cooking, built the homes, tanned the hides, and did the majority of the work. On the other hand, they owned their homes which they passed onto their oldest daughters when they died, and they insured the smooth running of life in the tribe. Meanwhile, the men hunted, fished, and defended their homes and villages. It is probable that traditionally, only the men could be chiefs and that lineage was reckoned through the father's line, which seems to be more in keeping with the Algonquin ways, but nowadays, women can be chiefs, too. Two-Spirit tribes-members were accepted, valued and celebrated in ceremonial dances.
Sauk and Fox Courtship: Although I could not find anything specifically on the Sauk and Fox courtship traditions, I did find out that the men, like other Woodland cultures, played flutes in order to court the woman of their dreams. There were specific love-songs and melodies that were employed by the young men who played said cedar, sumac, pine or cottonwood flutes, some with fancy feathers, beads and inlaid work, and some as long as four feet in length. The men played their flutes while outside of their beloved's mother's house just out of sight. (It is also possible that he communicated his unseen love for her by whistling his love-songs, instead, especially if he were not a skilled flutist.) If she was impressed by his flute-playing or whistling, and went outside to seek him out, there she could find him, sitting with his legs crossed on his courting blanket. If they followed the traditions of similar tribes, she would sneak him into her parents' lodge to spend the night and if her parents found them in the morning, they were considered married, whereupon the groom would live with and labor for his in-laws until his first child was born. During this period, his new wife would build her house, and once it was completed, it was hers but she shared it with her husband and their children.
Interesting Tidbits: Both the Sac and the Fox used to have two chiefs: the peace chief and the war chief. The peace chief inherited his position from his father, and the war chief was elected to the position. The peace chief was probably a remnant of the old matriarchal system of Clan Mothers.... The Sauk and Fox each have four clans: The Bear Clan, the Sturgeon Clan, the Thunder Clan and the Wolf Clan.... Because the U.S. Government deemed them fully assimilated, the Sauk and Fox were set for termination (meaning, losing their reservation, tribal lands, scholarships, medical care, and sense of identity as members of the Sauk and Fox tribes) in 1953, but with a concerted effort, got a reprieve.... The term "Red-Earth People" comes from the Meskwaki creation story that the Creator made the first man out of red earth or clay....
Traditional Religion: Native American Church, Christianity, Drum Dance, traditional tribal religion.
Slavery and the Sauk and Fox: Over one thousand men, women and children of the Sauk and Fox tribes were captured by the allies of the French during the two Fox Wars in the 1700's and were sold into slavery to the French colonists. As slaves, they were bartered in trade for goods and credit by their Native American captors, and then used by the French-Canadian colonists and administrators for unpaid, unskilled labor, domestic servants and as field hands. The Shawnee also participated in the slave trade, as did other Native American tribes. From the early 1700's to the 1800's, slaves living in Canada were forcibly converted to Catholicism and called "servants," and there were twice as many Native American (including Fox) slaves in Canada as there were black slaves. However, unlike chattel slavery in the American South, the marriages between slaves in Canada were legally recognized, families were not separated, and slaves could learn how to read and write. Gradually, slavery declined as a wide-spread institution, and after it was outlawed in Canada in 1834, one could be still a slave for life, but no new slaves could be imported from the United States or other countries and the children of slaves had to be granted their freedom as soon as they reached age 25. On the other hand, slavery has extended beyond abolition in Canada, is still ongoing, and is now called "Human trafficking" which is a much fuzzier and less incendiary term.
Current Population: There are over 3800 registered members of the Sauk and Fox nations in the United States.
Current Sources of Tribal Income: Casinos, golf courses, RV parks, truck stops, restaurants, tribal museum, hotels and smoke shops.
Famous Sauk and Fox: Jim Thorpe, the All-American Athlete; Saginaw Grant, actor; Black Hawk, Sauk and Fox leader.
Meaning of Names: The Sauk call themselves the "Osa'kiwug" which means "People of the Outlet," or "Sak," "Sac" or "Sauk" for short. They consider themselves the "People of the Yellow Earth." The Fox call themselves the "Muskwakiwug," which means "Red Earth People." The Fox were called "Outagamie" by their enemies, the Chippewa (Ojibwe), who were allies of the French. The Chippewa had told the French that the clan of the Muskwaskiwug that they were pointing to, the Fox Clan, was called the "Fox" and the French thought that they were talking about the entire tribe, so they called the Muskwaskiwug the "Renards," which is "Fox" in French. Apparently, the Chippewa didn't bother to correct them, so the name "Fox" stuck.
Location: The Fox tribe lived in the Michigan and Wisconsin side of the Great Lakes area for several thousand years as part of the Eastern Woodland/Algonquin culture. In the 1700's, over a period of several wars and several years, they were forced out by the French and their allies (see "Traditional Enemies), and took sanctuary with their neighborly allies, the Sauk, many of whom lived in the city of Saukenuk in Illinois. After that, both the Sauk and the Fox were shuffled around by white men to live in Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas and finally, Oklahoma. Most of the Sauk/Fox people now live in Oklahoma, but some live in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Canada. Those who had entered Canada following the French/Fox wars, had done so as slaves of the French colonists.
Original Language: Meskwaki-Sauk, a dialect of the Algonquin family tree.
Tribal Affiliations: The Sac and Fox people have been allies since the Sauk offered them sanctuary. Their other allies included or include the Mascoutens, the Kickapoo, the Winnebago and the British, who didn't like the French, either.
Traditional Enemies: The French, the Iroquois, the Ottawa, the Neutrals, the Miamis, the Sioux, the Ojibwe, the Huron, the Potawatomi, the Iowas, the Assiniboine and the Cree.
Traditional Style of Housing: Traditionally, the Sauk and Fox had a summer home, which was near the wives' parents and grandparents, and a winter home, which was near the husbands' parents and family. Their large dome-shaped buffalo-skin-covered wigwams, which were made and owned by the wives, were used as temporary housing during the winter, and their rectangular bark-covered lodges, which were also made and owned by the wives, and were in villages near their fields, were used in spring, summer and fall as their permanent homes. These homes and their contents were passed down to the oldest daughters when their mothers died. Within the villages were even larger lodges that were big enough for five fire-pits or hearths. These were probably used for meeting places and as tribal town halls. The Sauk and Fox also probably had sweat-lodges, menstrual huts, fields for crops and sports, and smokehouses in their villages.
Traditional Attire: The Sac and Fox seemed to have picked up whatever style of native clothing was adopted by the other tribes. The women historically wore wraparound skirts, and then long cotton dresses. The men went shirtless, and wore breechcloths, leggings, moccasins, beaded collars or yokes, face paint, and animal hides draped across their chests. They either shaved their heads into a Mohawk, or wore porky roaches, or wrap-around hats of otter-fur with feathers.
Traditional Foods: Once the Sauk and Fox moved out of the Great Lakes area and set up their villages and farms in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, the women grew corn, beans and squash, including pumpkins. They also gathered or grew whatever grew naturally in the area: Indian potatoes, sunflowers, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, elderberries, pecans, hickory nuts, paw paws, persimmons, crabapples, plums, wild grains, and wild roses. The men hunted or trapped geese, ducks, turkeys, pheasants, grouse, quail, loons, pelicans, brants, snipes, rails, woodcocks, partridges, gulls, teals, doves, pigeons, armadillos, otters, beaver, possums, bears, skunks, rabbits, elk, squirrels, groundhogs, deer and occasionally buffalo. They fished for or speared lampreys, pickerel, sturgeon, gar, eels, shad, paddlefish, shiners, chubs, suckers, buffalo-fish, catfish, trout, perch, sculpin, bass, sunfish, crappie and walleye. As always, they took what they needed from the land and left the rest unharmed, and shared with all members of the community. Even today, the Sauk and Fox have a generous food distribution program. They also grew tobacco.
Position of Women: Neither the Sauk and the Fox were completely patriarchal nor completely matriarchal. The women did the farming, made the clothes, did the childcare, did the cooking, built the homes, tanned the hides, and did the majority of the work. On the other hand, they owned their homes which they passed onto their oldest daughters when they died, and they insured the smooth running of life in the tribe. Meanwhile, the men hunted, fished, and defended their homes and villages. It is probable that traditionally, only the men could be chiefs and that lineage was reckoned through the father's line, which seems to be more in keeping with the Algonquin ways, but nowadays, women can be chiefs, too. Two-Spirit tribes-members were accepted, valued and celebrated in ceremonial dances.
Sauk and Fox Courtship: Although I could not find anything specifically on the Sauk and Fox courtship traditions, I did find out that the men, like other Woodland cultures, played flutes in order to court the woman of their dreams. There were specific love-songs and melodies that were employed by the young men who played said cedar, sumac, pine or cottonwood flutes, some with fancy feathers, beads and inlaid work, and some as long as four feet in length. The men played their flutes while outside of their beloved's mother's house just out of sight. (It is also possible that he communicated his unseen love for her by whistling his love-songs, instead, especially if he were not a skilled flutist.) If she was impressed by his flute-playing or whistling, and went outside to seek him out, there she could find him, sitting with his legs crossed on his courting blanket. If they followed the traditions of similar tribes, she would sneak him into her parents' lodge to spend the night and if her parents found them in the morning, they were considered married, whereupon the groom would live with and labor for his in-laws until his first child was born. During this period, his new wife would build her house, and once it was completed, it was hers but she shared it with her husband and their children.
Interesting Tidbits: Both the Sac and the Fox used to have two chiefs: the peace chief and the war chief. The peace chief inherited his position from his father, and the war chief was elected to the position. The peace chief was probably a remnant of the old matriarchal system of Clan Mothers.... The Sauk and Fox each have four clans: The Bear Clan, the Sturgeon Clan, the Thunder Clan and the Wolf Clan.... Because the U.S. Government deemed them fully assimilated, the Sauk and Fox were set for termination (meaning, losing their reservation, tribal lands, scholarships, medical care, and sense of identity as members of the Sauk and Fox tribes) in 1953, but with a concerted effort, got a reprieve.... The term "Red-Earth People" comes from the Meskwaki creation story that the Creator made the first man out of red earth or clay....
Traditional Religion: Native American Church, Christianity, Drum Dance, traditional tribal religion.
Slavery and the Sauk and Fox: Over one thousand men, women and children of the Sauk and Fox tribes were captured by the allies of the French during the two Fox Wars in the 1700's and were sold into slavery to the French colonists. As slaves, they were bartered in trade for goods and credit by their Native American captors, and then used by the French-Canadian colonists and administrators for unpaid, unskilled labor, domestic servants and as field hands. The Shawnee also participated in the slave trade, as did other Native American tribes. From the early 1700's to the 1800's, slaves living in Canada were forcibly converted to Catholicism and called "servants," and there were twice as many Native American (including Fox) slaves in Canada as there were black slaves. However, unlike chattel slavery in the American South, the marriages between slaves in Canada were legally recognized, families were not separated, and slaves could learn how to read and write. Gradually, slavery declined as a wide-spread institution, and after it was outlawed in Canada in 1834, one could be still a slave for life, but no new slaves could be imported from the United States or other countries and the children of slaves had to be granted their freedom as soon as they reached age 25. On the other hand, slavery has extended beyond abolition in Canada, is still ongoing, and is now called "Human trafficking" which is a much fuzzier and less incendiary term.
Current Population: There are over 3800 registered members of the Sauk and Fox nations in the United States.
Current Sources of Tribal Income: Casinos, golf courses, RV parks, truck stops, restaurants, tribal museum, hotels and smoke shops.
Famous Sauk and Fox: Jim Thorpe, the All-American Athlete; Saginaw Grant, actor; Black Hawk, Sauk and Fox leader.
The Klamath People of the Basin
Tribe: The Klamath
Meaning of Name: "Klamath" is a Chinook term, meaning unknown, but the Klamath people traded with the Chinook, so whatever it meant, at least it wasn't a term used by an enemy. One sources says that the Klamath called themselves "Maqlaq" or "Maklak" which means "People." Another source says that the Klamath called themselves "Eukshikni" or "Auksni" for short, which means "People of the Lake."
Location: The Klamath People have lived in Oregon, specifically, near Crater Lake and Klamath Lake in the Klamath Basin east of the Cascade Mountains, for 14,000 years. Their headquarters is located in Chiloquin, Oregon. Unfortunately, in 1954, the U.S. Congress, primarily in order to obtain prime Ponderosa Pine timber land, terminated their legal tribal status, which resulted in loss of education grants, health care, their entire reservation in Oregon, as well as a sense of tribal identity and self-respect. The Klamath People are currently attempting to get back what was taken from them in order to restore the environmentally-abused Klamath Basin. And a very small group of Klamath people live with the Karuk and the Shasta people on a reservation in Quartz Valley, north of Mount Shasta, in Siskiyou County in California, not far from the Oregon-California border.
Original Language: The Plateau-Pentian language family.
Tribal Affiliations: The Modoc, the Yahooskin, the Chinook. They also got along with the Molala, the Upper Umpqua and the Takelma, who were on the other side of Crater Lake.
Traditional Enemies: Originally, just the Achomawi, Atsugewi, Northern Paiute, Shasta and Takelma, but later and more recently, the U.S. Government, logging companies and whomever else has been grossly-polluting their old stomping grounds.
Traditional Style of Houses: Wickiups, dome or igloo-like dwellings make of branches, leaves, wood, and covered with mats. They were probably constructed and owned by the women. Klamath villages probably also had a town hall, smokehouses, sweat-lodges and menstrual huts.
Traditional Attire: Until the Klamath got in contact with the People of the Plains and white man, they wore mantles made of animal skins, and skirts, leggings and sandals made of tule with coyote fur mittens. After they met people with other fashion sensibilities, they wore buckskin shirts, skirts, breechcloths, skirts, and moccasins. The Klamath men and women also greased their hair with animal fat or fish oil, and wore their braids wrapped in otter fur. They also used otter, coyote, beaver, skunk, elk, deer or buffalo hide or fur for hats, which had earflaps against the cold. Both men and women pierced their noses and ears, and the shamans were the only ones in the tribe who were allowed to wear grizzly-bear claws.
Traditional Foods: The Klamath men fished, hunted or trapped salmon, mullet, trout, elk, sheep, bear, baked and skinned grizzly-bear paws, deer and deer jerky, antelope, swans, ducks, geese, baked beaver, baked badger, baked porcupine, roasted and skinned beaver tail, otter, rabbits, martens, fishers, foxes, coyotes, groundhogs, mink, raccoon, squirrels, pelicans, brants, cranes, loons, gulls, mudhens, teals, and blackbirds. The women roasted camas root, dried or raw "yampahs" or "ipos" (a kind of wild carrot), and foraged for Biscuit root, grass seeds which were made into mush, fresh young Tule shoots, goosefoot, amaranth, wild parsnips, mint, Indian potatoes, wild onions, cattails, hazelnuts, serviceberries, huckleberries, chokecherries, currants, elderberries, bush honeysuckle, strawberries, wild plums, wild rose hips and manzanita flowers and berries. Fish could be dried to be used later in soups and in fishcakes. The Klamath people also gathered the pods from giant yellow water lilies. After extensive preparation, the women extracted the seeds and either parched them as in parched corn, or prepared them as in acorn mush. Parched, the seeds tasted like parched corn or popcorn. Buckskin could be reconstituted and made into either jerky or stews. It was an engrained part of Klamath culture to share food with the other members of the tribe.
Position of Women: Klamath people, who seemed to be patriarchal, could marry within their own tribe and clans, but considering that their villages numbered only about fourteen people, all of whom were related, this could account for the frequent kidnapping women and children from other tribes. Klamath suitors who married within the tribe had to met the father's bride-price in order to marry his daughter. Once they married, the happy couple went to live with her mother, until their first child was born, and then they went to live with the groom's mother and father. Descent was reckoned through the father's line. Klamath women were responsible for food preparation and cooking, tanning, childcare, clothing production, housework, farming, gathering, and some hunting and fishing. The boys and men did the majority of the hunting.
Klamath Courtship: Like the Yurok and the Modoc, Klamath marriages were of two kinds: a half-marriage and a full-marriage. When a young man had decided on a mate, he and two of his male relatives would ask the father of the potential bride for a bride-price. The young Klamath man and his relatives would discuss this price, and if they could meet it, plans for a full-marriage would commence. However, if all that the young man and his relatives could scrounge up was half of the asking price, plans for a half-marriage would commence, and only if the father of the bride needed extra men in the family or if the father of the groom did not approve of the bride. Her social status and the social status of their children depended completely upon the bride price. The higher the bride-price as set by her father and paid by her groom-to-be, the more status she got. Her wedding dress, by the way, was of four colors: white for the east, blue for the south, orange for the west and black for the north.
Interesting Tidbits:
The Klamath used fibers from a species of cannabis - hemp - in order to make fishing nets, fishing line and twine. They also used dried sap (latex) from the cannabis as chewing gum, and parts of the rest of the plant to make herb-based medicines, which, because it was extremely poisonous, had to be administered very carefully by the medicine-men (Shamans) who had more actual political and social power than the chiefs, who were just rich men with opinions that could be ignored. Partly because they lacked some kind of hierarchical organization and therefore political power, they were outmatched when it came to negotiations with the U.S. Government....
Part of the coming-of-age vision quests of young Klamath men seemed to have been the building of piles of rocks, like cairns....
Klamath people used spoons made out of the breast bones of swans, which resemble spoons, and made hairbrushes out of porcupine tails....
Pine pitch (sap) was used as Band-Aids. Sage brush mash, ingested, fixed diarrhea, and if slathered on aching body parts, was used a liniment....
The Klamath occupied the Klamath Basin since 12,000 BC, so they were there for the eruption of Mount Mazama in 4000 BC, which created Crater Lake.
The Klamath and the Modoc people were very close and often married each other. Their children eventually formed a different tribe, the "Kumbatatuash."
Traditional Religion: Traditional tribal religion.
Slavery and the Klamath: The Klamath engaged in raids on the Achomawi, the Atsugewi, the Northern Paiute, the Shasta and the Takelma for the purposes of acquiring women and children to be used as slaves. However, their slaves didn't live any better or any worse than your average poor Klamath, and was not purposefully degraded, so it may be that the Klamath engaged in kidnapping also for the purpose of adding to their population as well as enslaving captives for cheap labor. Two slave children, who could do some of the minor labor and be indoctrinated into the Klamath ways, were worth five horses, several buffalo hides, and some beads. A slave woman was worth a great deal more. Male captives taken in raids were just killed.
Current Population: There are currently approximately 4500 registered members of the Klamath tribe.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: The Klamoya Casino. ("Klamoya" refers to Klamath, Modoc and the Yahooskin tribes. The Yahooskin were also called the "Snake Indians" and the "Snake Paiute.") There are still ongoing water rights, timber, land and restoration-of-tribal-status disputes.
Famous Klamath: None that I can ascertain.
Meaning of Name: "Klamath" is a Chinook term, meaning unknown, but the Klamath people traded with the Chinook, so whatever it meant, at least it wasn't a term used by an enemy. One sources says that the Klamath called themselves "Maqlaq" or "Maklak" which means "People." Another source says that the Klamath called themselves "Eukshikni" or "Auksni" for short, which means "People of the Lake."
Location: The Klamath People have lived in Oregon, specifically, near Crater Lake and Klamath Lake in the Klamath Basin east of the Cascade Mountains, for 14,000 years. Their headquarters is located in Chiloquin, Oregon. Unfortunately, in 1954, the U.S. Congress, primarily in order to obtain prime Ponderosa Pine timber land, terminated their legal tribal status, which resulted in loss of education grants, health care, their entire reservation in Oregon, as well as a sense of tribal identity and self-respect. The Klamath People are currently attempting to get back what was taken from them in order to restore the environmentally-abused Klamath Basin. And a very small group of Klamath people live with the Karuk and the Shasta people on a reservation in Quartz Valley, north of Mount Shasta, in Siskiyou County in California, not far from the Oregon-California border.
Original Language: The Plateau-Pentian language family.
Tribal Affiliations: The Modoc, the Yahooskin, the Chinook. They also got along with the Molala, the Upper Umpqua and the Takelma, who were on the other side of Crater Lake.
Traditional Enemies: Originally, just the Achomawi, Atsugewi, Northern Paiute, Shasta and Takelma, but later and more recently, the U.S. Government, logging companies and whomever else has been grossly-polluting their old stomping grounds.
Traditional Style of Houses: Wickiups, dome or igloo-like dwellings make of branches, leaves, wood, and covered with mats. They were probably constructed and owned by the women. Klamath villages probably also had a town hall, smokehouses, sweat-lodges and menstrual huts.
Traditional Attire: Until the Klamath got in contact with the People of the Plains and white man, they wore mantles made of animal skins, and skirts, leggings and sandals made of tule with coyote fur mittens. After they met people with other fashion sensibilities, they wore buckskin shirts, skirts, breechcloths, skirts, and moccasins. The Klamath men and women also greased their hair with animal fat or fish oil, and wore their braids wrapped in otter fur. They also used otter, coyote, beaver, skunk, elk, deer or buffalo hide or fur for hats, which had earflaps against the cold. Both men and women pierced their noses and ears, and the shamans were the only ones in the tribe who were allowed to wear grizzly-bear claws.
Traditional Foods: The Klamath men fished, hunted or trapped salmon, mullet, trout, elk, sheep, bear, baked and skinned grizzly-bear paws, deer and deer jerky, antelope, swans, ducks, geese, baked beaver, baked badger, baked porcupine, roasted and skinned beaver tail, otter, rabbits, martens, fishers, foxes, coyotes, groundhogs, mink, raccoon, squirrels, pelicans, brants, cranes, loons, gulls, mudhens, teals, and blackbirds. The women roasted camas root, dried or raw "yampahs" or "ipos" (a kind of wild carrot), and foraged for Biscuit root, grass seeds which were made into mush, fresh young Tule shoots, goosefoot, amaranth, wild parsnips, mint, Indian potatoes, wild onions, cattails, hazelnuts, serviceberries, huckleberries, chokecherries, currants, elderberries, bush honeysuckle, strawberries, wild plums, wild rose hips and manzanita flowers and berries. Fish could be dried to be used later in soups and in fishcakes. The Klamath people also gathered the pods from giant yellow water lilies. After extensive preparation, the women extracted the seeds and either parched them as in parched corn, or prepared them as in acorn mush. Parched, the seeds tasted like parched corn or popcorn. Buckskin could be reconstituted and made into either jerky or stews. It was an engrained part of Klamath culture to share food with the other members of the tribe.
Position of Women: Klamath people, who seemed to be patriarchal, could marry within their own tribe and clans, but considering that their villages numbered only about fourteen people, all of whom were related, this could account for the frequent kidnapping women and children from other tribes. Klamath suitors who married within the tribe had to met the father's bride-price in order to marry his daughter. Once they married, the happy couple went to live with her mother, until their first child was born, and then they went to live with the groom's mother and father. Descent was reckoned through the father's line. Klamath women were responsible for food preparation and cooking, tanning, childcare, clothing production, housework, farming, gathering, and some hunting and fishing. The boys and men did the majority of the hunting.
Klamath Courtship: Like the Yurok and the Modoc, Klamath marriages were of two kinds: a half-marriage and a full-marriage. When a young man had decided on a mate, he and two of his male relatives would ask the father of the potential bride for a bride-price. The young Klamath man and his relatives would discuss this price, and if they could meet it, plans for a full-marriage would commence. However, if all that the young man and his relatives could scrounge up was half of the asking price, plans for a half-marriage would commence, and only if the father of the bride needed extra men in the family or if the father of the groom did not approve of the bride. Her social status and the social status of their children depended completely upon the bride price. The higher the bride-price as set by her father and paid by her groom-to-be, the more status she got. Her wedding dress, by the way, was of four colors: white for the east, blue for the south, orange for the west and black for the north.
Interesting Tidbits:
The Klamath used fibers from a species of cannabis - hemp - in order to make fishing nets, fishing line and twine. They also used dried sap (latex) from the cannabis as chewing gum, and parts of the rest of the plant to make herb-based medicines, which, because it was extremely poisonous, had to be administered very carefully by the medicine-men (Shamans) who had more actual political and social power than the chiefs, who were just rich men with opinions that could be ignored. Partly because they lacked some kind of hierarchical organization and therefore political power, they were outmatched when it came to negotiations with the U.S. Government....
Part of the coming-of-age vision quests of young Klamath men seemed to have been the building of piles of rocks, like cairns....
Klamath people used spoons made out of the breast bones of swans, which resemble spoons, and made hairbrushes out of porcupine tails....
Pine pitch (sap) was used as Band-Aids. Sage brush mash, ingested, fixed diarrhea, and if slathered on aching body parts, was used a liniment....
The Klamath occupied the Klamath Basin since 12,000 BC, so they were there for the eruption of Mount Mazama in 4000 BC, which created Crater Lake.
The Klamath and the Modoc people were very close and often married each other. Their children eventually formed a different tribe, the "Kumbatatuash."
Traditional Religion: Traditional tribal religion.
Slavery and the Klamath: The Klamath engaged in raids on the Achomawi, the Atsugewi, the Northern Paiute, the Shasta and the Takelma for the purposes of acquiring women and children to be used as slaves. However, their slaves didn't live any better or any worse than your average poor Klamath, and was not purposefully degraded, so it may be that the Klamath engaged in kidnapping also for the purpose of adding to their population as well as enslaving captives for cheap labor. Two slave children, who could do some of the minor labor and be indoctrinated into the Klamath ways, were worth five horses, several buffalo hides, and some beads. A slave woman was worth a great deal more. Male captives taken in raids were just killed.
Current Population: There are currently approximately 4500 registered members of the Klamath tribe.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: The Klamoya Casino. ("Klamoya" refers to Klamath, Modoc and the Yahooskin tribes. The Yahooskin were also called the "Snake Indians" and the "Snake Paiute.") There are still ongoing water rights, timber, land and restoration-of-tribal-status disputes.
Famous Klamath: None that I can ascertain.
Friday, June 12, 2015
The Tuscarora- The Hemp People
Tribe: The Tuscarora is the Sixth Nation of the Haudenosaunee, aka the "Six Nations of the Iroquois," the "People of the Longhouse," the "Iroquois Confederacy" and the "Iroquois League." There are only two federally-recognized Tuscarora tribes: the Tuscarora Nation of New York, and as part of the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation in Canada. The Tuscarora people who are not in New York or Ontario in Canada are not federally recognized as Tuscarora.
Meaning of Name: "Tuscarora" means "Hemp-Gatherer" in Iroquoian. The Tuscarora, particularly those residing in North Carolina, sometimes refer to themselves as the "Skarure" meaning "Long Shirt People" because they wore long shirts made of hemp, a fibrous member of the cannabis family.
Location: The Tuscarora originally lived in the Northeast with the other Iroquois-speaking tribes, and then, in about 1000 AD, before the formation of the Haudenosaunee, and probably because of the brutal and never-ending wars between the Iroquois tribes, moved down to the Carolinas and Virginia. In 1713, they lost the Tuscarora War with the British and their allies, were thrown off their land and many of them moved to New York State, where the Oneida tribe allotted them some of their land. In 1722, most of the Tuscarora joined their ancestral and cultural kin as the Sixth Nation of the Haudenosaunee. Those who did not become part of the Haudenosaunee either had remained or returned to the Carolinas and Virginia. The Tuscarora people, as a genetically-related group, now live in Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Ohio.
Original Language: Skarureh, a branch of the Iroquoian language tree.
Tribal Affiliations: When the Tuscarora were still living in the Carolinas and Virginia, they allied themselves with the Pamlico, the Cothechney, the Core, the Mattamusett, and the Matchepungo tribes to wage war against the encroaching British and European settlers and their own Native American allies. After the Tuscarora lost the war, a portion of them traveled north and joined the Iroquois League, and their allies now included the Mohawk, the Seneca, the Oneida, the Onondaga and the Cayuga.
Traditional Enemies: The British, the Dutch, the Germans, the Yamasse and the Cherokee.
Traditional Style of Housing: The Tuscarora, both those who lived in New York and those who lived in the Carolinas and Virginia, lived in permanent wood-frame buildings called "longhouses" which were made of elm bark, rounded on top and could be up to one hundred feet long, but were probably about fifty feet long, on average. These longhouses were partitioned, with storage areas and a stone hearth or fireplace for cooking and baking. They could hold up to maybe thirty extended family members. The entire Tuscarora village of ten to twenty longhouse was protected against other tribes and wild animals by a palisade, a tall wooden wall that may have also enclosed their vegetable and herb gardens, their orchards, their smokehouses, their town halls, their sweat-lodges and their menstrual lodges. During the hunting and warring seasons, the Tuscarora lived in somewhat temporary small dome-like round wickiups, as did the Cherokee, another Iroquois-speaking tribe who at the time lived in the Carolinas and were their mortal enemies. The longhouses and the wickiups were owned by the women.
Traditional Attire: The Tuscarora tribes seem to pride themselves on distinguishing themselves from their Iroquois brothers and sisters, and toward that end, they have made and worn hemp shirts for several hundred years. Hemp clothing is sustainable, comfortable, lighter than deerskin and is easier to clean. Tuscarora moccasins went higher up on the leg, almost to the shin, as compared to the shorter Iroquoian moccasins. The Tuscarora women wore rounded, not pointed, decorated yokes over their shin-length dresses. When they did not wear dresses, they wore undecorated full-length halter-style aprons over their wraparound skirts and leggings. Their high beaded tiaras (think "Russian empress") were worn lower on the forehead, almost like an Apache headband, and their fancy clothing often had very long fringes. The Tuscarora men went around in breechcloths and high moccasins during the long sweaty months, but otherwise wore comfortable hemp shirts, leggings or trousers, and, for ceremonial occasions, feather-covered gustowehs but without long upright or downcast eagle feathers. The raised beadwork of the Tuscarora, which is evident on their caps, yokes and collars, is particularly lovely. The Southern Tuscarora are also said to have dyed their hair bright red in order to remain different-looking from the other Iroquois and their tribal neighbors.
Traditional Foods: The Tuscarora were a settled, agrarian people, so the New York Tuscarora women grew their own corn, beans and squash. They also grew herbs, carrots, turnips and rutabagas, fiddleheads, onions, cabbages, pumpkin, Jerusalem artichokes, sunflowers, Indian potatoes, and strawberries. They foraged for mushrooms, leeks, ramps, wintergreen, walnuts, hickory nuts, chestnuts, and greens. They had community-owned crabapple, plum and cherry orchards, and gathered wild blueberries, cranberries, honey, mulberries, elderberries and serviceberries. They made maple syrup, cornbread, corn soup and stews, and dried the surplus of their produce. The men, on the other hand, hunted or trapped deer, elk, bear, rabbit, muskrat, beaver, grouse, pheasant, turkeys, and geese, and fished for salmon, trout, bass, perch and whitefish.
The Tuscarora women in the south grew beans, corn and squash, including pumpkins. They also grew or foraged for hazelnuts, filberts, black walnuts, acorns, chestnuts, sunflowers, a wild grain called "chechinquarnins," mulberries, paw paws, persimmons, huckleberries, wild grapes, muskmelon, peaches, melons, cucumbers, peas, peanuts, Indian potatoes, goosefoot, marsh-elder for quinoa, wild barley, maygrass, a kind of grain, and grew tobacco and hemp. The Southern Tuscarora men fished for or netted oysters, crab, scallops, clams, flounder, stingray, skate, crayfish, bear, beaver, panther, skunk, wildcats, possums, rabbits, squirrels, deer (including unborn fawns), wasp larvae, turtles, turtle eggs, water-fowl, and turkey. Once the Europeans arrived in the early 1600's, the Tuscarora added beef, mutton, lamb, and pork to their diet.
Position of Women: Extremely high, almost matriarchal. Like most of the nations in the Iroquois League, the Tuscarora were matrilineal and matrilocal. Tuscarora men moved into the longhouses that belonged to their wives' grandmothers or mothers. Tuscarora women could inherit and bequeath property and were the heads of household, and their husbands could do nothing without consulting their wives first. The six Clan Mothers of the northern Tuscarora tribe had the final say regarding matrimony, and had naming rights regarding their grandchildren. They were completely responsible for the selection of the six male chiefs, called "Teethhe," who would serve as the Representatives of not only the Tuscarora but the Iroquois people before the Grand Council meetings of the Iroquois League. Tuscarora women were also responsible for establishing the social status of their families, for the fate of captives taken in war, in charge of child-rearing, food production, clothing production, rope production, housework, the healing arts, the usual domestic chores and served as tribal judges. The men, on the other hand, managed to get out of the house and away from the women by clearing fields, making houses, fishing, hunting, waging war (with the permission of the women), and playing sports.
Among the Southern Bands of the Tuscarora, there are still Clan Mothers, and clan membership is still reckoned through the mother's line, but because times have changed since the Tuscarora are no longer an agrarian society, a lot of the old matriarchal ways of the Tuscarora have been lost.
Tuscarora Courtship: If a young Tuscarora man wanted to court a Tuscarora woman, provided that she were not a member of the same clan, he would play sweet flute music outside of her mother's longhouse. If she peeked outside, saw who was playing, and accepted his suit, she would invite him in, at which time, he was probably mercilessly grilled by her mother, her grandmother and her aunts. If they all agreed that it was a good match, preparations would be made for a big fancy wedding complete with a reception in which the tribe would give the happy couple everything that they would need for their lives together. Their marriage was expected to last forever, so divorce was uncommon. But, if a Tuscarora wife did feel that her husband were worthless or lacking in some way, all that she would have to do would be to put his blanket and few belongings outside the longhouse, and he had to go, so divorces, while rare, were very simple.
Interesting Tidbits:
The ancestors of the Iroquois had lived on the eastern side of the Great Lakes probably since 15,000 BC. They all spoke the same language, lived in the same kinds of houses, wore the same kinds of clothes, headdresses and hairstyles, belonged to the same kinds of clans drawn from the same maternal lines, and their tribes were all headed by women. They worshipped the same Creator, and grew the same Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash). They were brothers and sisters and cousins of each other. And as it is with all families, arguments broke out between them and they separated into many tribes: the Seneca, the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the Oneida, the Cayuga, the Tuscarora, the Cherokee, the Huron, the Erie, the Wyandot, the Meherrin, the Nottaway, and many others. But in 1142 AD, the Great Peacemaker, Dekanawida and his disciple, Hiawatha, formed the Haudenosaunee, the "People of the Longhouse," which is the "Iroquois League" and the "Five Nations" that were and are still bound together by The Great Law of Peace, a common law, allegiance, truce and trade agreement. These five tribes were the Seneca, the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the Oneida and the Cayuga. In 1722, sponsored by the Oneida, the Tuscarora, who had just returned from North Carolina, were allowed to join the Iroquois League as the Sixth Nation....
The Tuscarora had every reason to be unhappy with the encroachment of white settlers in the Carolinas and Virginia. They were overcharged for goods and services, denied use of the ferries to cross rivers, restricted in the use of their traditional hunting grounds, cheated in trade and treaties, timber was illegally logged on their land, and bit by bit, the land that had been reserved for them (the reservations) was being swindled out from under them. Furthermore, in the many wars with the settlers, their villages and orchards were burned to the ground and their women and children were enslaved and sent off to work in the plantations of the Caribbean....
The Northern Tuscarora clans seem to include the Bear Clan, the Turtle Clan, the Beaver Clan, the Deer Clan, the Eel Clan, and the Snipe Clan. They are led by the Clan Mothers. The Southern Tuscarora tribe, which still lives in North Carolina and Virginia, has their own Grand Council and seven clans: the Bear Clan, the Deer Clan, the Eel Clan, the Mud Turtle Clan, the Sand Turtle Clan, the Snipe Clan and the Wolf Clan. The Clans can be represented at the Grand Council by either Clan Mothers (women) or Clan Chiefs (men). The Southern Tuscarora also have a generous food pantry program for tribal members....
According to Iroquois legend, the Clan system came about this way: The grandmothers of the ancestral Iroquois tribe were told by the Great Peacemaker to step out of their longhouses on a designated morning and to report to him the first animal that they saw. One grandmother saw a bear, another saw a turtle, another saw a beaver, another saw a deer, another saw an eel, another saw a sandpiper or a snipe, and another saw a wolf, another saw a hawk and another saw a heron. Once the grandmothers reported their findings to the Great Peacemaker, he told them that these animals were to serve as their family's totems, the emblems of that family. Therefore, the grandmother who had seen the bear, for instance, was the Bear Clan Mother, and her daughters would be members of the Bear Clan, and her granddaughters would be members of the Bear Clan, and so forth, through the maternal line. Boys, on the other hand, were born into their mother's clan, but became members of their wives' clans when they married, and they could not marry anyone from their own clan, which was, genetically and socially, a very good idea....
The Southern Tuscarora tribe used, and may still use, a Turtle (or lunar) Calendar, noting that a turtle (the mythological version of whom carries the earth upon his back, and upon whom the Sky Woman fell) has thirteen large interior sections on his shell and twenty-eight smaller exterior sections on his shell. Therefore, their year has thirteen months, with twenty-eight days per month. In English, these months are as follows: (starting with January) Blizzard Moon, North-winds Moon, Maple Syrup Moon, Planting Moon, Flower Moon, Strawberry Moon, Summer Moon, Ripening Corn Moon, Harvest Moon, Moon of Fallen Leaves, Cold Weather Moon and Snow Moon. Almost every month has a festival attached to it....
Hemp, a member of the Cannabis family, was indigenous to China, and was probably brought cross the Bering Strait when the waves of First People came to this continent beginning in 50,000 BC. It was then spread by human hands or by bird droppings across North and South America. In the Spring, its flowers can be battered, deep-fried and eaten like broccoli tempura. Immature seed pods can be cooked in stews as vegetables, and its thick fibers, once processed and dried, can be used for making cords, ropes and coarse material. Parts of the cannabis plant were also either smoked or used as a tincture by the Tuscarora, who considered it their own special gift from the Creator, and who were led to it by deer, the animal symbolic of peace. They consider it the "seed of life" and "the seed of peace" and as medicine.
The Southern Tuscarora, which includes the Tuscarora Indian Nation of North Carolina, the Southern Band of the Tuscarora Indian Tribe, the Tuscarora Nation One Fire, the Tosneoc Tuscarora Community, the Skaroreh Katenuaka Nation and the Tuscarora Tribe Indians (which has been accepted into the National Congress of American Indians) do not consider themselves to be part of the Six Nations of the Iroquois League, nor does the Iroquois League consider them to be truly Tuscaroran. These six groups do not have federal or state recognition as tribes. Federal and state recognition is desirable because without them, there can be no sovereign nation, no self-determination, no self-respect or self-identity, no eligibility for special programs like educational grants, scholarships, food programs, health services, no reservations, and their tribal land, which they'd been on for hundreds or thousands of years, can be sold out from under them in some white corporate takeover.
Traditional Religion: Christianity, Longhouse, Handsome Lake, and traditional tribal religions.
Slavery and the Tuscarora: The Tuscarora, especially those who remained in the Carolinas and Virginia, were captured by the British and sent as slaves to the British plantations in the Caribbean. The Tuscarora who moved north and became part of the Iroquois League probably served as messengers and conductors for escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, especially in or around Lewiston, New York, which was on or near Tuscarora land.
Current Population: There are more than 17,000 registered Tuscarora living in New York and Ontario, and less than 300 are living as non-registered Tuscarora in North Carolina.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Tuscarora living in New York State earn a nice living from the fishing industry, the tourism industry, casinos, small businesses (woodwork, roofing and siding, crafts, consulting, paper doll manufacturing, and an art gallery) and work at saving the environment. The Tuscarora who live in North Carolina are very, very poor.
Famous Tuscarora: None that I have heard of.
Meaning of Name: "Tuscarora" means "Hemp-Gatherer" in Iroquoian. The Tuscarora, particularly those residing in North Carolina, sometimes refer to themselves as the "Skarure" meaning "Long Shirt People" because they wore long shirts made of hemp, a fibrous member of the cannabis family.
Location: The Tuscarora originally lived in the Northeast with the other Iroquois-speaking tribes, and then, in about 1000 AD, before the formation of the Haudenosaunee, and probably because of the brutal and never-ending wars between the Iroquois tribes, moved down to the Carolinas and Virginia. In 1713, they lost the Tuscarora War with the British and their allies, were thrown off their land and many of them moved to New York State, where the Oneida tribe allotted them some of their land. In 1722, most of the Tuscarora joined their ancestral and cultural kin as the Sixth Nation of the Haudenosaunee. Those who did not become part of the Haudenosaunee either had remained or returned to the Carolinas and Virginia. The Tuscarora people, as a genetically-related group, now live in Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Ohio.
Original Language: Skarureh, a branch of the Iroquoian language tree.
Tribal Affiliations: When the Tuscarora were still living in the Carolinas and Virginia, they allied themselves with the Pamlico, the Cothechney, the Core, the Mattamusett, and the Matchepungo tribes to wage war against the encroaching British and European settlers and their own Native American allies. After the Tuscarora lost the war, a portion of them traveled north and joined the Iroquois League, and their allies now included the Mohawk, the Seneca, the Oneida, the Onondaga and the Cayuga.
Traditional Enemies: The British, the Dutch, the Germans, the Yamasse and the Cherokee.
Traditional Style of Housing: The Tuscarora, both those who lived in New York and those who lived in the Carolinas and Virginia, lived in permanent wood-frame buildings called "longhouses" which were made of elm bark, rounded on top and could be up to one hundred feet long, but were probably about fifty feet long, on average. These longhouses were partitioned, with storage areas and a stone hearth or fireplace for cooking and baking. They could hold up to maybe thirty extended family members. The entire Tuscarora village of ten to twenty longhouse was protected against other tribes and wild animals by a palisade, a tall wooden wall that may have also enclosed their vegetable and herb gardens, their orchards, their smokehouses, their town halls, their sweat-lodges and their menstrual lodges. During the hunting and warring seasons, the Tuscarora lived in somewhat temporary small dome-like round wickiups, as did the Cherokee, another Iroquois-speaking tribe who at the time lived in the Carolinas and were their mortal enemies. The longhouses and the wickiups were owned by the women.
Traditional Attire: The Tuscarora tribes seem to pride themselves on distinguishing themselves from their Iroquois brothers and sisters, and toward that end, they have made and worn hemp shirts for several hundred years. Hemp clothing is sustainable, comfortable, lighter than deerskin and is easier to clean. Tuscarora moccasins went higher up on the leg, almost to the shin, as compared to the shorter Iroquoian moccasins. The Tuscarora women wore rounded, not pointed, decorated yokes over their shin-length dresses. When they did not wear dresses, they wore undecorated full-length halter-style aprons over their wraparound skirts and leggings. Their high beaded tiaras (think "Russian empress") were worn lower on the forehead, almost like an Apache headband, and their fancy clothing often had very long fringes. The Tuscarora men went around in breechcloths and high moccasins during the long sweaty months, but otherwise wore comfortable hemp shirts, leggings or trousers, and, for ceremonial occasions, feather-covered gustowehs but without long upright or downcast eagle feathers. The raised beadwork of the Tuscarora, which is evident on their caps, yokes and collars, is particularly lovely. The Southern Tuscarora are also said to have dyed their hair bright red in order to remain different-looking from the other Iroquois and their tribal neighbors.
Traditional Foods: The Tuscarora were a settled, agrarian people, so the New York Tuscarora women grew their own corn, beans and squash. They also grew herbs, carrots, turnips and rutabagas, fiddleheads, onions, cabbages, pumpkin, Jerusalem artichokes, sunflowers, Indian potatoes, and strawberries. They foraged for mushrooms, leeks, ramps, wintergreen, walnuts, hickory nuts, chestnuts, and greens. They had community-owned crabapple, plum and cherry orchards, and gathered wild blueberries, cranberries, honey, mulberries, elderberries and serviceberries. They made maple syrup, cornbread, corn soup and stews, and dried the surplus of their produce. The men, on the other hand, hunted or trapped deer, elk, bear, rabbit, muskrat, beaver, grouse, pheasant, turkeys, and geese, and fished for salmon, trout, bass, perch and whitefish.
The Tuscarora women in the south grew beans, corn and squash, including pumpkins. They also grew or foraged for hazelnuts, filberts, black walnuts, acorns, chestnuts, sunflowers, a wild grain called "chechinquarnins," mulberries, paw paws, persimmons, huckleberries, wild grapes, muskmelon, peaches, melons, cucumbers, peas, peanuts, Indian potatoes, goosefoot, marsh-elder for quinoa, wild barley, maygrass, a kind of grain, and grew tobacco and hemp. The Southern Tuscarora men fished for or netted oysters, crab, scallops, clams, flounder, stingray, skate, crayfish, bear, beaver, panther, skunk, wildcats, possums, rabbits, squirrels, deer (including unborn fawns), wasp larvae, turtles, turtle eggs, water-fowl, and turkey. Once the Europeans arrived in the early 1600's, the Tuscarora added beef, mutton, lamb, and pork to their diet.
Position of Women: Extremely high, almost matriarchal. Like most of the nations in the Iroquois League, the Tuscarora were matrilineal and matrilocal. Tuscarora men moved into the longhouses that belonged to their wives' grandmothers or mothers. Tuscarora women could inherit and bequeath property and were the heads of household, and their husbands could do nothing without consulting their wives first. The six Clan Mothers of the northern Tuscarora tribe had the final say regarding matrimony, and had naming rights regarding their grandchildren. They were completely responsible for the selection of the six male chiefs, called "Teethhe," who would serve as the Representatives of not only the Tuscarora but the Iroquois people before the Grand Council meetings of the Iroquois League. Tuscarora women were also responsible for establishing the social status of their families, for the fate of captives taken in war, in charge of child-rearing, food production, clothing production, rope production, housework, the healing arts, the usual domestic chores and served as tribal judges. The men, on the other hand, managed to get out of the house and away from the women by clearing fields, making houses, fishing, hunting, waging war (with the permission of the women), and playing sports.
Among the Southern Bands of the Tuscarora, there are still Clan Mothers, and clan membership is still reckoned through the mother's line, but because times have changed since the Tuscarora are no longer an agrarian society, a lot of the old matriarchal ways of the Tuscarora have been lost.
Tuscarora Courtship: If a young Tuscarora man wanted to court a Tuscarora woman, provided that she were not a member of the same clan, he would play sweet flute music outside of her mother's longhouse. If she peeked outside, saw who was playing, and accepted his suit, she would invite him in, at which time, he was probably mercilessly grilled by her mother, her grandmother and her aunts. If they all agreed that it was a good match, preparations would be made for a big fancy wedding complete with a reception in which the tribe would give the happy couple everything that they would need for their lives together. Their marriage was expected to last forever, so divorce was uncommon. But, if a Tuscarora wife did feel that her husband were worthless or lacking in some way, all that she would have to do would be to put his blanket and few belongings outside the longhouse, and he had to go, so divorces, while rare, were very simple.
Interesting Tidbits:
The ancestors of the Iroquois had lived on the eastern side of the Great Lakes probably since 15,000 BC. They all spoke the same language, lived in the same kinds of houses, wore the same kinds of clothes, headdresses and hairstyles, belonged to the same kinds of clans drawn from the same maternal lines, and their tribes were all headed by women. They worshipped the same Creator, and grew the same Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash). They were brothers and sisters and cousins of each other. And as it is with all families, arguments broke out between them and they separated into many tribes: the Seneca, the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the Oneida, the Cayuga, the Tuscarora, the Cherokee, the Huron, the Erie, the Wyandot, the Meherrin, the Nottaway, and many others. But in 1142 AD, the Great Peacemaker, Dekanawida and his disciple, Hiawatha, formed the Haudenosaunee, the "People of the Longhouse," which is the "Iroquois League" and the "Five Nations" that were and are still bound together by The Great Law of Peace, a common law, allegiance, truce and trade agreement. These five tribes were the Seneca, the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the Oneida and the Cayuga. In 1722, sponsored by the Oneida, the Tuscarora, who had just returned from North Carolina, were allowed to join the Iroquois League as the Sixth Nation....
The Tuscarora had every reason to be unhappy with the encroachment of white settlers in the Carolinas and Virginia. They were overcharged for goods and services, denied use of the ferries to cross rivers, restricted in the use of their traditional hunting grounds, cheated in trade and treaties, timber was illegally logged on their land, and bit by bit, the land that had been reserved for them (the reservations) was being swindled out from under them. Furthermore, in the many wars with the settlers, their villages and orchards were burned to the ground and their women and children were enslaved and sent off to work in the plantations of the Caribbean....
The Northern Tuscarora clans seem to include the Bear Clan, the Turtle Clan, the Beaver Clan, the Deer Clan, the Eel Clan, and the Snipe Clan. They are led by the Clan Mothers. The Southern Tuscarora tribe, which still lives in North Carolina and Virginia, has their own Grand Council and seven clans: the Bear Clan, the Deer Clan, the Eel Clan, the Mud Turtle Clan, the Sand Turtle Clan, the Snipe Clan and the Wolf Clan. The Clans can be represented at the Grand Council by either Clan Mothers (women) or Clan Chiefs (men). The Southern Tuscarora also have a generous food pantry program for tribal members....
According to Iroquois legend, the Clan system came about this way: The grandmothers of the ancestral Iroquois tribe were told by the Great Peacemaker to step out of their longhouses on a designated morning and to report to him the first animal that they saw. One grandmother saw a bear, another saw a turtle, another saw a beaver, another saw a deer, another saw an eel, another saw a sandpiper or a snipe, and another saw a wolf, another saw a hawk and another saw a heron. Once the grandmothers reported their findings to the Great Peacemaker, he told them that these animals were to serve as their family's totems, the emblems of that family. Therefore, the grandmother who had seen the bear, for instance, was the Bear Clan Mother, and her daughters would be members of the Bear Clan, and her granddaughters would be members of the Bear Clan, and so forth, through the maternal line. Boys, on the other hand, were born into their mother's clan, but became members of their wives' clans when they married, and they could not marry anyone from their own clan, which was, genetically and socially, a very good idea....
The Southern Tuscarora tribe used, and may still use, a Turtle (or lunar) Calendar, noting that a turtle (the mythological version of whom carries the earth upon his back, and upon whom the Sky Woman fell) has thirteen large interior sections on his shell and twenty-eight smaller exterior sections on his shell. Therefore, their year has thirteen months, with twenty-eight days per month. In English, these months are as follows: (starting with January) Blizzard Moon, North-winds Moon, Maple Syrup Moon, Planting Moon, Flower Moon, Strawberry Moon, Summer Moon, Ripening Corn Moon, Harvest Moon, Moon of Fallen Leaves, Cold Weather Moon and Snow Moon. Almost every month has a festival attached to it....
Hemp, a member of the Cannabis family, was indigenous to China, and was probably brought cross the Bering Strait when the waves of First People came to this continent beginning in 50,000 BC. It was then spread by human hands or by bird droppings across North and South America. In the Spring, its flowers can be battered, deep-fried and eaten like broccoli tempura. Immature seed pods can be cooked in stews as vegetables, and its thick fibers, once processed and dried, can be used for making cords, ropes and coarse material. Parts of the cannabis plant were also either smoked or used as a tincture by the Tuscarora, who considered it their own special gift from the Creator, and who were led to it by deer, the animal symbolic of peace. They consider it the "seed of life" and "the seed of peace" and as medicine.
The Southern Tuscarora, which includes the Tuscarora Indian Nation of North Carolina, the Southern Band of the Tuscarora Indian Tribe, the Tuscarora Nation One Fire, the Tosneoc Tuscarora Community, the Skaroreh Katenuaka Nation and the Tuscarora Tribe Indians (which has been accepted into the National Congress of American Indians) do not consider themselves to be part of the Six Nations of the Iroquois League, nor does the Iroquois League consider them to be truly Tuscaroran. These six groups do not have federal or state recognition as tribes. Federal and state recognition is desirable because without them, there can be no sovereign nation, no self-determination, no self-respect or self-identity, no eligibility for special programs like educational grants, scholarships, food programs, health services, no reservations, and their tribal land, which they'd been on for hundreds or thousands of years, can be sold out from under them in some white corporate takeover.
Traditional Religion: Christianity, Longhouse, Handsome Lake, and traditional tribal religions.
Slavery and the Tuscarora: The Tuscarora, especially those who remained in the Carolinas and Virginia, were captured by the British and sent as slaves to the British plantations in the Caribbean. The Tuscarora who moved north and became part of the Iroquois League probably served as messengers and conductors for escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, especially in or around Lewiston, New York, which was on or near Tuscarora land.
Current Population: There are more than 17,000 registered Tuscarora living in New York and Ontario, and less than 300 are living as non-registered Tuscarora in North Carolina.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: Tuscarora living in New York State earn a nice living from the fishing industry, the tourism industry, casinos, small businesses (woodwork, roofing and siding, crafts, consulting, paper doll manufacturing, and an art gallery) and work at saving the environment. The Tuscarora who live in North Carolina are very, very poor.
Famous Tuscarora: None that I have heard of.
The Cayuga - The Keepers of the Great Pipe
Tribe: The Cayuga.
Meaning of Name: "Cayuga" is the shortened English version of their name for themselves, the "Gayogoho," which means "People of the Canoe Carry Place," or "People of the Swamp."
Location: Cayuga territory used to be between the Onondaga land in the east and Seneca land in the west, in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. After their land was taken, many of the Cayuga moved to Canada, Wisconsin, and Ohio, and then to Oklahoma. The Cayuga currently live in Ontario, New York, and as part of the Seneca-Cayuga tribe in Oklahoma. They never got their land back.
Original Language: Cayuga, a branch of the Iroquoian family tree.
Tribal Affiliations: As one of the original members of the Haudenosaunee, aka "the Iroquois Nation" or "Iroquois League," the Cayuga were allies of the Mohawk, the Seneca, the Onondaga, the Oneida and later, the Tuscarora. During the Revolutionary War, the Cayuga tried to remain neutral since they really didn't have a horse in the race between Britain and the Colonies, but after George Washington's army destroyed their villages, orchards and fields in what was basically a preemptive strike, the Cayuga decided to side with the British.
Traditional Enemies: The Wabanaki, the Mohican, the Ojibwe, the Algonquin, the Hurons, the Erie, the Neutrals, the Montagnais, the Susquehannock, the French, the American Colonists and the State of New York.
Traditional Style of Housing: Like the other Iroquois tribes, the Cayuga lived in longhouses with stone hearths. These longhouses, which were wholly owned by the women, were protected from wild animals and other tribes by thick palisade walls. Each village lasted about ten to thirty years before the Cayuga moved to let Mother Earth heal herself from where they had depleted her natural resources. Like the other Iroquois tribes, the Cayuga probably also had fields for crops, orchards, sweat-lodges, smokehouses, town halls, athletic fields, and menstrual lodges.
Traditional Attire: Cayuga women either went shirtless, especially during the hot sweaty months, or wore shin-length deerskin dresses over longer wraparound deerskin skirts, a pair of deerskin leggings, with deerskin moccasins. They cut their hair short only when they were in mourning, and probably never wore a "Mohawk." Cayuga men also went shirtless during the sweaty months, or wore deerskin shirts, breechcloths, legging and moccasins. Their "gustoweh" or feather-covered cap, was topped with one droopy, despondent, downward-angled feather.
Traditional Foods: The Cayuga were a settled, agrarian people. The women owned their own longhouses and worked in the community gardens and fields where they grew corn, beans and squash, which they called the "Three Sisters." (See "Interesting Tidbits.") They also grew tobacco, carrots, turnips, rutabagas, onions, cabbages, leeks, pumpkin, Jerusalem artichokes, Indian potatoes, and sunflowers. They planted groves and orchards where they gathered walnuts, hickory nuts, chestnuts, crabapples, cherries, plums, mulberries and elderberries. They foraged for fiddleheads, wild herbs, wild rice, mushrooms, ramps, wintergreen, wild greens, strawberries, blueberries, cranberries, wild grapes, rhubarb, chard and serviceberries, and gathered honey and maple sap for making syrup and candy. The men hunted for or trapped deer, elk, bear, rabbits, muskrat, beaver, grouse, pheasant, wild turkeys and Canadian geese, and fished for salmon, trout, bass, perch, pike, pickerel, muskie, walleye and whitefish, which the women either cooked in soups and stews, or salted, dried and stored for later use. And, like all of the Iroquois people, they took no more than was needed from the Earth and shared with others what they had. Even today, the Cayuga people of New York continue this tradition of sharing. They have a farm, called "Gakwiyo Garden," in Seneca County, where they grow, dry, and distribute produce to tribal members across the country.
Position of Women: Extremely high, almost matriarchal. Like most of the nations in the Iroquois League, the Cayuga were matrilineal and matrilocal. The Cayuga men moved into the longhouses that belonged to their wives' grandmothers or mothers. Cayuga women could inherit and bequeath property and were the heads of household, and Cayuga husbands could do nothing without consulting their wives first. The ten Clan Mothers of the Cayuga tribe had the final say regarding choice of mates and for the selection of the ten male chiefs whom they felt could be trusted to look after the needs of the entire tribe as the People's Representatives before the Grand Council meetings of the Iroquois League. Cayuga women were also responsible for establishing the social status of their families, the fate of captives taken in war, child-rearing, being the judges in disputes, food production, clothing production, the healing arts, and the usual domestic chores. The men, on the other hand, managed to get out of the house and away from the women by building longhouses, putting up palisades, clearing fields, chopping wood, fishing, hunting, waging war (with the permission of the women), and running foot-races, and playing "Snow Snake" and Lacrosse. (See the entry on Sports and the Native American.)
Cayuga Courtship: If a young Cayuga man wanted to court a young Cayuga woman, he would play sweet flute music outside of her mother's longhouse. If she peeked outside, saw who was playing, and accepted his suit, she would invite him in, at which time, he was probably mercilessly grilled by her mother, her grandmother and her aunts. If they all agreed that it was a good match, preparations would be made for a big fancy wedding complete with a reception in which the couple would be given everything that they would need for their lives together. Their marriage was expected to last forever, so divorce was uncommon. However, if a Cayuga wife felt that her husband were worthless or lacking in some way, all that she would have to do would be to put his blanket and few belongings outside the longhouse, and he had to be gone, so divorces, while rare, were very simple.
Interesting Tidbits:
The "Three Sisters" are corn, beans and squash. The corn represents the oldest sister, for she provides the stalk upon which the second sister, the bean vine, can grow. At their feet is the little sister, the squash, who provides shelter and nourishment for their roots.
The Cayuga lost all of their territory, villages and orchards to George Washington and his army in 1779, and did not get them back. Those who survived were taken in by their Iroquois brothers and sisters, most notably, their neighbors, the Seneca and the Onondaga. There are still disputes with the United States government regarding reclaiming their ancestral land....
The Cayuga, along with the rest of the Iroquois League, signed the Treaty of Canandaigua between the United States and the Iroquois Nations. This treaty recognized the rights of the sovereign nations, particularly with regard to trade and travel. The United States government still sends muslin fabric to the Six Nations to this day as part of this agreement...
Many of the Cayuga who are in Ontario in Canada live on a "reserve," but the Cayuga Nation of New York does not have their own reservation but live on the reservation of the Seneca. The Cayuga who live in Oklahoma also live on a reservation with the Seneca....
The Cayuga have five clans: the Wolf Clan, the Bear Clan, the Turtle Clan, the Sandpiper or Snipe Clan and the Heron Clan. Several of these clans have been divided into smaller clans. They are led by the ten Cayuga Clan Mothers, or by a chief, a sub-chief or a Seat-Warmer....
The Cayuga observe the Strawberry Ceremony, the Green Corn Ceremony, the Harvest Ceremony and the Midwinter Ceremony. These are good occasions to wear fancy dress and meet members of the opposite sex in traditional settings....
The Cayuga are the Keepers of the Great Pipe, and have probably been growing tobacco for a thousand years, if not longer. This tobacco, which is smoked using a pipe or "calumet," was used for ceremonial purposes and not for recreational use.
Traditional Religion: Longhouse religion, Handsome Lake, and Christianity.
Slavery and the Cayuga: The Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Nation officially abolished slavery between the Mohawk, the Seneca, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Oneida and the Tuscarora. However, captives taken from other tribes during times of war were often enslaved. In Canada, some of the Cayuga people were captured and taken to France to work as galley slaves on the French King's ships....
The Iroquois Nation was also part of the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. There were several "stations" across New York where escaping slaves could stop on their way to Canada (the "Promised Land"). Once they left the Carolinas by boat, these escaped African slaves traveled up the Delaware River, to New Jersey, then to the Hudson River, and then traveled across Central New York by land, where there were many Underground Railroad stations on Iroquois land. These stations included Albany on Mohawk land, Buffalo and Rochester on Seneca land, Lewiston on Tuscarora land, Syracuse on Onondaga land, and Elmira, which was on land once owned by the Cayuga. Iroquois "conductors," who knew the territory, ran ahead to the next "station" to tell the next stationmaster that they were coming.
Current Population: There are still some 450 registered Cayuga in New York and almost 5,000 registered Cayuga living with the Seneca in Oklahoma.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: The Cayuga Nation of New York has several businesses: gas stations, convenience stores, smoke shops, gaming, a towing and vehicle repair shop, a water bottling company, Gakwiyo Gardens, a soybean farm, a farm-stand, and an ice cream parlor and miniature golf course. The Seneca-Cayuga in Oklahoma rely on tourism, gaming, casinos and cigarette manufacturing.
Famous Cayuga: None that I have heard of.
Meaning of Name: "Cayuga" is the shortened English version of their name for themselves, the "Gayogoho," which means "People of the Canoe Carry Place," or "People of the Swamp."
Location: Cayuga territory used to be between the Onondaga land in the east and Seneca land in the west, in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. After their land was taken, many of the Cayuga moved to Canada, Wisconsin, and Ohio, and then to Oklahoma. The Cayuga currently live in Ontario, New York, and as part of the Seneca-Cayuga tribe in Oklahoma. They never got their land back.
Original Language: Cayuga, a branch of the Iroquoian family tree.
Tribal Affiliations: As one of the original members of the Haudenosaunee, aka "the Iroquois Nation" or "Iroquois League," the Cayuga were allies of the Mohawk, the Seneca, the Onondaga, the Oneida and later, the Tuscarora. During the Revolutionary War, the Cayuga tried to remain neutral since they really didn't have a horse in the race between Britain and the Colonies, but after George Washington's army destroyed their villages, orchards and fields in what was basically a preemptive strike, the Cayuga decided to side with the British.
Traditional Enemies: The Wabanaki, the Mohican, the Ojibwe, the Algonquin, the Hurons, the Erie, the Neutrals, the Montagnais, the Susquehannock, the French, the American Colonists and the State of New York.
Traditional Style of Housing: Like the other Iroquois tribes, the Cayuga lived in longhouses with stone hearths. These longhouses, which were wholly owned by the women, were protected from wild animals and other tribes by thick palisade walls. Each village lasted about ten to thirty years before the Cayuga moved to let Mother Earth heal herself from where they had depleted her natural resources. Like the other Iroquois tribes, the Cayuga probably also had fields for crops, orchards, sweat-lodges, smokehouses, town halls, athletic fields, and menstrual lodges.
Traditional Attire: Cayuga women either went shirtless, especially during the hot sweaty months, or wore shin-length deerskin dresses over longer wraparound deerskin skirts, a pair of deerskin leggings, with deerskin moccasins. They cut their hair short only when they were in mourning, and probably never wore a "Mohawk." Cayuga men also went shirtless during the sweaty months, or wore deerskin shirts, breechcloths, legging and moccasins. Their "gustoweh" or feather-covered cap, was topped with one droopy, despondent, downward-angled feather.
Traditional Foods: The Cayuga were a settled, agrarian people. The women owned their own longhouses and worked in the community gardens and fields where they grew corn, beans and squash, which they called the "Three Sisters." (See "Interesting Tidbits.") They also grew tobacco, carrots, turnips, rutabagas, onions, cabbages, leeks, pumpkin, Jerusalem artichokes, Indian potatoes, and sunflowers. They planted groves and orchards where they gathered walnuts, hickory nuts, chestnuts, crabapples, cherries, plums, mulberries and elderberries. They foraged for fiddleheads, wild herbs, wild rice, mushrooms, ramps, wintergreen, wild greens, strawberries, blueberries, cranberries, wild grapes, rhubarb, chard and serviceberries, and gathered honey and maple sap for making syrup and candy. The men hunted for or trapped deer, elk, bear, rabbits, muskrat, beaver, grouse, pheasant, wild turkeys and Canadian geese, and fished for salmon, trout, bass, perch, pike, pickerel, muskie, walleye and whitefish, which the women either cooked in soups and stews, or salted, dried and stored for later use. And, like all of the Iroquois people, they took no more than was needed from the Earth and shared with others what they had. Even today, the Cayuga people of New York continue this tradition of sharing. They have a farm, called "Gakwiyo Garden," in Seneca County, where they grow, dry, and distribute produce to tribal members across the country.
Position of Women: Extremely high, almost matriarchal. Like most of the nations in the Iroquois League, the Cayuga were matrilineal and matrilocal. The Cayuga men moved into the longhouses that belonged to their wives' grandmothers or mothers. Cayuga women could inherit and bequeath property and were the heads of household, and Cayuga husbands could do nothing without consulting their wives first. The ten Clan Mothers of the Cayuga tribe had the final say regarding choice of mates and for the selection of the ten male chiefs whom they felt could be trusted to look after the needs of the entire tribe as the People's Representatives before the Grand Council meetings of the Iroquois League. Cayuga women were also responsible for establishing the social status of their families, the fate of captives taken in war, child-rearing, being the judges in disputes, food production, clothing production, the healing arts, and the usual domestic chores. The men, on the other hand, managed to get out of the house and away from the women by building longhouses, putting up palisades, clearing fields, chopping wood, fishing, hunting, waging war (with the permission of the women), and running foot-races, and playing "Snow Snake" and Lacrosse. (See the entry on Sports and the Native American.)
Cayuga Courtship: If a young Cayuga man wanted to court a young Cayuga woman, he would play sweet flute music outside of her mother's longhouse. If she peeked outside, saw who was playing, and accepted his suit, she would invite him in, at which time, he was probably mercilessly grilled by her mother, her grandmother and her aunts. If they all agreed that it was a good match, preparations would be made for a big fancy wedding complete with a reception in which the couple would be given everything that they would need for their lives together. Their marriage was expected to last forever, so divorce was uncommon. However, if a Cayuga wife felt that her husband were worthless or lacking in some way, all that she would have to do would be to put his blanket and few belongings outside the longhouse, and he had to be gone, so divorces, while rare, were very simple.
Interesting Tidbits:
The "Three Sisters" are corn, beans and squash. The corn represents the oldest sister, for she provides the stalk upon which the second sister, the bean vine, can grow. At their feet is the little sister, the squash, who provides shelter and nourishment for their roots.
The Cayuga lost all of their territory, villages and orchards to George Washington and his army in 1779, and did not get them back. Those who survived were taken in by their Iroquois brothers and sisters, most notably, their neighbors, the Seneca and the Onondaga. There are still disputes with the United States government regarding reclaiming their ancestral land....
The Cayuga, along with the rest of the Iroquois League, signed the Treaty of Canandaigua between the United States and the Iroquois Nations. This treaty recognized the rights of the sovereign nations, particularly with regard to trade and travel. The United States government still sends muslin fabric to the Six Nations to this day as part of this agreement...
Many of the Cayuga who are in Ontario in Canada live on a "reserve," but the Cayuga Nation of New York does not have their own reservation but live on the reservation of the Seneca. The Cayuga who live in Oklahoma also live on a reservation with the Seneca....
The Cayuga have five clans: the Wolf Clan, the Bear Clan, the Turtle Clan, the Sandpiper or Snipe Clan and the Heron Clan. Several of these clans have been divided into smaller clans. They are led by the ten Cayuga Clan Mothers, or by a chief, a sub-chief or a Seat-Warmer....
The Cayuga observe the Strawberry Ceremony, the Green Corn Ceremony, the Harvest Ceremony and the Midwinter Ceremony. These are good occasions to wear fancy dress and meet members of the opposite sex in traditional settings....
The Cayuga are the Keepers of the Great Pipe, and have probably been growing tobacco for a thousand years, if not longer. This tobacco, which is smoked using a pipe or "calumet," was used for ceremonial purposes and not for recreational use.
Traditional Religion: Longhouse religion, Handsome Lake, and Christianity.
Slavery and the Cayuga: The Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Nation officially abolished slavery between the Mohawk, the Seneca, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Oneida and the Tuscarora. However, captives taken from other tribes during times of war were often enslaved. In Canada, some of the Cayuga people were captured and taken to France to work as galley slaves on the French King's ships....
The Iroquois Nation was also part of the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. There were several "stations" across New York where escaping slaves could stop on their way to Canada (the "Promised Land"). Once they left the Carolinas by boat, these escaped African slaves traveled up the Delaware River, to New Jersey, then to the Hudson River, and then traveled across Central New York by land, where there were many Underground Railroad stations on Iroquois land. These stations included Albany on Mohawk land, Buffalo and Rochester on Seneca land, Lewiston on Tuscarora land, Syracuse on Onondaga land, and Elmira, which was on land once owned by the Cayuga. Iroquois "conductors," who knew the territory, ran ahead to the next "station" to tell the next stationmaster that they were coming.
Current Population: There are still some 450 registered Cayuga in New York and almost 5,000 registered Cayuga living with the Seneca in Oklahoma.
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: The Cayuga Nation of New York has several businesses: gas stations, convenience stores, smoke shops, gaming, a towing and vehicle repair shop, a water bottling company, Gakwiyo Gardens, a soybean farm, a farm-stand, and an ice cream parlor and miniature golf course. The Seneca-Cayuga in Oklahoma rely on tourism, gaming, casinos and cigarette manufacturing.
Famous Cayuga: None that I have heard of.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
The Onondaga - Keepers of the Fire
Tribe: The Onondaga, who call themselves the "Ononda'gega'."
Meaning of Name: "Onondaga" is the shortened form of "Ononda'gega," which in turn comes from the word "Onundaga'ono," which means "People of the Hill." They are one of the Six Nations, the Iroquois League, and therefore part of the Haudenosaunee, the "People of the Longhouses." This makes the Onondaga one of the few tribes that weren't called something else by their enemies.
Location: Historically, the Onondaga occupied a long swatch of land in the middle of what became New York State, with the Seneca and the Cayuga tribes on the west and the Oneida and the Mohawk tribes on the east. Many Onondaga still live on Onondaga Reservation south of Syracuse, New York in Onondaga County. Others live in Ontario in Canada. According to archeologists, the tribes that comprise the Iroquois Nations have lived there in New York for at least 15,000 years.
Original Language: Onondagega, which was part of the Iroquoian language family.
Tribal Affiliations: The Mohawk, the Seneca, the Oneida, the Cayuga, and, since 1722, the Tuscarora. These Six Nations are called the "Haudenosaunee," the "People of the Longhouse," and they have pledged to live in peace as brothers since the formation of the Iroquois League in 1142 AD. Onondaga allies also included, at least historically, the Dutch, English and French.
Traditional Enemies: The Montagnais, the Etchemin, the Hurons, the Algonquin, the Ottawa, the Erie, the Conestoga, the Wabanaki, the Ojibwe, the Mohican, and, at different times, the Mohawk, the French and the American Colonists.
Traditional Style of Housing: Longhouses, sometimes up to two hundred feet long, and large enough to contain several generations. They were frame-houses, covered in bark, with stone hearths for cooking, baking and heating. The longhouses were owned by the matriarch of each family. Each Onondaga hamlet or village was contained within a wooden palisade for protection against wild animals and other tribes. Inside the palisade walls were storehouses, menstrual lodges, sweat-lodges, smokehouses, and a town hall, and outside of the palisade walls were athletic fields, fields for crops, and orchards. At some point, probably after so many of their fellow tribes-people were lost to diseases like Smallpox, the Onondaga built and moved into smaller log cabins, although some young Onondaga report having grown up in one.
Traditional Attire: For the men, deerskin breechcloths, leggings and rabbit-fur-lined moccasins, with "gustowehs" (caps covered with small feathers) boasting one upright eagle, hawk, pheasant or turkey feather, and one downward-angled eagle, hawk, pheasant or turkey feather. When the men went to war, they either shaved their heads (or plucked out all of their hair) except for a scalp-lock or a long ridge of stiff upright hair, or they wore roaches. The women wore shin-length loose, comfortable deerskin dresses with embroidered or beaded detachable yokes, worn over longer deerskin skirts and deerskin leggings, and sometimes beaded and quilled tiaras for special occasions. (Think Russian Empress crowns with intricate beaded designs.)
Traditional Foods: The Onondaga, like the other Iroquois tribes, were a settled agrarian people who grew their own corn, beans and squash from which they made soup, mush and bread, planted orchards, and otherwise foraged seasonally. In the Spring and Summer, the men fished and the women gathered wild onions, dandelions, leeks, ramps, milkweed, berries and strawberries. During the Fall and Winter, the men hunted for deer, turkey, rabbit and small game. When the hunters came home, they only took what was needed and shared the rest with the other members of the tribe. For a more complete list of foods, see the Seneca, Mohawk and Oneida entries.)
Position of Women: Very high. There are fourteen Clan Mothers who lead the Wolf Clan, the Bear Clan, the Turtle Clan, the Sandpiper or Snipe Clan, the Deer Clan, the Beaver Clan, and the Eel Clan and their subdivisions. They choose fourteen of the fifteen Onondaga chiefs who represent the Executive branch of the tribes before the Grand Council of the Iroquois Nations. (See "Interesting Tidbits.")
Onondaga Courtship: Although I couldn't find anything distinctive to the Onondagas, I did find out that they had several annual dances, including the Smoke Dance, the Stick Dance and the Stomp Dance. So, presumably, a young couple could spy each other there, and then follow the usual Iroquois courtship patterns of flute playing, baskets of goodies, interrogation, and overly-inquisitive potential in-laws.
Interesting Tidbits:
The fourteen chiefs chosen by the Clan Mothers are the Keepers of the Fire, and are chosen because they have proven themselves to be kind, unselfish, helpful, honest and to put the needs of the tribe above their own needs. The Grand Council meetings are held, according to the schedule that the Clan Mothers set, on the Onondaga Reservation in Onondaga County, New York. There the fourteen Onondaga chiefs meet with the other thirty-four chiefs of the other five tribes of the Iroquois League, for a total of forty-nine chiefs. The fiftieth chief of the Onondaga is called the "Tadodaho." He is the Head Chief of all of the Six Nations. This was a greatly-respected lifetime position, one that requires him to maintain the history of the Six Nations. The Tadodaho is always of the Onondaga People. He does not have a Clan Mother, and when he dies, his replacement is decided upon by the other Onondago chiefs....
The Onondaga make up the Executive Branch of the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois League.) The Mohawk and the Seneca make up the Legislative Branch, and the Oneida, the Cayuga and the Tuscarora make up the Representative Branch of the Grand Council. These tribes and branches are further divided, and each must agree before a question of trade or war is sent from the Legislative and Representative Branches up to the Executive Branch. (The Clan Mothers, by the way, make up the Judicial Branch.) Each person who comes before the Grand Council is equal before the Creator and under the provisions of the Great Law of Peace, which is the Iroquois Constitution. It doesn't make any difference if the person is male or female, rich or poor, chief or non-chief, and each chief's vote, on behalf of his tribe, counts equally, whether the tribe is large or small. This system of participatory democracy should sound awfully familiar, and well it should, because it was used as the role model for the representative (House of Representatives) the legislative (the United States Senate), the executive (the President of the United States) and the judicial (the Supreme Court) branches of the United States Government as outlined in the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Onondaga Lake, which was and is sacred to the Onondaga People because it was the place where the original Five Tribes met and agreed to live in peace, is now one of the most polluted lakes in the United States, and is a Superfund site. Sewage from Syracuse dumps into the lake, there are oxygen-choking algae blooms which kill off the fish and plants, and there are toxins, fine sediment and mercury. The Onondaga are trying hard to clean this up, even though they did not make the mess....
Traditional Religion: Longhouse, Handsome Lake, and other tribal religions.
Slavery and the Onondaga: The land owned by the Onondaga was on the Underground Railroad and near the Freedom Trail. Many escaping African slaves elected to hole up with the welcoming Onondaga tribe instead of continuing to Canada. There were also slave-owners in Onondaga County, but most of their slaves seemed to have been white indentured servants who were working off their passage to the United States.
Current Population: There may be some 4200 Onondaga in New York State
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: The Onondaga currently have smoke shops, a sports arena where lacrosse and hockey are played, a manufacturing plant that makes environmentally-safe cleaning products, a business that promotes sustainable gardening through greenhouses, a drinking water system, and a "Ganigonhiyoh," which may be a kind of holistic mind-healing spa and sweat lodge for cleansing the mind and chasing out bad spirits.
Famous Onondaga: None that I have heard of.
Meaning of Name: "Onondaga" is the shortened form of "Ononda'gega," which in turn comes from the word "Onundaga'ono," which means "People of the Hill." They are one of the Six Nations, the Iroquois League, and therefore part of the Haudenosaunee, the "People of the Longhouses." This makes the Onondaga one of the few tribes that weren't called something else by their enemies.
Location: Historically, the Onondaga occupied a long swatch of land in the middle of what became New York State, with the Seneca and the Cayuga tribes on the west and the Oneida and the Mohawk tribes on the east. Many Onondaga still live on Onondaga Reservation south of Syracuse, New York in Onondaga County. Others live in Ontario in Canada. According to archeologists, the tribes that comprise the Iroquois Nations have lived there in New York for at least 15,000 years.
Original Language: Onondagega, which was part of the Iroquoian language family.
Tribal Affiliations: The Mohawk, the Seneca, the Oneida, the Cayuga, and, since 1722, the Tuscarora. These Six Nations are called the "Haudenosaunee," the "People of the Longhouse," and they have pledged to live in peace as brothers since the formation of the Iroquois League in 1142 AD. Onondaga allies also included, at least historically, the Dutch, English and French.
Traditional Enemies: The Montagnais, the Etchemin, the Hurons, the Algonquin, the Ottawa, the Erie, the Conestoga, the Wabanaki, the Ojibwe, the Mohican, and, at different times, the Mohawk, the French and the American Colonists.
Traditional Style of Housing: Longhouses, sometimes up to two hundred feet long, and large enough to contain several generations. They were frame-houses, covered in bark, with stone hearths for cooking, baking and heating. The longhouses were owned by the matriarch of each family. Each Onondaga hamlet or village was contained within a wooden palisade for protection against wild animals and other tribes. Inside the palisade walls were storehouses, menstrual lodges, sweat-lodges, smokehouses, and a town hall, and outside of the palisade walls were athletic fields, fields for crops, and orchards. At some point, probably after so many of their fellow tribes-people were lost to diseases like Smallpox, the Onondaga built and moved into smaller log cabins, although some young Onondaga report having grown up in one.
Traditional Attire: For the men, deerskin breechcloths, leggings and rabbit-fur-lined moccasins, with "gustowehs" (caps covered with small feathers) boasting one upright eagle, hawk, pheasant or turkey feather, and one downward-angled eagle, hawk, pheasant or turkey feather. When the men went to war, they either shaved their heads (or plucked out all of their hair) except for a scalp-lock or a long ridge of stiff upright hair, or they wore roaches. The women wore shin-length loose, comfortable deerskin dresses with embroidered or beaded detachable yokes, worn over longer deerskin skirts and deerskin leggings, and sometimes beaded and quilled tiaras for special occasions. (Think Russian Empress crowns with intricate beaded designs.)
Traditional Foods: The Onondaga, like the other Iroquois tribes, were a settled agrarian people who grew their own corn, beans and squash from which they made soup, mush and bread, planted orchards, and otherwise foraged seasonally. In the Spring and Summer, the men fished and the women gathered wild onions, dandelions, leeks, ramps, milkweed, berries and strawberries. During the Fall and Winter, the men hunted for deer, turkey, rabbit and small game. When the hunters came home, they only took what was needed and shared the rest with the other members of the tribe. For a more complete list of foods, see the Seneca, Mohawk and Oneida entries.)
Position of Women: Very high. There are fourteen Clan Mothers who lead the Wolf Clan, the Bear Clan, the Turtle Clan, the Sandpiper or Snipe Clan, the Deer Clan, the Beaver Clan, and the Eel Clan and their subdivisions. They choose fourteen of the fifteen Onondaga chiefs who represent the Executive branch of the tribes before the Grand Council of the Iroquois Nations. (See "Interesting Tidbits.")
Onondaga Courtship: Although I couldn't find anything distinctive to the Onondagas, I did find out that they had several annual dances, including the Smoke Dance, the Stick Dance and the Stomp Dance. So, presumably, a young couple could spy each other there, and then follow the usual Iroquois courtship patterns of flute playing, baskets of goodies, interrogation, and overly-inquisitive potential in-laws.
Interesting Tidbits:
The fourteen chiefs chosen by the Clan Mothers are the Keepers of the Fire, and are chosen because they have proven themselves to be kind, unselfish, helpful, honest and to put the needs of the tribe above their own needs. The Grand Council meetings are held, according to the schedule that the Clan Mothers set, on the Onondaga Reservation in Onondaga County, New York. There the fourteen Onondaga chiefs meet with the other thirty-four chiefs of the other five tribes of the Iroquois League, for a total of forty-nine chiefs. The fiftieth chief of the Onondaga is called the "Tadodaho." He is the Head Chief of all of the Six Nations. This was a greatly-respected lifetime position, one that requires him to maintain the history of the Six Nations. The Tadodaho is always of the Onondaga People. He does not have a Clan Mother, and when he dies, his replacement is decided upon by the other Onondago chiefs....
The Onondaga make up the Executive Branch of the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois League.) The Mohawk and the Seneca make up the Legislative Branch, and the Oneida, the Cayuga and the Tuscarora make up the Representative Branch of the Grand Council. These tribes and branches are further divided, and each must agree before a question of trade or war is sent from the Legislative and Representative Branches up to the Executive Branch. (The Clan Mothers, by the way, make up the Judicial Branch.) Each person who comes before the Grand Council is equal before the Creator and under the provisions of the Great Law of Peace, which is the Iroquois Constitution. It doesn't make any difference if the person is male or female, rich or poor, chief or non-chief, and each chief's vote, on behalf of his tribe, counts equally, whether the tribe is large or small. This system of participatory democracy should sound awfully familiar, and well it should, because it was used as the role model for the representative (House of Representatives) the legislative (the United States Senate), the executive (the President of the United States) and the judicial (the Supreme Court) branches of the United States Government as outlined in the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Onondaga Lake, which was and is sacred to the Onondaga People because it was the place where the original Five Tribes met and agreed to live in peace, is now one of the most polluted lakes in the United States, and is a Superfund site. Sewage from Syracuse dumps into the lake, there are oxygen-choking algae blooms which kill off the fish and plants, and there are toxins, fine sediment and mercury. The Onondaga are trying hard to clean this up, even though they did not make the mess....
Traditional Religion: Longhouse, Handsome Lake, and other tribal religions.
Slavery and the Onondaga: The land owned by the Onondaga was on the Underground Railroad and near the Freedom Trail. Many escaping African slaves elected to hole up with the welcoming Onondaga tribe instead of continuing to Canada. There were also slave-owners in Onondaga County, but most of their slaves seemed to have been white indentured servants who were working off their passage to the United States.
Current Population: There may be some 4200 Onondaga in New York State
Current Sources of Tribal Revenue: The Onondaga currently have smoke shops, a sports arena where lacrosse and hockey are played, a manufacturing plant that makes environmentally-safe cleaning products, a business that promotes sustainable gardening through greenhouses, a drinking water system, and a "Ganigonhiyoh," which may be a kind of holistic mind-healing spa and sweat lodge for cleansing the mind and chasing out bad spirits.
Famous Onondaga: None that I have heard of.
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