While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Aborigines--The Iroquois Confederacy--Its Origin and Organization--Tribal
Relations--Secret of its Power--Its Superiority and Supremacy--Its
Degeneracy
We have no authentic history of a people inhabiting this
country anterior to those who occupied it on the advent of the Europeans,
and who are classed under the generic term Indians. Even their history
prior to their intimate association with civilized people is shrouded in
obscurity and is transmitted to us in the form of vague and fragmentary
legends.
The aborigines were a barbaric race and have left no
written history, except that we occasionally discover traces of their rude
paintings and still ruder engravings. But this is in a measure compensated
by the more enduring relics, consisting of the implements of husbandry,
the chase and war, which the plow and other means of excavation have
numerously disclosed. Their fortified villages and places of burial are
rich also in suggestive incidents.1
This was a part of the broad domain of the Iroquois2
Confederacy, which extended, in general terms, from the Hudson
to the Genesee, and from the north to the south boundary of this State.
This confederacy was composed of the following nations, located in the
following order from east to west, the Mohawk, (Ganeagaonos,)3
Its origin is buried in the obscurity of vague tradition and was unknown
to civilized nations in 1750.4
on the river which bears their name, the Oneida, (Onayotekaonos)
Onondaga, (Onundagaonos) Cayugas, (Gwengwehonos) and
Seneca, (Nundawaonos)
mostly adjacent to the lakes which bear their names. The traditions of the
Iroquois ascribe it, as well as the origin of the individual nations, to a
supernatural source. They, like the Athenians, sprung from the earth
itself. "In remote ages they had been confined under a mountain near the
falls of the Oshwah-kee, or Oswego river, whence they were released by
Tharonhyjagon, the Holder of the Heavens,"5
Schoolcraft inclines to the opinion that the Confederation is to be
referred to a comparatively recent date, early in the fifteenth century;
Mr. Webster, the Indian interpreter, a good authority, about two
generations before the white people came to trade with the Indians;
Pyrlaus, a missionary among the Mohawks, "one age, or the length of a
man's life, before the white people came into the country;" while Clark, 'from
the permanency of their institutions, the peculiar structure of their
government, the intricacy of their civil affairs, the stability of their
religious beliefs and the uniformity of their pagan ceremonies, differing
from other Indian nations in important particulars," thinks it must have
had a longer duration.
1 The Indians were accustomed to
bury with their dead various articles of ornament and use, which, it was
supposed, would be serviceable in their passage to a future abode, of
which the most barbaric had some conception. 2 Iroquois was the French name for the five
confederated nations of
Indians residing mostly within this State. By the Dutch they were called
"Maquas." They denominated themselves "Mingoes," meaning United
People - Clark's Onondaga. Their true name is "Hodenosaunee" or
"People of the Long House," because the five nations were ranged in a
long line through Central New York, and likened to one of their long bark
houses. Parkman's Jesuits. Ruttenber says they bore the title of
"Aquinosbione," or "Konosbioni," having the same meaning. 3 The Iroquois termination in one, means
people.--Parkman's Jesuits. 4 Coldens Five Nations. 5 Indian Tribes of Hudson's River.--Ruttenber.
