Iroquois Jobs
By David Heller
Hunting
Iroquois Indian men hunted for all of the food, tools, weapons and clothes. Some of the women also hunted, but only if they were good at it. The Iroquois were also effective =isherman. They hunted bear, deer, turtles, elk, beaver and wolf. Men weren’t always hunting. Sometimes they could be playing a game or something like that. At age 6, little boys started using blowguns, and bow and arrows. At age 8 or 9, young men started hunting and bringing home rabbits and birds. (I think that is way to young to start bringing home food, because if I were an Iroquois Indian, I would be hunting right now!) The weapons that the Iroquois Indians used were bows and arrows, blowguns, spears and traps. Spears were mostly used to =ish, but they sometimes used them for hunting animals. When boys were in their teens, they started to hunt with their family mates. Boys got taught how to hunt by their male family members. The hunting people wore a Mohawk when they hunted to show that they were a hunter, and not an animal. Without it, hen they were on the ground picking up an animal that they killed someone could accidentally think they were an animal. Bow and arrows were so popular almost every tribe used them for a weapon when they hunted. A tomahawk was another extremely valuable tool that a lot of the tribes worked with. Most of the tools that they used were made out of wood, stone, and bones. Cooking
Women were cooking the food and they also planted their crops. They farmed more than they =ished. Women cooked whatever the men hunted. If they lived in a longhouse, the food that they made was shared with the other longhouse families even in the hardest times, that’s why those people very rarely got hungry. When there were guests, the guest always got to take their food =irst.
Clothing
Women made the clothing, but the men hunted to get the hides. Men and women’s clothing didn’t have very different styles for their clothing, but they didn’t wear the same clothes, just the clothes looked the same. They wore a lot of fur on their clothing, especially in the freezing cold. Clothing didn’t guard a lot of their body. It mostly guarded their privates. The most popular crops were called The Three Sisters. The Three Sisters are beans, squash and corn. They were very popular foods. The Iroquois mostly ate those crops, but sometimes they ate meat. If they ate meat, they mostly ate deer meet. . Kids went to hunting school to be ready to hunt in their teens with their family mates. The Iroquois Indians =ished for salmon, trout and bass, they made maple syrup in the spring. Whatever the men hunted, the women made into clothes. Moccasins were slippers/shoes. Moccasins had fur inside them and they had designs on the outsides of them in the front. Girls helped to make the clothes and moccasins sometimes. Men would sometimes tweeze their hair out with clamshells or rip it out. Men traditionally wore fringed shirts that were made out of deerskin. “Regalia” is what the Iroquois Indians called clothes.