Happy Indigenous Peeples day

Of all the North American Indian tribes, the seventeenth-century Iroquois are the most renowned for their cruelty towards other human beings. Scholars know that they ruthlessly tortured war prisoners and that they were cannibals; in the Algonquin tongue the word Mohawk actually means "flesh-eater." There is even a story that the Indians in neighboring Iroquois territory would flee their homes upon sight of just a small band of Mohawks. Ironically, the Iroquois were not alone in these practices. There is ample evidence that most, if not all, of the Indians of northeastern America engaged in cannibalism and torture—there is documentation of the Huron, Neutral, and Algonquin tribes each exhibiting the same behavior. This paper will examine these atrocities, search through several possible explanations, and ultimately reveal that the practices of cannibalism and torture in the Iroquois were actually related.

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Through the course of this paper several possibilities have been proposed that might account for cannibalism and torture among the seventeenth-century Iroquois and other northeastern American tribes. Though many (especially the religious views) may have influenced these abominable practices to varying degrees, the source of these acts stems from the need of the Iroquois to strengthen their own tribes by inducting physically or supernaturally a replacement for a slain member. This practice known as mourning wars did not extend in name to the other tribes, but they doubtlessly performed acts of cannibalism and torture for similar purposes. Though it is not a rationale that we can fully comprehend, cannibalism and torture nonetheless served a very important purpose to the Iroquois and their neighbors.

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