Before and after the American Revolution, the ability to defend and to adapt to crises of disease, invasion, and political encroachment by means of retaliatory warfare and political diplomacy, as well as develop a unique identity and spiritual culture, allowed the Iroquois to survive the onslaught of European expansionism that fated many other North American Indians.
A Fierce Warfare Culture
In 1669, Jesuit Father Jean Pierron describes a counterattack by a Mohawk band in Ganadaouagué village, in the area now known as Fonda, New York. A surprise attack by enemy “Loups,” a Mohican tribe, prompted an immediate retaliatory charge by the Mohawks, who, as Pierron writes, “without becoming disconcerted, dressed themselves promptly in all the most precious things they had, according to the custom observed by them on these occasions.”The Mohawks pursued a vicious assault on the Loups, defeating the attacking party and then chasing other Loups who had fled the counterattack by nightfall in canoes, and eventually ambushing their encamping party. Pierron, present at the initial skirmish, records that “[t]here was only a single warrior of the Nation of the Loups on the place [battlefield], and I saw that a Barbarian, having cut off his hands and feet, skinned him and separated the flesh from the bones, in order to make a detestable repast.”
Logistical Style of Attacks
This order of violence was not unusual in Iroquois warfare, nor was the resilience of their warriors, who, as Stanley Smoyer writes, in the entire period between 1600-1800 “never numbered more than 3,000 fighting men.” The brutality they inflicted on their enemies was calculated and symbolic, and their mode of attack was logistically superior to most of the enemies on either side of their borders, including some Europeans, most of whom were unfit for the type of sophisticated guerilla-style ambushes met at Devil’s Hole during the uprising known as Pontiac’s Conspiracy. The reliance on the recruitment of traditional enemies of the Iroquois, such as the Huron, Algonquin, Susquehannoks, the Eastern Abenaki, and the Montagnais--some of which belong to the same linguistic subgroup as the Iroquois--became of primary logistical importance to the Europeans attempting to infiltrate Iroquois territory.
Blood Feud
An important element in Iroquois culture was a dominant value of warrior-kinship based upon the common, traditional practice of what historian Anthony F.C. Wallace refers to as “blood feud.” In the Iroquois culture, this amounted to the moral obligation of a blood relative to avenge the death of a fallen warrior by either killing an enemy warrior or kidnapping an enemy warrior and adopting him into the clan to replace the dead relative. According to Anthony F.C. Wallace, these “mutually vengeful killings” were the sole basis and strategy in Iroquois warfare. The governing councils in the League acted as “restraining” political bodies that judged and sanctioned the advantageous or disadvantageous political result of settling a proposed blood feud with an enemy tribe. The result of this basis of strategy was that the League, under a participating confederacy, acted as an Iroquois polity that represented the interests of all confederate members, who were more inclined to maintain peace or status quo than participate in a continual warfare that reflected individual or tribal interests above the greater solidarity of the Six Nations.
Diplomatic Advantages & European Advancement
This sophistication of the blood-feud-avenging ritual created a greater political cohesion that allowed the Iroquois to act on behalf of as well as protect each others’ territories, and, most importantly, to not engage in wars to which they knew they could not effectively win. By 1700, diplomacy for the Iroquois eventually became, as Iroquois historian Daniel K. Richter, a “play[ing] off of...ties with the two colonial powers [French and English] to build a lasting framework for peace in the West.” The War of Spanish Succession ultimately displaced the Iroquois’ trust in proceeding agreements and ties between both English and French forces, but strategically, the Iroquois were competitively aligned with keeping in relative subservience to the European powers. And so after the Treaty of Utrecht, political sagacity and diplomatic peace “became the only viable policy, for war against Europeans was almost unthinkable." (Richter, 207)
Sources:
Richter, Daniel K. The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization. Williamsburg: University of North Carolina Press. 1992. 207
Smoyer, Stanley C., “Indians as Allies in the Intercolonial Wars,” Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association, 34. 1936: 418
Wallace, Anthony F.C.. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. New York: Vintage Books. 1972. 43-45
