Iroquois Policy and Iroquois Culture: Two Histories and an Anthropological Ethnohistory

The Iroquois Restoration: Iroquois Diplomacy on the Colonial Frontier, 1701–1754. By Richard Aquila. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. x + 285 pp., illustrations, preface, introduction, maps, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. $15.00 paper.)

Your Fyre Shall Burn No More: Iroquois Policy toward New France and Its Native Allies to 1701. By José António Brandão. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. xx + 375 pp., tables and graphs, preface, acknowledgments, introduction, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. $60.00 cloth.)

The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy. By William N. Fenton. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. xxii + 786 pp., illustrations, tables, preface, acknowledgments, note on pronunciation, list of abbreviations, appendixes, bibliography, index. $70.00 cloth.)

At least since the publication of Cadwallader Colden’s History of the Five Indian Nations Depending on the Province of New-York in America in 1727, the Iroquois Confederacy has been popular fare among editors looking for book sales. There are probably now an unprecedented number of books in print dealing with aspects of Iroquois history and culture. All three books under review here are original, high-quality contributions to knowledge and, given the importance of the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy in northeastern North America in the two centuries before 1800, all three are necessary reading for anyone interested in that time and place. The three volumes include one reissue and two new and noteworthy titles; I discuss them in the order listed above.

Richard Aquila’s Iroquois Restoration was originally published in 1983 and has been reissued as part of the University of Nebraska Press’s growing list of works dealing with eastern North America, particularly, Iroquoia. The first edition received a somewhat cool review by Elisabeth Tooker (1985; 71) in the pages of this journal, suggesting that “each specialist will find something in Aquila’s discussion with which to disagree.” The reviews from historical journals quoted on the book’s back cover seem to have been more enthusiastic. This edition includes a new, ten-page introduction (5–14), but by some miracle of the printer’s art, this has not changed the pagination of the remainder of the work from that of the original publication. A new generation of students of the northern frontier will be pleased to see Aquila’s monograph again available.

Aquila’s focus is on what he perceives to be the goals of Iroquois policy in the years 1701–54, and he assesses the success of the Iroquois leadership in achieving those goals. He depicts the Iroquois of New York (one must distinguish them from their kin who had emigrated) as a humbled if not conquered people in 1701. They had emerged from what he terms the “Twenty Years’ War” having suffered severe losses in territory and manpower. The combination of the numerous and well-armed western Algonquians and their French allies had proven too formidable for Iroquois arms.

In Aquila’s view for the next half-century the Iroquois followed a fourfold “Restoration Policy.” This included (1) maintaining neutrality in conflicts between the French and English colonial powers, (2) maintaining peace with the interior nations who were under French influence, (3) cooperating with Pennsylvania to assert control over the Indian population on the borders of that colony, and (4) waging war against southern nations, especially the Catawba. Although the last policy provided some tension in relations with the English, it served to strengthen ties to the French and their allies in the upper Great Lakes and the Ohio country. Aquila’s approach is thematic rather than chronological, with single chapters dealing with each of the perceived goals of Iroquois policy.

A basic problem in dealing with “Iroquois” policy, however, is that given the egalitarian nature of Iroquois political organization, the constituent units of the confederacy seldom acted in concert. William N. Fenton (1951) long ago pointed out that the basic social, political...