Iroquois Indian Museum

Young boys would spend their measure practicing with the toy bows and arrows, throwing hatchets, and playing at war and hunting. The men of the crossroads frequently occupied their leisure hours with athletics, hatchet throwing, and other amusements that would indicate the eye, harden the muscle, and preserve the skill of the warrior and hunter. Cruel upon the warpath, he himself expect no quarter if captured and was prep ared to suffer with equanimity the analogous tortures that he had meted out to pris integrityrs in the past.

Where religion and the supernatural are concerned, the Iroquois acknowledged the existence of many supernatural beings. However, they considered there to be two major impels in the universes, the famous "Twin Boys":

Creator, or Upholder of the Skies was the goodish Twin, who had brought forth all the good things upon the countrythe cultivated plants, rivers, animals and man. The Evil Twin, of Flint, had created the poisonous plants, monstrous animals and all sorts of impediments upon the earth.

The Good Twin would come to be called the "Great Spirit" by the white men.

Where the women of the kinsfolks are concerned, Iroquois women are unique in record for one simple reason: they possessed most of the force out within their smart set. Some cultures allowed women to be a powerful force in their society, unless not many. The Iroquois women, however, enjoyed such use of power that they were able t

This unparalleled fiber of women in the image of Iroquois politics, religion and domestic affairs cannot be emphasized enough. These women were primitive, unsophisticated and faithoriented more than logical systembased. Yet they share more control in their society with men, and it is largely because they were invaluable in their position as economic (food supplies) holders. Still, the men did have a large portion of control as well, and one should not make the mistake of accept that the Iroquois women had all the power and did exactly as they pleased. In the expression in which they influenced the Council Elders, their influence was ancillary to the male power, not in place of it.

As noted by Brown, "The nation was not a matriarchy, as claimed by round, but the matrons were an eminence grise." Still, one cannot underestimate the fact that these women remained a powerful influence and shared their control with the men. Some research available on the Iroquois reports that the women of the tribe did not exert this much power: "Influence of the womanhood did not reach outward to the affairs of the gens, phatry or tribe, but seemed to have commenced and ended with the household."

These seemingly modern " lay" Indians were a great deal misunderstood by the settlers and colonials as filthy savages and practitioners of rank superstition. Whenever the Indians discussed "metaphysics," the Colonials were seeming to hear stories of how men had turned into beasts. They considered this rank superstition, unable to recognise that these myths may have been merely a metaphor for some physical or natural phenomenon that had occurred. In addition, the Iroquois were seen as repelling because of what were perceived to be "filthy" practices and habits by the Europeans:

Jennings, Francis. The Invasion of the States: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest. North Carolina: North Carolina Press, 1975.

The Iroquois were quite an unusual, almost "model" people in the way they lived th
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