Saint Lawrence Iroquois

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Distribution area of ​​the St. Lawrence Iroquois around 1535

The St. Lawrence Iroquois lived until the late 16th century along the banks of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec and Ontario ( Canada ) and in the state of New York ( United States ). Little that is known today about the Saint Lawrence Iroquois comes from the records of the French explorer Jacques Cartier , archaeological and linguistic studies of the late 20th century, and studies of the oral traditions of the contemporary indigenous peoples of their historical past.

lifestyle

Associated with the introduction of corn cultivation in the northeastern region, many Iroquois tribes began to migrate from a nomadic lifestyle to more permanent settlements in the Great Lakes region around the year 1000 . The fertility of the soil along the St. Lawrence Valley as well as the rich fish population and the surrounding forests with a lot of game offered a good place for the north-eastern Iroquois settlements. Around 1300, the image of the settlements began to change into the fortified villages for which the Saint Lawrence Iroquois were known.

Villages

Jacques Cartier observed some Iroquois villages north of the Île d'Orléans in 1535 and 1536 , including the village of Stadacona , about the same place as the present-day city of Québec , and the village of Hochelaga in the vicinity of present-day Montreal. Archaeologists have unearthed other similar villages further west, not far from the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. The Saint Lawrence Iroquois lived in villages that were usually a few kilometers from the Saint Lawrence River and were often surrounded by a wooden palisade. Up to 2000 people lived in larger villages. Although Jacques Cartier mentioned longhouses in Hochelaga, he did not provide any description of Stadacona or other neighboring villages. You can get an idea of ​​these villages at the Tsiionhiakwatha / Droulers archaeological site interpretation center , an in-situ museum that is being built right next to an excavation site. There was a village from the 15th century.

language

Linguistic research indicates that the Saint Lawrence Iroquois believed to have developed several different dialects of their language, often referred to as Laurentian , one of the languages ​​of the Iroquois language family that included Mohawk, Huron-Wyandot, and Cherokee. Since very sparse records were made of Jacques Cartier during his 1535-1536 voyage, including two vocabulary lists with a total of only about 200 words, the Saint Lawrence Iroquois could have spoken two or more different languages ​​in an area that spanned Stretched 600 km from Lake Ontario to the Île d'Orléans.

literature

  • Roland Tremblay: Les Iroquoiens du Saint-Laurent. Peuple du mais , Les Éditions de l'Homme, 2006.

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