the fire then there had to be very little rain. If there was a lot of rain they might have had a way to close up the hole. The fence around their long houses was another signal that they built their houses based on their location.When you think about their importance and their impact on history, it is hard to believe how few Iroquois there were in 1600 — probably less than 20,000. Their inland location protected them somewhat from the initial European penetration, but these had reached them by 1650 and, combined with warfare, cut their population to about half of its original number. Through the conquering of other Iroquoian-speaking enemies, they increased their population to 25,000 in 1660.For now, their talent for diplomacy and political unity kept things under control, but forces which would destroy them had been set in motion. On the positive side, the conquering gave the Iroquois a claim to the lands of their former enemies. However, the Iroquois didn’t extend their conquering to non-Iroquoian speaking tribes and that caused the population to drop. Despite the incorporation of 1,500 Tuscarora in 1722 as a sixth member of the Five Nations, there were only 12,00 Iroquois by 1768. By the end of the Revolutionary War, they were less than 8,000. The shelter for the Iroquois were called long houses. A normal long house was 150 feet long by 20 feet wide, hence the name long house. Each long house had a number of rooms. Each room was home to one family. There was a fire in between the two rooms and that was shared by both of the families. There was a hole in the roof for the smoke to go out of. There was little to distinguish the Iroquois from their Iroquoian-speaking neighbors. For example, they all had the same social structure, the women owned all the property and determined the family relationship. Each Iroquois tribe was in one of three clans headed by the clan mother, turtle, bear, and wolf. After a man married, he move...
