Exceptions that Prove the Rule, #1: The Iroquois
by Jason GodeskyFamily legend says that there is an Iroquois princess somewhere in my ancestry. Clusty my name [PDF] and you’ll see the legacy of my parents’ long quest up our family tree with clusters like, “Genealogy, obituaries,” and “County, query posted.” They’ve taken it back pretty far–but not far enough to catch that Iroquois princess. The Iroquois were one of the most powerful forces in pre-Columbian North America. Their wars of conquest complicate Daniel Quinn’s simple dichotomy of “Takers” and “Leavers,” and illustrate that the differences are not as easy as some Quinn fans would like to believe.
The Tribe of Anthropik makes its home these days in the city of Pittsburgh, where the Allegheny and Monongahela join to form the Ohio River, that marches on to the Mississippi. All of those names came from the tribes that once lived here. Much here is named for the Allegwi tribe, including our county, our mountains, and one of our rivers. In 1887, A. J. Davis wrote a History of Clarion County, where he recorded:
The aboriginal tribe who dwelt on the shores of the Allegheny were the Allegwi, a people of gigantic stature who inhabited fortified towns. The Lenni Lenape, or Delawares, in navigating from the West sought a residence with them, but this was refused; the Allegwi only granting them leave to cross the river and proceed eastward. While they were doing this the Allegwi, alarmed at their numbers and strength, fell on those who had reached the eastern bank and destroyed many of them. Eager for revenge the Lenni Lenape entered into an alliance with the Mengwe, or Iroquois, a nation lying south of Lakes Erie and Ontario, and engaged in a war with the Allegwi, which, after a desperate struggle of many years, ended in the defeat of the latter, who retired down the Ohio and Mississippi, never to return. The Lenni Lenape then, together with the Iroquois, took possession of the valley of the Allegheny and upper Ohio. In the lapse of years, however, they became enemies, and the different tribes of the Mengwe — the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas — wisely increased their strength by a closer union styled the Five, and, after the accession of the Tuscaroras, the Six Nations.
The Lenape were being pushed west by the European advance, and that migration allowed the Iroquois to conquer this land and wipe out the “gigantic” and “fortified” Allegwi. The Monongahela tribe lived to the south of them, and may have been amongst the earliest peoples in North America. Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, near our good confluence, has spent most of its continuous 30,000 years of human habitation under the auspices of the Monongahela tribe. Some believe the Monongahela were wiped out by the diseases Europeans brought with them; others, that they, too, fell prey to the Iroquois and the Lenape. Still others claim that two massive droughts, one from 1587-1589 and another from 1607-1612, drove the Monongahela from the region in search of a more habitable area.
The final river–the Ohio–comes directly from the Iroquois themselves. In their language, it meant “Great Water.”
Perhaps it is because of this history that I have so often emphasized the warlike, conquering nature of the Iroquois, to problematize Daniel Quinn’s distinctions between “Takers” and “Leavers.” They came from upstate New York–the same region Giuli comes from–to conquer much of northeastern North America–including the region I come from. The term “Iroquois” comes from the French, and may refer to the insults their Huron allies used against their confederated enemies (calling them “black snakes”), or perhaps from their oratory. They referred to themselves as the Haudenosaunee, “the people of the long houses,” a name given by the Great Peacemaker at the dawn of the confederacy. In those days–Bruce Johansen calculates it to 1142, but general consensus puts it later, at around 1570–Deganawidah, “the Great Peacemaker,” recieved a vision from the Great Maker. Some say Deganawidah was a Huron; others, an Onondaga adopted by the Mohawks. The Great Maker told Deganawidah that peace would come to all nations. He prophesied that a white serpent would come to befriend them, only to decieve them. Then a red serpent would come to make war on the white serpent, but both would fall to the black serpent that would then arise. But Deganawidah promised the Haudenosaunee that they would be preserved from this apocalypse because of their obedience to the Great Maker.
With his disciple Hiawatha–the hero of Longfellow’s poem, one of the greatest in American literature, shares only his name–the Great Peacemaker set down the Great Law of Peace, and founded the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Deganawidah gave them this name, telling the tribes to end their warring and cannibalism, and live in peace within a single metaphorical long house. The Seneca would guard its western door; the Mohawks, its eastern.
With this peace and unity, the Haudenosaunee began to execute the mandate the Great Peacemaker had left them: to spread the Gayaneshakgowa–the Great Law of Peace–to all peoples, in accordance with their apocalyptic vision. All nations needed to share in that peace, or be destroyed by the white, red and black serpents. The Great Law of Peace needed to be spread at all costs, and by force, if necessary. That mandate is codified in paragraph 80 of the Iroquois Constitution:
When the Confederate Council of the Five Nations has for its object the establishment of the Great Peace among the people of an outside nation and that nation refuses to accept the Great Peace, then by such refusal they bring a declaration of war upon themselves from the Five Nations. Then shall the Five Nations seek to establish the Great Peace by a conquest of the rebellious nation.
In all, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy reached its territorial apex with 24,894,080 acres. Their conquests stretched from West Virginia to Quebec, from the St. Lawrence River down to the Delaware Bay and inland to the Great Lakes. Despite the epidemics that wiped out 99% of all humans in North America when the Europeans arrived, the Haudenosaunee actually increased their population by 125% through conquest of their neighbors. “Iroquois History” records:
Considering their impact on history, it is amazing how few Iroquois there were in 1600 - probably less than 20,000 for all five tribes. Their inland location protected them somewhat from the initial European epidemics, but these had reached them by 1650 and, combined with warfare, cut their population to about half of its original number. However, unlike other native populations which continued to drop, the Iroquois, through the massive adoption of conquored Iroquian-speaking enemies (at least 7,000 Huron, and similar numbers of Neutrals, Susquehannock, Tionontati, and Erie), actually increased and reached their maximum number in 1660, about 25,000. Absorption of this many outsiders was not without major problems - not the least of which was the Iroquois became a minority within their own confederacy.
Neither was war with the Haudenosaunee a very palatable thing. Torture and ritual cannibalism often awaited those who “rebelled” in their obstinence, refusing to accept the Great Law of Peace.
Countenancing and acknowledging the dark side of the Haudenosaunee–their apocalyptic vision, their barbaric wars of conquest, their rabid expansionism, their intolerance of other beliefs, etc.–is important, especially if we are to learn from their other, more positive examples.
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was the world’s oldest, living, participatory democracy. While the individual five nations were chiefdoms–that is, nascent kingdoms–this was mitigated by the cross-tribal organizations and complexity that marks what anthropologists refer to as “tribe-level” society, usually considered to lie between simple “band-level” and more complex “chiefdom-level” society. Even though the Iroquois were no longer what would be considered an “egalitarian” society, they treated one another with the same sort of interactions one would expect of a simple, band-level society. Meanwhile, their matrilineal clans gave women an amount of power that is rarely seen in such complex societies.
Daniel Quinn divides the world into “Takers” and “Leavers,” who are defined by multiple criteria throughout his corpus. Intuitively, we might classify the Iroquois as “Leavers.” Yet, the Iroquois creation myth–just like our own–sets people apart as a higher, nobler order, fallen from our grand origins. They share the same apocalyptic, Manichaean worldview as Judeo-Christianity, and the very same divine mandate to spread their “One Right Way” to all nations.
But they lack other of Quinn’s defining characteristics. They were horticulturalists, largely incapable of “locking up the food.” They did not practice what Quinn called “totalitarian agriculture.” Their horticultural techniques were relatively benign and sustainable.
So, were the Iroquois Takers, or Leavers? They meet all of Daniel Quinn’s criteria for a Taker “vision,” yet their subsistence was like that of a Leaver. And yet again–they conquered as voraciously as Takers.
The borderline case of the Iroquois undermines Quinn’s distinction. This is because Quinn divides the world into Takers and Leavers based on their “vision,” espousing the idea that culture follows ideology. This runs counter to cultural materialism, the reigning paradigm in cultural anthropology, which says that ideology follows from material reality. The Iroquois developed the Great Law of Peace because their infighting was threatening their continued existence. They were running close to their limits, and not only did they need to stop losing resources in wars against one another, they also needed to expand. Not all Iroquoisan-speaking tribes joined the Great Peacemaker’s confederacy. They fell to the confederacy’s conquests, in the sure pattern of natural selection.
Thus, the Iroquois are an exception that proves the rule: memes and cultural practices follow from material reality, rather than vice versa.
I think we’re slipping into the old nature (Jared) vs. nurture (Quinn) argument expressed in a different form.
Hm… I suppose I should make myself clearer…
Every gene wants to reproduce itself; that’s the function of life. But its environment shapes how that gene is expressed. In a typical hierarchical pack, the alpha gets the best mates, then everything else trickles down. The lowest in social ranking gets practically nothing. Tough luck for him because in another environment, that low ranking one might be top dog and be allowed to reproduce at will. Genes express differently depending on your circumstance.
When it comes to memes, it’s obvious (and pointed out in GGS) that food abundance (such as that caused by agriculture) can lead to a specific meme (”Hey, we’re the chosen ones & superior life forms”). But I can’t help but wonder if other factors can alter how that meme is expressed.
Which leads me to a couple of questions…
Ignore, for a moment, the Six Nations desire to assimilate all other people. What was their relationship with their environment? Were they doing the same sort of destructive behaviors that marked the Fertile Crescent farmers at the same time (developmentally speaking)? Also, since they obviously had contact with the Europeans, were they adopting agriculture? If not, what within their meme or their environment prevented this practice?
On a weirdly separate but related note, does anyone know what happened to the other centers of independently aquired agriculture in the world? Did they all go belly up in a fury of climate-aided, man-inspired drought? (like the Mayans and the Fertile Crescent)
What happened to the origin center of China’s agriculture? Is it desert now? Or does it still promote growth? If the desertification occurred, when did it occur?
I’m wondering if the agricultural/expansion meme has to express itself the same way every time or if there is the standard mutability found in most memeplexes.
Oh… and one final question. What did being a part of the “Great Peace” entail? Was everyone supposed to become a horticulturalist?
Best!
Bill Maxwell
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 9 September 2005 @ 3:51 AM
The Iroquois did adopt agriculture, but not from the Europeans. Centuries before European arrival, the Mesoamerican Triad–maize (or in American, “corn”), beans and squash–made its way up, through the Southwest, up the Mississippi, and all the way to the Iroquois. I understand Iroquois agriculture resembled permaculture in many ways, including the use of the same “seedballs” that we’ve heard so much about in other comments threads. Here’s part of Wikipedia’s definition of “sustainability”:
On the other hand, a very useful Wikipedia article, “Iroquois economics,” includes this disturbing little tidbit:
What did the Great Law of Peace entail? Primarily, submission to the confederacy. The official webpage of the modern Six Nations has this to say:
So, Bill, you’re actually re-stating my own hypothesis: our memes develop to help support our way of life. That’s the opposite of Quinn’s formulation, where our way of life is an expression of our memes.
What kind of environmental effects has this had on other autochthonous agricultural areas? Mesoamerica and the Fertile Crescent became deserts, of course. In both the cases of China and the Andes, we’re dealing primarily with terraces carved into mountains, and this seems to have greatly reduced the amount of ecological rampage. China in particular had little interest in conquest (the Inka were more like us in that regard).
Increasing complexity needs multi-dimensional “space” in which to grow. Geographical space may not be necessary if there is sufficient economic, technological, or other dimensions of space that can be filled first.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 September 2005 @ 10:28 AM
Hey –
Umm… hold up… two things…
The original site of civilizational development in China was the Yellow River Valley… that’s not where you are talking about mountaintop terraces…. do you know what the Yellow River looks like these days? (I have no idea)
Secondarily, as I understand it, China was VERY expansionistic, within thier ‘cultural realm’. How was it expressed? That because of the continuity of and single monolithic power base of Imperial China, they expanded to a certain point(cultural & geographical limitations) and then stopped… someone on Ishcon put up a good post on this in the last month or two…
Janene
Comment by Janene — 9 September 2005 @ 11:00 AM
Obviously, China is not my forte … I think of the Yellow River, I think of mountains and a very steep river valley. Maybe I’m totally wrong about that impression.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 September 2005 @ 11:03 AM
We shouldn’t describe Iroquois agriculture as “permaculture.” It was permaculturAL, but it wasn’t a complete permaculture system a la that of the Maya or the Kayapo. I understand that there is evidence of environmental degradation around Iroquois settlements.
Let’s not forget the degree of influence of European culture on the Iroquois. The Taker-Leaver distinction (which Quinn himself has said is not a perfect representation) breaks down when you have Leaver cultures (chiefdoms, bands and tribes of the Eastern woodlands) confronted with a massive state-level society supported by intensive agriculture, population influxes from Europe, and disease, and which has introduced a market economy.
Memes and ways of life. Hmmmm. I think either formulation is a simplification. As individuals, our brain-bag of memes dictates how we live our lives. If I’m infected by the Jesus meme, I’m going to become a Christian and probably change my pattern of behavior. (You know, by never having fun of any sort again.) As a society, memes are only going to take hold in a large percentage of the population if the socioeconomic (and probably psychological and political) conditions can support them. If a large percentage of the population is trapped in a set of circumstances which is not (for one reason or another, or for many) working for them, and a memeplex arises whereby they might free themselves of these circumstances, then this meme is likely to enjoy a long, healthy life–and lead to the creation of a new societal infrastructure. I think.
We’re all living proof that memes change lifestyles.
Comment by Steve Thomas — 9 September 2005 @ 1:59 PM
Hey -
So I ah… ahem… got off my ass and went and looked
Yellow River Civilization info appears to much thinner and less accessible than Mesopotamian sites (rather like my searches for Ancient Sumer 7-8 years ago….)
But from what I could find, it appears that the ‘middle’ yellow river is a highland plateau with lots of agricultural terracing etc… but the original Y-R Civilization was in the lower alluvial plain, down river from the plateau and on out to the sea…
Makes sense, simply because there is a reason that early civilizations appeared as a rule, in alluvial plains
As for currently, it sounds like the lower yellow river is much the same now as it was then… but it is also unique compared to other sites in that the ‘heart’ of Chinese civilization moved south to the Yangtze River when they started growing rice as the primary grain (YRC planted millet). Second, although agriculture has been practiced along the Yellow River (terraced and alluvial) the lower river floods in a big way regularily (and still) Apparently, the river carries so much silt that the river bed is above ground level now and has been for centuries. So they put in levees… which have been overwhelmed at least 1500 times in known history. I can only guess that this massive flooding has combined with other factors to change the dynamics of this particular river system. (I wonder of the relatively high latitude bears a role as well????)
Janene
Comment by Janene — 9 September 2005 @ 2:26 PM
My post from the “kung-fu fighting” thread on Ishcon:
I’m not sure that’s the whole story on the Chinese… after all, the “unification of China” thing involved a lot of conquering and assimilation. Jared Diamond looked into this a bit in GG&S, and at least part of the reason for China’s lack of continued expansion following their initial exploration and trade was political, and was a product of the unification. (I’m going from memory here, so bear with. I’ll try to find the exact ref when I go home tonight.) Once China became unified, it had a single concentration of power. The powers-that-be at the time were interested in exploration, and supported the fleets which sailed all over the place. At some point, there was a change in leaders, and the new powers wanted nothing to do with the endeavors of the previous rulers, so they discontinued support of the exploration (Kyoto Protocol, anyone?). With China being unified and all, there was nobody else to ask for support besides the emperor, so any lofty dreams of swift ships and eternal global domination were soundly crushed.
Europe, on the otherhand, consisted of a multitude of independent states, each with its own ruler. So when a would-be explorer like Columbus got it into his head that he wanted to sail around the flat world, even if his own ruler laughed in his face, and even if a couple other kings did the same, he could finally find a gullible monarch willing to bankroll his crazy endeavor.
China’s strong cohesion and disdain for barbarians would eventually hurt it in its dealings with the Europeans, but I don’t think that’s the reason why they stopped conquering initially.
Comment by Raku — 9 September 2005 @ 3:00 PM
Thanks Roxy!
Comment by Janene — 9 September 2005 @ 7:52 PM
I think that it is very important for all readers of Quinn to understand that the Leavers/Takers model is simply a model of the world, and not the world itself. It is a way of understanding the world in a general way, but there’s no sharp division between the two, just like there’s no sharp division between the member groups of the geek/nerd/dork model.
Unfortunately, Quinn isn’t all that vocal in his books about the model vs. reality difference. Maybe he’s trying to avoid confusing readers who are new to the ideas, or maybe he honestly thinks that the lines are sharply defined. I don’t think it much matters; harping on Quinn for errors in his primitivist theory is about as productive as harping on Dungeons and Dragons for the unworkability of its alignment system. D&D is just an entry point, not rules-based roleplaying in tota.
I like how the essay was presented: “How do we not end up like these guys? By knowing about them!” Well written, and very informative.
Comment by Chuck — 10 September 2005 @ 2:51 PM
Reading thru this again, I’m more convinced than ever that the concept of [i]frith[/i] is a useful one for primitivists to spend some time understanding. It seems to provide key insights into how both the Inuit & the Haudenosaunee related to both themselves and to others. I think that those of us of European descent would be able to gain valuable insight by seeing how our own ancestors related to themselves and others via [i]frith[/i].
I’m a little hesitant to put a url in here
For anyone who’s interested, just google frith and look for “The Meaning of Frith”.
Comment by jhereg — 5 July 2007 @ 11:15 AM