Discusses the origin, history, daily life, customs, and future of the Iroquois Indians.

In this richly illustrated book, Neal B. Keating explores Iroquois visual expression through more than five thousand years, from its emergence in ancient North America into the early twenty-first century. Drawing on extensive archival research and fieldwork with Iroquois artists and communities, Keating foregrounds the voices and visions of Iroquois peoples, revealing how they have continuously used visual expression to adapt creatively to shifting political and economic environments. Iroquois, or Haudenosaunee, peoples have long been the subjects of Western study. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, European and Euro- American writers classified Iroquois works not as art but as culturally lower forms of expression. During the twentieth century, Western critics commonly rejected contemporary Native art both as art and as an "inauthentic" expression of Indianness. Keating exposes the false assumptions underlying these perceptions. Approaching his subject from the perspective of an anthropologist, he focuses on the social relations and processes that are indexed by Iroquois visual culture through time, and he shows how Iroquois images are deployed in colonized contexts. As he traces the history of Iroquois art practice, Keating seeks a middle road between ethnohistorical approaches and the activist perspectives of contemporaryartists. He is one of the first scholars in Iroquois studies to emphasize painting, a popular art form among present-day Iroquois. He conceptualizes painting broadly, to include writing, incising, drawing, tattoo, body painting, photography, videography, and digital media. Featuring more than 100 color and black-and-white reproductions, this volume embraces a wide array of artworks in diverse media, prompting new appreciation--and deeper understanding--of Iroquois art and its historical and contemporary significance.

"Iroquois treaty-making has had enormous significance in American history, even to the present day. But until now, we have not had a comprehensive collection of treaty documents and systematic study of the Iroquois treaty procedure. This book brings the research of negotiations carried on by the Dutch, English, French, and Americans with the Iroquois to a new level of sophistication. Since September 1978, the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American at Chicago's Newberry Library has directed a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to compile and publish a documentary history of the Iroquois. The results of this undertaking are: (1) a comprehensive microform corpus of Iroquois treaties and related documents, (2) a printed calendar and index to the treaties, and (3) this reference guide to the treaties and their meanings. In addition to summary essays by Francis Jennings on history and background, William N. Fenton on Culture, Mary A. Drake on structure, Robert J. Surtees on Canada, and Michael K. Foster on linguistics, the editors have included a sample treaty with analytical commentary. They have drawn together a list of participants in Iroquois treaties, figures of speech in political rhetoric, a gazetteer of place names and their modern equivalents, maps of areas important to treaty-making, a descriptive treaty calendar listing negotiations involving Iroquois Indians 1613-1913, and a select bibliography. This books makes the rich array of treaty documents accessible to the informed lay reader. Its publication is a landmark in Iroquois studies." -- Publisher's description

Describes how the Six Nations got involved in the War of 1812, the role they played in the defense of Canada, and the war's effects on their society

An authoritative illustrated study of the People of the Longhouse. In this handsome book, Michael G. Johnson, the author of the award-winning Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes and its companion, Arts and Crafts of the North American Tribes, looks at the people of the Iroquois Confederacy. The tribes were the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, and -- admitted into the Iroquois as a sixth nation by 1722 -- the Tuscarora. Iroquois: People of the Longhouse details their story up to the present day, when perhaps 50,000 people of Iroquois descent still live on, or near, their reserves in Canada and the U.S., with that many again living in cities. Rich with archival, contemporary and modern photographs, maps and illustrations, Iroquois: People of the Longhouse contains certainty: The Origins of the Iroquois Confederacy The Six Nations and Incorporated Tribes History 1500-1750 The French and Indian War 1754-1766 New Wars in the Old Northwest The American Revolution and the Aftermath Disintegration, Reformation and Perseverance 1783 to the Present Iroquois in the West Iroquois Social & Political Warfare Food and Flora Religion and Rituals Material Culture: Longhouses, Dress, Wampum, Masks, Decorative Art, Beadwork Important People in Six Nations History. An Iroquois gazetteer, bibliography and list of Iroquois reserves and reservations and their populations complete this authoritative reference.