A Short Account of the Mohawk Indians, their Country, Language, Stature, Dress,
Religion and Government, thus described and recently, August 26, 1644, sent out of
New Netherland, by Johannes Megapolensis the younger, Preacher there.
THE country here is in general like that in Germany. The land is good, and fruitful in
everything which supplies human needs, except clothes, linen, woollen, stockings,
shoes, etc., which are all dear here. The country is very mountainous, partly soil, partly
rocks, and with elevations so exceeding high that they appear to almost touch the
clouds. Thereon grow the finest fir trees the eye ever saw. There are also in this country
oaks, alders, beeches, elms, willows, etc. In the forests, and here and there along the
water side, and on the islands, there grows an abundance of chestnuts, plums, hazel
nuts, large walnuts of several sorts, and of as good a taste as in the Netherlands, but
they have a somewhat harder shell. The ground on the hills is covered with bushes of
bilberries or blueberries; the ground in the fiat land near the rivers is covered with
strawberries, which grow here so plentifully in the fields, that one can lie down and eat
them. Grapevines also grow here naturally in great abundance along the roads, paths,
and creeks, and wherever you may turn you find them. I have seen whole pieces of land
where vine stood by vine and grew very luxuriantly, climbing to the top of the largest and
loftiest trees, and although they are not cultivated, some of the grapes are found to be as
good and sweet as in Holland. Here is also a sort of grapes which grow very large, each
grape as big as the end of one’s finger, or an ordinary plum, and because they are
somewhat fleshy and have a thick skin we call them Speck Druyven.i If people would
cultivate the vines they might have as good wine here as they have in Germany or
France. I had myself last harvest a boat-load of grapes and pressed them. As long as
the wine was new it tasted better than any French or Rhenish Must, and the color of the
grape juice here is so high and red that with one wine-glass full you can color a whole
pot of white wine.
In the forests is great plenty of deer, which in autumn and early winter are as fat as any
Holland cow can be. I have had them with fat more than two fingers thick on the ribs, so
that they were nothing else than almost clear fat, and could hardly be eaten. There are
also many turkies, as large as in Holland, but in some years less than in others. The
year before I came here,ii there were so many turkies and deer that they came to feed by
the houses and hog pens, and were taken by the Indians in such numbers that a deer
was sold to the Dutch for a loaf of bread, or a knife, or even for a tobacco pipe; but now
one commonly has to give for a good deer six or seven guilders. In the forests here there
are also many partridges, heath-hens and pigeons that fly together in thousands, and
sometimes ten, twenty, thirty and even forty and fifty are killed at one shot. We have
here, too, a great number of all kinds of fowl, swans, geese, ducks, widgeons, teal,
brant, which sport upon the river in thousands in the spring of the year, and again in the
autumn fly away in flocks, so that in the morning and evening any one may stand ready
with his gun before his house and shoot them as they fly past. I have also eaten here
several times of elks, which were very fat and tasted much like venison; and besides these profitable beasts we have also in this country lions,iii bears, wolves, foxes, and
particularly very many snakes, which are large and as long as eight, ten, and twelve feet.
Among others, there is a sort of snake, which we call rattlesnake, from a certain object
which it has back upon its tail, two or three fingers’ breadth long, and has ten or twelve
joints, and with this it makes a noise like the crickets. Its color is variegated much like
our large brindled bulls. These snakes have very sharp teeth in their mouth, and dare to
bite at dogs; they make way for neither man nor beast, but fall on and bite them, and
their bite is very poisonous, and commonly even deadly too.
As to the soil of this country, that on the mountains is a reddish sand or rock, but in the
low flat lands, and along the rivers, and even in the jutting sides of the mountains for an
hundred or two hundred paces up, there is often clay. I have been on hills here, as high
as a church, to examine the soil, and have found it to be clay. In this ground there
appears to be a singular strength and capacity for bearing crops, for a farmer iv here told
me that he had raised fine wheat on one and the same piece of land eleven years
successively without ever breaking it up or letting it lie fallow. The butter here is clean
and yellow as in Holland.
Through this land runs an excellent river, about 500 or 600 paces wide. This river comes
out of the Mahakas Country, about four leagues north of us. There it flows between two
high rocky banks, and falls from a height equal to that of a church, with such a noise that
we can sometimes hear it here with us.v In the beginning of June twelve of us took a ride
to see it. When we came there we saw not only the river falling with such a noise that we
could hardly hear one another, but the water boiling and dashing with such force in still
weather, that it seemed all the time as if it were raining; and the trees on the hills near by
(which are as high as Schoorler Duyn vi ) had their leaves all the time wet exactly as if it
rained. The water is as clear as crystal, and as fresh as milk. I and another with me saw
there, in clear sun-shine, when there was not a cloud in the sky, especially when we
stood above upon the rocks, directly opposite where the river falls, in the great abyss,
the half of a rainbow, or a quarter of a circle, of the same color with the rainbow in the
sky. And when we had gone about ten or twelve rods farther downwards from the fall,
along the river, we saw a complete rainbow, like a half circle, appearing clearly in the
water just as if it had been in the clouds, and this is always so according to the report of
all who have ever been there.
In this river is a great plenty of all kinds of fish—pike, eels, perch, lampreys, suckers, cat
fish, sun fish, shad, bass, etc. In the spring, in May, the perch are so plenty, that one
man with a hook and line will catch in one hour as many as ten or twelve can eat. My
boys have caught in an hour fifty, each a foot long. They have three hooks on the
instrument with which they fish, and draw up frequently two or three perch at once.
There is also in the river a great plenty of sturgeon, which we Christians do not like, but
the Indians eat them greedily. In this river, too, are very beautiful islands, containing ten,
twenty, thirty, fifty and seventy morgens of land. The soil is very good, but the worst of it
is, that by the melting of the snow, or heavy rains, the river readily overflows and covers
that low land. This river ebbs and flows at ordinary low water as far as this place,
although it is thirty-six leagues inland from the sea.
As for the temperature in this country, and the seasons of the year, the summers are
pretty hot, so that for the most of the time we are obliged to go in just our shirts, and the
winters are very cold. The summer continues long, even until All Saints’ Day; but when
the winter does begin, just as it commonly does in December, it freezes so hard in one
night that the ice will bear a man. Even the rivers, in still weather when there is no strong
current running, are frozen over in one night, so that on the second day people walk over it. And this freezing continues commonly three months; for although we are situated here
in 42 degrees of latitude, it always freezes so. And although there come warm and
pleasant days, the thaw does not continue, but it freezes again until March. Then,
commonly, the rivers first begin to open, and seldom in February. We have the greatest
cold from the northwest, as in Holland from the northeast. The wind here is very seldom
east, but almost always south, southwest, northwest, and north; so also the rain.
Our shortest winter days have nine hours sun; in the summer, our longest days are
about fifteen hours. We lie so far west of Holland that I judge you are about four hours in
advance of us, so that when it is six o’clock in the morning with us it is ten in the
forenoon with you, and when it is noon with us, it is four o’clock in the afternoon with
you.
The inhabitants of this country are of two kinds: first, Christians—at least so called;
second, Indians. Of the Christians I shall say nothing; my design is to speak of the
Indians only. These among us are again of two kinds: first, the Mahakinbas, or, as they
call themselves, Kajingahaga; second, the Mahakans, otherwise called Agotzagena.vii
These two nations have different languages, which have no affinity with each other, like
Dutch and Latin. These people formerly carried on a great war against each other, but
since the Mahakanders were subdued by the Mahakobaas, peace has subsisted
between them, and the conquered are obliged to bring a yearly contribution to the
others. We live among both these kinds of Indians; and when they come to us from their
country, or we go to them, they do us every act of friendship. The principal nation of all
the savages and Indians hereabouts with which we have the most intercourse, is the
Mahakuaas viii , who have laid all the other Indians near us under contribution. This nation
has a very difficult language, and it costs me great pains to learn it, so as to be able to
speak and preach in it fluently. There is no Christian here who understands the language
thoroughly; those who have lived here long can use a kind of jargon just sufficient to
carry on trade with it, but they do not understand the fundamentals of the language. I am
making a vocabulary of the Mahakuaas language, and when I am among them I ask
them how things are called; but as they are very stupid, I sometimes cannot make them
understand what I want. Moreover when they tell me, one tells me the word in the
infinitive mood, another in the indicative; one in the first, another in the second person;
one in the present, another in the preterit. So I stand oftentimes and look, but do not
know how to put it down. And as they have declensions and conjugations also, and have
their augments like the Greeks, I am like one distracted, and frequently cannot tell what
to do, and there is no one to set me right. I shall have to speculate in this alone, in order
to become in time an Indian grammarian. When I first observed that they pronounced
their words so differently, I asked the commissary of the company ix what it meant. He
answered me that he did not know, but imagined they changed their language every two
or three years; I argued against this that it could never be that a whole nation should
change its language with one consent;—and, although he has been connected with
them here these twenty years, he can afford me no assistance.
The people and Indians here in this country are like us Dutchmen in body and stature;
some of them have well formed features, bodies and limbs; they all have black hair and
eyes, but their skin is yellow. In summer they go naked, haying only their private parts
covered with a patch. The children and young folks to ten, twelve and fourteen years of
age go stark naked. In winter, they hang about them simply an undressed deer or bear
or panther skin; or they take some beaver and otter skins, wild cat, raccoon, martin,
otter, mink, squirrel or such like skins, which are plenty in this country, and sew some of
them to others, until it is a square piece, and that is then a garment for them; or they buy of us Dutchmen two and a half ells of duffel, and that they hang simply about them, just
as it was torn off, without sewing it, and walk away with it. They look at themselves
constantly, and think they are very fine. They make themselves stockings and also
shoes of deer skin, or they take leaves of their corn, and plait them together and use
them for shoes. The women, as well as the men, go with their heads bare. The women
let their hair grow very long, and tie it together a little, and let it hang down their backs.
The men have a long lock of hair hanging down, some on one side of the head, and
some on both sides. On the top of their heads they have a streak of hair from the
forehead to the neck, about the breadth of three fingers, and this they shorten until it is
about two or three fingers long, and it stands right on end like a cock’s comb or hog’s
bristles; on both sides of this cock’s comb they cut all the hair short, except the aforesaid
locks, and they also leave on the bare places here and there small locks, such as are in
sweeping-brushes, and then they are in fine array.
They likewise paint their faces red, blue, etc., and then they look like the Devil himself.
They smear their heads with bear’s-grease, which they all carry with them for this
purpose in a small basket; they say they do it to make their hair grow better and to
prevent their having lice. When they travel, they take with them some of their maize, a
kettle, a wooden bowl, and a spoon; these they pack up and hang on their backs.
Whenever they are hungry, they forthwith make a fire and cook; they can get fire by
rubbing pieces of wood against one another, and that very quickly.
They generally live without marriage; and if any of them have wives, the marriage
continues no longer than seems good to one of the parties, and then they separate, and
each takes another partner. I have seen those who had parted, and afterwards lived a
long time with others, leave these again, seek their former partners, and again be one
pair. And, though they have wives, yet they will not leave off whoring; and if they can
sleep with another man’s wife, they think it a brave thing. The women are exceedingly
addicted to whoring; they will lie with a man for the value of one, two, or three schillings,x
and our Dutchmen run after them very much.
The women, when they have been delivered, go about immediately afterwards, and be it
ever so cold, they wash themselves and the young child in the river or the snow. They
will not lie down (for they say that if they did they would soon die), but keep going about.
They are obliged to cut wood, to travel three or four leagues with the child; in short, they
walk, they stand, they work, as if they had not lain in, and we cannot see that they suffer
any injury by it; and we sometimes try to persuade our wives to lie-in so, and that the
way of lying-in in Holland is a mere fiddle-faddle. The men have great authority over their
concubines, so that if they do anything which does not please and raises their passion,
they take an axe and knock them in the head, and there is an end of it. The women are
obliged to prepare the land, to mow, to plant, and do every-thing; the men do nothing,
but hunt, fish, and make war upon their enemies.
They are very cruel towards their enemies in time of war; for they first bite off the nails of
the fingers of their captives, and cut off some joints, and sometimes even whole fingers;
after that, the captives are forced to sing and dance before them stark naked; and finally,
they roast their prisoners dead before a slow fire for some days, and then eat them up.
The common people eat the arms, buttocks and trunk, but the chiefs eat the head and
the heart.
Our Mahakas carry on great wars against the Indians of Canada, on the River Saint
Lawrence, and take many captives, and sometimes there are French Christians among
them. Last year, our Indians got a great booty from the French on the River Saint Lawrence, and took three Frenchmen, one of whom was a Jesuit.xi They killed one, but
the Jesuit (whose left thumb was cut off, and all the nails and parts of his fingers were
bitten,) we released, and sent him to France by a yacht which was going to our country.
They spare all the children from ten to twelve years old, and all the women whom they
take in war, unless the women are very old, and then they kill them too. Though they are
so very cruel to their enemies, they are very friendly to us, and we have no dread of
them. We go with them into the woods, we meet with each other, sometimes at an hour
or two’s walk from any houses, and think no more about it than as if we met with a
Christian.
They sleep by us, too, in our chambers before our beds. I have had eight at once lying
and sleeping upon the floor near my bed, for it is their custom to sleep simply on the
bare ground, and to have only a stone or a bit of wood under their heads. In the evening,
they go to bed very soon after they have supped; but early in the morning, before day
begins to break, they are up again. They are very slovenly and dirty; they wash neither
their face nor hands, but let all remain upon their yellow skin, and look like hogs.
Their bread is Indian corn beaten to pieces between two stones, of which they make a
cake, and bake it in the ashes: their other victuals are venison, turkies, hares, beam, wild
cats, their own dogs, etc. The fish they cook just as they get them out of the water
without cleansing; also the entrails of deer with all their contents, which they cook a little;
and if the intestines are then too tough, they take one end in their mouth, and the other
in their hand, and between hand and mouth they separate and eat them. So they do
commonly with the flesh, for they carve a little piece and lay it on the fire, as long as one
would need to walk from his house to church, and then it is done; and then they bite into
it so that the blood runs along their mouths. They can also take a piece of bear’s-fat as
large as two fists, and eat it clear without bread or anything else. It is natural to them to
have no beards; not one in an hundred has any hair about his mouth.
They have also naturally a very high opinion of themselves; they say, Ihy Othkon, (“I am
the Devil”) by which they mean that they are superior folks. In order to praise themselves
and their people, whenever we tell them they are very expert at catching deer, or doing
this and that, they say, Tkoschs ko, aguweechon Kajingahaga kouaane Jountuckcha
Othkon; that is, “Really all the Mohawks are very cunning devils.”
They make their houses of the bark of trees, very close and warm, and kindle their fire in
the middle of them. They also make of the peeling and bark of trees, canoes or small
boats, which will carry four, five and six persons. In like manner they hollow out trees,
and use them for boats, some of which are very large. I have several times sat and
sailed with ten, twelve and fourteen persons in one of these hollowed logs. We have in
our colony xii a wooden canoe obtained from the Indians, which will easily carry two
hundred schepels xiii of wheat. Their weapons in war were formerly a bow and arrow,
with a stone axe and mallet; but now they get from our people guns, swords, iron axes
and mallets.
Their money consists of certain little bones, made of shells or cockles, which are found
on the sea-beach; a hole is drilled through the middle of the little bones, and these they
string upon thread, or they make of them belts as broad as a hand, or broader, and hang
them on their necks, or around their bodies. They have also several holes in their ears,
and there they likewise hang some. They value these little bones as highly as many
Christians do gold, silver and pearls; but they do not like our money, and esteem it no
better than iron. I once showed one of their chiefs a rix-dollar; he asked how much it was
worth among the Christians; and when I told him, he laughed exceedingly at us, saying we were fools to value a piece of iron so highly; and if he had such money, he would
throw it into the river.
They place their dead upright in holes, and do not lay them down, and then they throw
some trees and wood on the grave, or enclose it with palisades. They have their set
times for going to catch fish, bears, panthers, beavers and eels. In the spring, they catch
vast quantities of shad and lampreys, which are exceedingly large here; they lay them
on the bark of trees in the sun, and dry them thoroughly hard, and then put them in
notasten, or bags, which they plait from hemp which grows wild here, and keep the fish
till winter. When their corn is ripe, they take it from the ears, open deep pits, and
preserve it in these the whole winter. They can also make nets and seines in their
fashion; and when they want to fish with seines, ten or twelve men will go together and
help each other, all of whom own the seine in common.
They are entire strangers to all religion, but they have a Tharonhijouaagon, (whom they
also otherwise call Athzoock-kuatoriaho,) that is, a Genius, whom they esteem in the
place of God; but they do not serve him or make offerings to him. They worship and
present offerings to the Devil, whom they call Otskon, or Aireskuoni. If they have any
bad luck in war, they catch a bear, which they cut in pieces, and roast, and that they
offer up to their Aireskuoni, saying in substance, the following words: “Oh! great and
mighty Aireskuoni, we confess that we have offended against thee, inasmuch as we
have not killed and eaten our captive enemies;—forgive us this. We promise that we will
kill and eat all the captives we shall hereafter take as certainly as we have killed, and
now eat this bear.” Also when the weather is very hot, and there comes a cooling
breeze, they cry out directly, Asoronusi, asoronusi, Otskon aworouhsi reinnuha; that is, “I
thank thee, I thank thee, devil, I thank thee, little uncle !” If they are sick, or have a pain
or soreness anywhere in their limbs, and I ask them what ails them they say that the
Devil sits in their body, or in the sore places, and bites them there; so that they at-tribute
to the Devil at once the accidents which befall them; they have otherwise no religion.
When we pray they laugh at us. Some of them despise it entirely; and some, when we
tell them what we do when we pray, stand astonished. When we deliver a sermon,
sometimes ten or twelve of them, more or less, will attend, each having a long tobacco
pipe, made by him-self, in his mouth, and will stand awhile and look, and after-wards ask
me what I am doing and what I want, that I stand there alone and make so many words,
while none of the rest may speak. I tell them that I am admonishing the Christians, that
they must not steal, nor commit lewdness, nor get drunk, nor commit murder, and that
they too ought not to do these things; and that I intend in process of time to preach the
same to them and come to them in their own country and castles (about three days’
journey from here, further inland), when I am acquainted with their language. Then they
say I do well to teach the Christians; but immediately add, Diatennon jawij Assirioni,
hagiouisk, that is, “Why do so many Christians do these things?” They call us Assirioni,
that is, cloth-makers, or Charistooni, that is, iron-workers, because our people first
brought cloth and iron among them. They will not come into a house where there is a
men-struous woman, nor eat with her. No woman may touch their snares with which
they catch deer, for they say the deer can scent it.
The other day an old woman came to our house, and told my people that her forefathers
had told her “that Tharonhij-Jagon, that is, God, once went out walking with his brother,
and a dispute arose between them, and God killed his brother.” I suppose this fable took
its rise from Cain and Abel. They have a droll theory of the Creation, for they think that a
pregnant woman fell down from heaven, and that a tortoise, (tortoises are plenty and
large here, in this country, two, three and four feet long, some with two heads, very mischievous and addicted to biting) took this pregnant woman on its back, because
every place was covered with water; and that the woman sat upon the tortoise, groped
with her hands in the water, and scraped together some of the earth, whence it finally
happened that the earth was raised above the water. They think that there are more
worlds than one, and that we came from another world.
The Mohawk Indians are divided into three tribes, which are called Ochkari, Anaware,
Oknaho, that is, the Bear, the Tortoise and the Wolf. Of these, the Tortoise is the
greatest and most prominent; and they boast that they are the oldest descendants of the
woman before mentioned. These have made a fort of palisades, and they call their
castle Asserué.xiv Those of the Bear are the next to these, and their castle is called by
them Banagiro.xv The last are a progeny of these, and their castle is called
Thenondiogo.xvi These Indian tribes each carry the beast after which they are named (as
the arms in their banner) when they go to war against their enemies, and this is done as
well for the terror of their enemies, as for a sign of their own bravery. Lately one of their
chiefs came to me and presented me with a beaver, an otter, and some cloth he had
stolen from the French, which I must accept as a token of good fellowship. When he
opened his budget he had in it a dried head of a bear, with grinning teeth. I asked him
what that meant? He answered me that he fastened it upon his left shoulder by the side
of his head, and that then he was the devil, who cared for nothing, and did not fear any
thing.
The government among them consists of the oldest, the most intelligent, the most
eloquent and most warlike men. These commonly resolve, and then the young and
warlike men execute. But if the common people do not approve of the resolution, it is
left entirely to the judgment of the mob. The chiefs are generally the poorest among
them, for instead of their receiving from the common people as among Christians, they
are obliged to give to the mob; especially when any one is killed in war, they give great
presents to the next of kin of the deceased; and if they take any prisoners they present
them to that family of which one has been killed, and the prisoner is then adopted by the
family into the place of the deceased person.
There is no punishment here for murder and other villainies, but every one is his own
avenger. The friends of the deceased revenge themselves upon the murderer until
peace is made by presents to the next of kin. But although they are so cruel, and live
without laws or any punishments for evil doers, yet there are not half so many villainies
or murders committed amongst them as amongst Christians; so that I oftentimes think
with astonishment upon all the murders committed in the Fatherland, notwithstanding
their severe laws and heavy penalties. These Indians, though they live without laws, or
fear of punishment, do not (at least, they very seldom) kill people, unless it may be in a
great passion, or a hand-to-hand fight. Wherefore we go wholly unconcerned along with
the Indians and meet each other an hour’s walk off in the woods, without doing any harm
to one another.
iv Brant Peelen, of Nykerck in Gelderland, who lived on "Brant Peelen's" or
Castle Island, a little below Fort Orange. See De Vrics, p. 206, post.
v The Cohoes Falls.
vi A dune or sand hill on the coast of North Holland, near the village of Schoorl,
where Domine Megapolensis had lived.
vii Mohawks and Mohicans.
viii Mohawks.
ix Presumably Bastiaen Jansen Krol, who had been at Fort Orange most of
the time from 1626.
x The Dutch schilling was equivalent to twelve cents,
xi This happened on August 2, 1642. The Jesuit whose life was spared was
the celebrated Father Isaac Jogues, of whom a fuller account appears later, in the
introduction to portions of his writings included in this volume. His captivity
lasted till August, 1643. The relation of Megapolensis to his release is set forth
in the pieces alluded to, pp. 248, 252, post.
xii 1 Rensselaerswyck.
xiii 2 The schepel was about three pecks.
xiv 1 Assereawe appears on Van der Donck's map on the north side of the Mohawk
River, not far up.
