Cultura Mohawk

The Mohawk Nation
The Mohawk Nation (then known as Kanien'kehake, which means people of the flint) was one of the five founding Nations of the Iroquois League (or Iroquois confederacy). The name Mohawk was given to the tribe by the Algonquin and was later adopted by the Europeans who had difficulty pronouncing Kanien'kehake. The other Nations in the Confederacy were the Cayuga, the Seneca, theOneida, and the Onondaga. The sixth Nation to join was the Tuscarora.
At the time of the formation of the Iroquois League, the five tribes occupied territory from the East to the West, the Mohawk being the "keepers of the eastern door". For centuries, the Mohawks dominated what is now upstate New York. The Mohawk nation was the easternmost, living in the Mohawk River valley west of modernAlbany. The Seneca nation near Rochester was westernmost. Between them, from east to west, were the Oneida, the Onondaga, and the Cayuga nations.
The Mohawks were probably the most numerous of the Iroquois in the early seventeenth century, and their proximity to Dutch and later English colonists in Albany (Dutch Fort Orange) made them first among equals in many of the Indian-European interactionsof the colonial era.
People of Iroquoian linguistic stock were sedentary tribes who were accustomed to life in the harsher climates of the North-East. In 1634, the commander of Fort Orange ordered an expedition to negotiate a new price structure for furs with the Indians, expedition in which one of the men kept a daily journal that described Indian villages, healing rituals, language,subsistence practices, the environment, and many other details of the region and its inhabitants as they were before the first contact with European settlers. They were sometimes referred to as the Haudenosaunee, which meant "People of the Longhouse" because of their long, rectangular communal dwellings. This is a description of one of the villages in words of van den Bogaert: “There were only 36 houses,row on row in the manner of streets, so that people easily could pass through. These houses are constructed and covered with the bark of trees, and are mostly flat above. Some are 100, 90, or 90 steps long; 22 or 23 feet high.
There were also some interior doors made of split planks furnished with iron hinges. In some houses we also saw ironwork: iron chains, bolts, harrow teeth, iron hoops,spikes, which they steal when they are away from here. Most of the people were hunting for bear and deer. These houses were full of grain that they call Onesti and we corn; indeed, some held 300 or 400 skipples. They make boats and barrels of tree-bark and sew with it.”
Villages were often fortified against attack. This might include a stockade and a moat for defense. Trees were driven into thegowned so as to meet 12 to 16 feet above the ground. The spaces between were filled with a mixture of woven branches and logs. For all their fortifications and the constant level of warfare actually deaths were actually rare. More emphasis was placed on daring, bravery and honor than in the number of foes killed. However, capture of prisoners resulted in prolong ritual torture; Women and childrenmight be killed or adopted into the tribe to replace lost members.
They practiced intensive agriculture growing maize, beans and squashes as their principal crops. So important were these crops they were considered sacred and called "the three sisters". They are seen as the three beautiful sisters because they grow in the same mound in the garden. The corn provides a ladder for the bean vine, andthey together give shade to the squash. In addition to agriculture, they also obtained food through hunting and fishing however, meat seemed to be of limited importance when compared to crops. The people made a number of beverages, including maple syrup. They were also knowledgeable about the medical properties of the many plants they gathered. They were also excellent trappers.
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