Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes

122 IROQUOIS
Detail of Haudenosaunee wampum belt
1700s, when the Tuscarora migrated to New York from
North Carolina, the alliance became the League of Six
Nations.
The founding fathers of the United States who shaped
the new democratic government after the American Revolution—people
like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
and Benjamin Franklin—are thought to have
used the Iroquois Confederacy as a model for the new
democracy. The various states were like the different
tribes; the senators and congressmen, like the 50
sachems, or chiefs, chosen as representatives or spokesmen;
the president and his cabinet, like the honorary
Pine Tree Sachems; and Washington, D.C., like
Onondaga, the main village of the Onondaga tribe,
where the Grand Council Fire burned continually and
the Grand Council was held every year.
Lifeways
For their villages, the Haudenosaunee made clearings in
the woods, usually near streams or rivers, and surrounded
them with palisades, tall walls made from sharpened logs
stuck upright in the earth. They lived in longhouses made
of elm bark. These structures, from 50 to 100 feet long,
were communal with more than one family sharing the
space. The longhouses, sometimes crowded with as many
as 20 families, plus their dogs, were noisy and smelly. And
because inhabitants used only holes in the roof to let out
smoke from the fires, they were smoky.
The Haudenosaunee used the longhouse as a symbol
for their confederacy. They thought of their league as
one big longhouse extending across their territory, with
the Mohawk guarding the Eastern Door and the Seneca
guarding the Western Door.
Like the Algonquians, the Haudenosaunee often are
referred to as Woodland peoples and were skilled in chasing
and trapping the animals of the northern forests.
They used their catch for both food and clothing. They
made deerskin shirts, skirts, leggings, breechcloths, and
moccasins. They made robes and mittens from beaver
and bear furs. They used feathers and porcupine quills
for decoration. They used seashells to make belts of
wampum that served as public records of treaties, and
Haudenosaunee elm-bark longhouse