The Haudenosaunee People

The Haudenosaunee People There are many different nations and tribes of Native Americans in the history of the United States. They all settled somewhere in what are the lower forty-eight states and Canada as well as Mexico. They made the best with what they had. The Haudenosaunee are just one of those many nations of people. They are also known as the Iroquois people. There are six nations in the present day that are a part of the Iroquois Confederacy. They are the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora nations. The Tuscarora nation joined the Iroquois Confederacy in the early 1700’s, so they aren’t represented in some things, such as the Hiawatha belt, which symbolizes the Iroquois Confederacy’s founding. The original homeland to most of the Iroquois was northern New York between Niagara Falls and the Adirondack Mountains. Part of the Oneida tribe settled in Wisconsin while a part of the Seneca tribe lives in Oklahoma. In present day, they live either on the reservations in their respected areas or in Canada. The houses that the Iroquois lived in are known as Longhouses. Haudenosaunee, which is what they called themselves, means longhouse. They built these longhouses by making the frame out of tree saplings and then putting large pieces of elm bark over the saplings. There weren’t any windows and there was a door on either end of the longhouse facing east and west. They could but an animal skin over the door to keep warm inside. The longhouses housed many people. The people who lived in a longhouse were related and belonged to a same clan or were married to a woman whose family was a part of that clan. A traditional outfit for an Iroquoian man or boy would be a ribbon shirt, breechcloth, leggings and sash. A woman or girl would wear an overdress, skirt and leggings. They were either made from cloth or leather. For shoes, they usually wore moccasins. They might wear accessories

Bibliography: "Iroquois Indian Museum." Iroquois Indian Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Aug. 2012. <http://www.iroquoismuseum.org/index.html>. "Iroquois." Iroquois. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Aug. 2012. <http://www.tolatsga.org/iro.html>.