Nation Iroquoise presents an intriguing mystery. Found in the Bibliotheque Mazarine in Paris and in the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa, the unsigned and undated manuscript Nation Iroquoise is an absorbing and informative eyewitness account of the daily life and societal structure of the Oneida Iroquois in the seventeenth century. The Nation Iroquoise manuscript is arguably one of the earliest known comprehensive descriptions of an Iroquois group. Rich in ethnographic detail, the work is replete with valuable information about the traditional Oneidas: the role of women in tribal...

Why were the Iroquois unrelentingly hostile toward the French colonists and their Native allies? The longstanding "Beaver War" interpretation of seventeenth-century Iroquois-French hostilities holds that the Iroquois motives were primarily economic, aimed at controlling the profitable fur trade. Jose Antonio Brandao argues persuasively against this view. Drawing from the original French and English sources, Brandao has compiled a vast array of quantitative data about Iroquois raids and mortality rates. He offers a penetrating examination of seventeenth-century Iroquoian attitudes toward...