Beginning in 1701, the Iroquois, at their nadir after twenty years of warring, sought to rebuild the Confederacy. By design or circumstance, they carried out sophisticated diplomatic relations with their Indian and white neighbors, gradually recouping much of their political, military, and economic power. The Iroquois helped shape the frontier, influencing Westward expansion, the fur trade, and colonial warfare.

The Iroquois nation is commonly perceived as having plunged into a steep decline in the late 17th century due to colonial encroachment into the Great Lakes region. This book challenges long-standing interpretations that depict the Iroquois as defeated, colonized peoples.

The Iroquois confederacy, one of the most influential Native American groups encountered by early European settlers, is commonly perceived as having plunged into steep decline in the late seventeenth century due to colonial encroachment into the Great Lakes region. Kurt Jordan challenges long-standing interpretations that depict the Iroquois as defeated, colonized peoples by demonstrating that an important nation of that confederacy, the Senecas, maintained an impressive political and economic autonomy and resisted colonialism with a high degree of success. By combining archaeological data grounded in the material culture of the Seneca Townley-Read site with historical documents, Jordan answers larger questions about the Seneca's cultural sustainability and durability in an era of intense colonial pressures. He offers a detailed reconstruction of daily life in the Seneca community and demonstrates that they were extremely selective about which aspects of European material culture, plant and animal species, and lifeways they allowed into their territory.

Unconquered explores the complex world of Iroquois warfare, providing a narrative overview of nearly two hundred years of Iroquois conflict during the colonial era of North America. Detailing Iroquois wars against the French, English, Americans, and a host of Indian enemies, Unconquered builds upon decades of modern scholarship to reveal the vital importance of warfare in Iroquois society and culture, at the same time exploring the diverse motivations—especially Iroquoian spiritual and cultural beliefs—that guided such warfare. Economic competition and rivalry for trade were important factors in Iroquois warfare, but they often provided less motivation for waging war than Iroquoian spiritual and cultural beliefs, including the important tradition of the mourning war. Nor were European agendas particularly important to Iroquois warfare, except in that they occasionally coincided with Iroquois designs. Europeans influenced and incited, both directly and indirectly, conflict within the Iroquois League and with other Indian nations, but the peoples of the Iroquois League waged war according to their own cultural beliefs and by their own rules. In reality, the Iroquoi League rarely waged war against anyone. Rather its individual member nations drove the warfare often attributed to the whole, creating a shifting, amorphous political and military position that allowed member nations to pursue separate policies of war and peace against common foes and multiple enemies. Unconquered also seeks to dispel longstanding beliefs about the invincible Iroquois empire, myths that have been dispelled by focused academic studies, but still retain a powerful resonance among popular conceptions of the Iroquois League. While the Iroquois created far-reaching networks of trade and destroyed or dispersed Indian peoples along their borders, they created no expansive territorial empires. Nor were Iroquois warriors unequaled in battle. Europeans, Americans, and Indians defeated Iroquois warriors and burned Iroquois villages as often as they tasted defeat, and on more than one occasion they brought the Iroquois League to the brink of utter ruin. Yet the Iroquois were never completely destroyed.

"Iroquois treaty-making has had enormous significance in American history, even to the present day. But until now, we have not had a comprehensive collection of treaty documents and systematic study of the Iroquois treaty procedure. This book brings the research of negotiations carried on by the Dutch, English, French, and Americans with the Iroquois to a new level of sophistication. Since September 1978, the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American at Chicago's Newberry Library has directed a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to compile and publish a documentary history of the Iroquois. The results of this undertaking are: (1) a comprehensive microform corpus of Iroquois treaties and related documents, (2) a printed calendar and index to the treaties, and (3) this reference guide to the treaties and their meanings. In addition to summary essays by Francis Jennings on history and background, William N. Fenton on Culture, Mary A. Drake on structure, Robert J. Surtees on Canada, and Michael K. Foster on linguistics, the editors have included a sample treaty with analytical commentary. They have drawn together a list of participants in Iroquois treaties, figures of speech in political rhetoric, a gazetteer of place names and their modern equivalents, maps of areas important to treaty-making, a descriptive treaty calendar listing negotiations involving Iroquois Indians 1613-1913, and a select bibliography. This books makes the rich array of treaty documents accessible to the informed lay reader. Its publication is a landmark in Iroquois studies." -- Publisher's description

Iowa is the only state that lies entirely within the natural region of the tallgrass prairie. Early documents indicate that 95 percent of the state—close to 30 million acres—was covered by prairie vegetation at the time of Euro-American settlement. By 1930 the prairie sod had been almost totally converted to cropland; only about 30,000 acres of the original “great green sea” remained. Now, in this gracefully illustrated manual, Shirley Shirley has created a step-by-step guide to reconstructing the natural landscape of Iowa and the Upper Midwest. Chapters on planning, obtaining and selecting plants and seeds, starting seeds indoors, preparing the site, planting, and maintenance set the stage for comprehensive species accounts. Shirley gives firsthand information on soil, moisture, sun, and pH requirements; location, size, and structure; blooming time and color; and propagation, germination, and harvesting for more than a hundred wildflowers and grasses. Shirley's sketches—all drawn from native plants and from seedlings that she grew herself—will be valuable for even the most experienced gardener. While other books typically feature only the flowering plant, her careful drawings show the three stages of the seedlings, the flower, and the seedhead with seeds as well as the entire plant. This practical and attractive volume will help anyone dedicated to reconstructing the lost “emerald growth” of the historic tallgrass prairie.

Peacemakers: The Iroquois, the United States, and the Treaty of Canandaigua, 1794 offers a glimpse into how native peoples participated in the intercultural diplomacy of the New Nation and how they worked to protect their communities against enormous odds. The book introduces students, in detail, to the Treaty of Canandaigua, which is little known outside of Central New York. It examines how the Six Nations of the Iroquois secured from the United States a recognition of their sovereign status as separate polities with the right to the "free use and enjoyment" of their lands. In the fall of 1794 leaders from the Six Nations of the Iroquois met with officials from the U.S. in Canandaigua, New York. Iroquois leaders sought the restoration of lands they had lost a decade before at the coercive treaty of Fort Stanwix, which was negotiated with delegates sent from the American Congress under the Articles of Confederation. They felt cheated and aggrieved. The Iroquois delegates also sought the "brightening" of the Covenant Chain alliance which historically had linked the Six Nations to their non-Indian friends and allies. President George Washington sent Timothy Pickering to represent the U.S. at Canandaigua. Washington instructed Pickering to secure from the Six Nations a pledge to take no part in the powerful Indian uprising then occurring in the Northwest Territory. Washington, Pickering, and others in the national government feared that hostile Indians could set the young republic's frontiers ablaze from New York through the Carolinas. Land-hungry New Yorkers, who saw in the acquisition and sale of Iroquois lands a means to finance state government without resorting to a politically inexpedient program of taxation, watched closely and with great suspicion Pickering's actions. The British, meanwhile, still clung to a number of their posts on American soil in the early-1790s. Quietly, they hoped connections to Indian communities on American territory might restrain the territorial aggressiveness of the young republic.

The last decades of the seventeenth century were marked by persistent, bloody conflicts between the French and their Native allies on the one side and the Iroquois confederacy on the other. In the summer of 1701, 1,300 representatives of forty First Nations from the Maritimes to the Great Lakes and from James Bay to southern Illinois met with the French at Montreal. Elaborate, month-long ceremonies culminated in the signing of The Great Peace of Montreal, which effectively put an end to the Iroquois wars. In The Great Peace of Montreal of 1701 Gilles Havard brings to life the European and Native players who brought about this major feat of international diplomacy. He highlights the differing interests and strategies of the numerous First Nations involved while giving a dramatic account of the colourful conference. The treaty, Havard argues, was the culmination of the French colonial strategy of Native alliances and adaptation to Native political customs. It illustrates the extent of cultural interchange between the French and their Native allies and the crucial role the latter played in French conflicts with the Iroquois and the British. As we approach the 300th anniversary of the treaty's signing in August 1701, Gilles Havard emphasizes its contemporary significance: in signing a treaty with forty separate parties the French recognized the independent sovereignty of every First Nation. This translation is significantly revised and updated from the original French publication of 1992.