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"WHOSE WOODS THESE ARE . . ."
The League of the Iroquois, published in 1851, was a seminal work of history and anthropology. The author, Lewis Henry Morgan, was perhaps the first to identify and describe the matrilineal structure of the Iroquois, possibly the most significant aspect of their kinship. Morgan's writings influenced Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and were cited by Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud.
How did Morgan understand what other non-Indians could have only guessed at? He had invaluable help from a Seneca named Ely Parker, whom Morgan was fortunate to have met in a bookstore in Albany, New York. Parker had been selected by the leaders of his tribal community in Tonawanda, near Buffalo, to get an education and defend their legal interests during a critical juncture in the Indian nation's negotiations with the state of New York.
Morgan's narrative charted the cultural decline of the Iroquois, beginning with the arrival of the Europeans, attributing it to the introduction of disease and the perceived inability of the Iroquois to adapt to the technological advances brought by the colonists. This history accurately described how the Iroquois lived and what they believed at the time of Morgan and Parker's collaboration. According to Morgan's book, the Iroquois were, throughout their history, a sedentary farming people, comprising small, stable families. But Jon Parmenter, in his NEHfunded The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701, shows that, in light of recent archaeological findings and comparisons of French and English contemporary accounts, this was not entirely accurate.
Parmenter places the accent fully on freedom of movement as the most authentic Iroquois cultural trait. Far from sedentary, the Iroquois had a long tradition of roaming. The New York nations and the Laurentian Iroquois - primarily Mohawks - ranged widely before and after the arrival of Europeans, often controlling movements of other tribes through nuanced rites of passage known as Edge of the Woods ceremonies, which acknowledged the perils of the arriving party's journey. Additionally, the...