The Bob Stapeldon Society's Newsletter

Interesting tidbits I have to share (not done reading it):

1. The various tribes thought of themselves as different portions of a longhouse, because they all were "people of the longhouse". So, the Mohawks were the east door, and I'll have to list the rest when I get back home. (ETA: "The Senecas were known as the 'keepers of the western door' and the Mohawks as the 'keepers of the eastern door." The Onondagas were the firekeepers, at the geographic center of Iroquoia. That leaves the Oneida and the Cayuga, not sure about their longhouse section names.)
2. Men sat in council but were elected by the senior women of the tribe, and families were matrilineal.
3. They had "mourning war," sponsored/egged on by the women of the community, and used to replace lost relatives (and thereby indirectly maintain the size of the kinship group) if the loss of that relative was too greatly felt to be assuaged by time.
4. When capturing 'slaves' (to replace lost relatives), some would be kept as new family, and others - usually strong men, de facto warriors - would be tortured to death and sometimes? frequently? cannibalized. The men taken for torture would exhort their captors to do their worst, and taunt them to make their torture more horrific, to show their strength. The more the man could endure, the more highly he was regarded, even though a nominal enemy. (ETA: by eating him, the strength he showed in his torture and death was absorbed into the group.)
5. We look at them as tribes, but they a) shared linguistic background, using the same term to describe themselves (people of the longhouse), and b) divided themselves into crisscrossing networks of kinship groups (localized family groups).
6. They divided the world into "us" and "them" via trade. Either you were someone they traded with, or someone they warred with. If you traded with them, they viewed you as part of their confederation, basically.
7. Replenishing bonds between communities in this enormous network, included a ceremony grounded in consoling the bereaved, where part of the participants take on the role of inconsolable, and there's a whole ritual to make them whole and address their grief. It all seems to go back, IMO, to the death of one of the creator-twins who helped make all the animals and men of the world. (ETA (here's the legend, note it says nothing about the creator-twins, but having one die as part of the creation mythos is just too telling for me to let go): "Iroquois oral tradition tells . . . a virgin Huron woman living north of Iroquoia gave birth to a son." To wit, Deganawidah, the Peacemaker, who traveled to Iroquoia, preaching peace. He converted Hiawatha, "an Onondaga who had killed and eaten many of his enemies but whose grief over the loss of his own daughters left him inconsolable. Deganawidah restored Hiawatha's well-being by giving him three strings of beads while reciting words of condolence." The three strands dried his tears, cleared his throat (so he could speak), and opened his ears (so he could hear [the Peacemaker's message]). Hiawatha went on to heal the hate of an Onondaga sorcerer named Tadadaho, whose hate had twisted his body and even his hair. Hiawatha and Tadadaho founded the Iroquois League to preserve Deganawidah's message.)
8. Ergo, the concept of loss, grief, and recovery from that grief, are critical, culturally speaking, not just to an individual grieving, but to the entire community. (ETA: "The condolence ritual described in the Deganawidah Epic became the cermonial centerpiece of the Iroquois League." Conducted annually at the Grand Council.) Essentially, restoration of an injured person is paramount to the maintenance of the collective (kinship group).

Fascinating stuff.