The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701

Abstract

Jon Parmenter seeks to explain Iroquois territorial expansion and the wars it often engendered in the period leading up to 1701. The Iroquois, readers learn, were not motivated by a desire to control the fur trade—so that putative goal cannot account for Iroquois wars and geographic expansion. Rather, they fought various native and European powers as part of a “mourning war” cycle of hostilities and to maintain control over their lands. Iroquois “spatial mobility” (a rarely defined phrase but usually meaning travel, relocation, or war against others in lands not adjacent to Iroquois villages) “represented the geographic expression of Iroquois social, political, and economic priorities,” and much of it was reflected in the “Wood’s Edge” ceremony (p. xii). Iroquois ability to expand Iroquoia, to travel across it, and to control “information conduits” and access to their land helped them endure the onslaughts brought by new diseases and by others who warred against them (ibid.). It was a deliberative adaptive strategy—not a reflection of a disintegrating and faction-ridden culture.