THE OHIO VALLEY-GREAT LAKES ETHNOHISTORY
ARCHIVES: THE MIAMI COLLECTION
It is noted that the following work from the Miami Archives should be read and
considered within the historical context in which it was composed and printed.
The opinions expressed and the language used do not reflect the opinions or
standards of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, but are, rather,
indicative of thought in that historical moment during which the document was
published.
Memoir Upon the Late War
in North America
Pouchot in: Hough, Franklin B., trans.
and ed., Memoir Upon the Late War
in North America, between the
French and English, 1755-60,
vol. 2, Roxbury, Mass.,
1866, pp. 234-235.
The Iroquois are six nations united together, including the Tuscaroras, who had been almost destroyed, and whom they have incorporated among them, as also the Erie or Cat nation, of whom but a few individuals remain, who have been adopted by the Senecas. The Iroquois nation is the most perfectly allied of all those in America, and forms a true federated republic. This union has given them a decided superiority over all the other nations who being less numerous, were broken and unable to escape them. The Iroquois went to seek their enemies with thousands of warriors, as far as to the rivers which fall into the Mississippi, and to shores of Lake Superior. All of these incursions never ended without the death or capture of men, and the destruction of these nations. This is what the Indians call eating them. They never had a thought of extending their country, nor of gaining a larger hunting ground, nor of subjugating other nations to themselves. This is proved by the fact that notwithstanding all the advantages they enjoyed over the different nations they have almost destroyed, such as the Hurons, the Nepicins and the Algonquins, who were formerly very numerous, the Iroquois have never sought to take the lands of these nations, nor to reduce them to slavery.
The claims of the English were therefore very frivolous, when they supposed that by virtue of their pretended alliance with the Iroquois, that they had rights in the countries of all those nations with whom these people had been at war, and whom they had subjugated. These nations may have diminished, but they have never changed the condition of their various cantons.
The Outaouais, the Sauteurs or Ochibois and the Missisakes, who have almost the same language, and who are allied among themselves, although very near the Iroquois, have sustained themselves against them, on account of this union. The other nations more distant and less united, have, in the meantime, suffered somewhat. They are not even confederated for hunting, and therefore could not fight with success against the vast armies of the Iroquois which amounted they say to twenty thousand men. If such armies had existed, it is certain that they would have destroyed all the nations through which they might pass.
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