Iroquois Clan Practices

In particular, it is important to help avenge an injury by an outsider. The individual relies on the clan for his own protection and is able to do so; whoever harms the individual harms the whole clan. Thus, from the blood relations of the clan arises that obligation of blood vengeance which is absolutely recognized by the Iroquois. If a member of a clan was killed by a foreigner, the whole clan of the victim was obliged to take blood vengeance. Initially, mediation was tried; the council of the perpetrator's clan met and proposed to the council of the victim's clan to settle the matter peacefully, usually by way of an apology and a generous gift. If the offer is accepted, the matter is settled. Otherwise, the victimized clan appoints an avenger or a few avengers whose duty it is to go after the perpetrator and kill him. If this is done, the clan of the perpetrator has no right to complain, and the matter is closed.

Clans have fixed names, or sets of names, which can be used only by that clan within the whole tribe, so that the name of an individual member of a clan indicates to which clan he belongs. The clan's personal names bring the rights of the clan by themselves at the outset.

7. The clan could admit outsiders into the clan and use this to absorb them as members of the whole tribe. In this way, unkilled captives, by virtue of being admitted into a clan, become members of the Seneca tribe, and thus acquire all the rights of the clan and the tribe. The admission of outsiders into the clan is effected on the proposal of individual members of the clan: a man may propose the admission of an outsider as a brother or a sister; a woman may propose the admission of an outsider as her child; and in order to confirm this admission, an initiation ceremony must be held. Individual clans that have been depopulated by special circumstances are often revitalized by the admission of large numbers of people from another clan (with its consent). Among the Iroquois, initiation ceremonies were held at public **** gatherings of the tribal council and became practically a religious ceremony.

8. It is difficult to determine whether Indian clans had exclusive religious rituals; however, Indian religious ceremonies were more or less tied to the clan. During the six annual religious festivals of the Iroquois, the chiefs and chiefs of the various clans, by virtue of their position, were listed among the "guardians of the faith" and performed priestly functions.

9. The clans had the same cemeteries. The Iroquois, who were surrounded by white men in the State of New York, have cemeteries which are now extinct, but which once existed. With other Indians such cemeteries are still preserved; for example, the Tuscarora, who are related to the Iroquois, though Christians, have each clan in a separate row on the cemetery grounds, and so always bury the mother, not the father, in a row with the children. Among the Iroquois, on the other hand, the whole clan of the deceased attends the burial, creates the grave, gives the eulogy, etc.

10. Clans had councils, which were democratic assemblies in which all adult men and women of the clan had equal voting rights. This council elects and dismisses the chiefs and sheikhs, as well as the rest of the "guardians of the faith"; it makes decisions about accepting atonement offerings for slain members of the clan (murder payoffs) or blood vengeance; and it adopts outsiders into the clan. In short, it is the highest authority of the clan