IROQUOIS (SENECA) MEN

A FIRST AMERICANS BOOK                           Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve
Holiday House, New York 1995

“Besides being powerful warriors, the Iroquois men were skilled hunters. On foot they silently stalked deer, or drove moose and caribou into the water where hunters in canoes killed them. The Iroquois hunters sometimes used a blowgun, a tube through which they blew darts with enough force to kill small creatures.

To lure game, the hunters made calls that sounded exactly like those of animals. Sometimes they disguised themselves with skins and lay in wait for their prey along trails or by water holes. Several men organized hunting parties to drive deer into fenced barriers, where they killed the animals with bows and arrows. The hunters only killed what they needed to survive.

The Iroquois liked to fish too. They used spears, bows and arrows, or lures and hooks to catch fish.

Iroquois men made all of their tools and weapons. They fashioned arrowheads from flint, jasper, or slate. They used springy wood, such as shagbark hickory, white ash, cedar, or white oak to make bows. They set round stones into wooden handles to make war clubs. The trees in the forest also supplied wood for carving dishes. The men carved wooden bowls, ladles, and spoons. In addition, they built lightweight, swift canoes by fastening birch bark to wooden frames. They made the canoes waterproof by sealing the seams with a mixture of spruce gum and charcoal. They used the wood of the forest and rawhide strips to make snowshoes for traveling in deep snow.”

Courtesy of the Warren County Historical Society