1851 Morgan Map of New York under the Iroquois: Ho-De'-No-Sau-Nee-Ga

This is the rare 1851 first edition of 'Father of American Anthropology' Lewis Henry Morgan and Seneca Sachem Ely S. Parker's map of New York as it existed under the Iroquois League c. 1720. This novel work is one of the few maps published in the 19th century to directly detail American Indian lands, routes of travel, and language. It is considered the first scientific representation of an American Indian Tribe on a map.

A Closer Look

The title refers to Haudenosaunee ('People of the Long House'), the indigenous name of the Iroquois Confederacy or Five Nations (later Six Nations), consisting of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and, from 1722, the Tuscarora. The map is a product of meticulous research that overlays Iroquois data, including placenames, trails, villages, and more, on a geographically modern map of New York State.

Coverage extends from around what became Erie, Pennsylvania, to the Hudson River, and stretching south to Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten Island at bottom-right, although the focus is on Upstate New York. Detail is most focused on the important corridor between the Niagara River and the Hudson River, including the Finger Lakes region. Many of the indigenous names have clear connections with their modern Anglicizations, such as Cha-da-quet (Chataqua), Gen-nis-hee-yo (Genesee), Ne-ah-ga (Niagara), Gwa-u-gweh (Cayuga), and so on. The novel decorative border features American Indian implements and weapons, including pipes, clubs, and tomahawks.

The Iroquois League

The Iroquois League was a powerful and sophisticated confederacy of indigenous tribes in Northeastern North America. Comprising the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations, the League maintained an advanced political system characterized by a constitution known as the Great Law of Peace. This structure allowed the Iroquois to maintain a balance of power among the member tribes and effectively manage their vast territory, which spanned from modern-day New York into the Great Lakes region. The Iroquois were renowned for their diplomatic skills, playing a crucial role in the regional power dynamics between European colonial powers, such as the French and English, and other Native American tribes. Their society was marked by a matrilineal system, where descent and inheritance were traced through the female line, and women held significant power. As skilled warriors and strategic thinkers, the Iroquois had a profound regional influence on the political, social, and economic landscape, as well as a long-term global influence in that their system of governance and constitution played a role in the ideas behind the U.S. Constitution. Some Iroquois still live in New York State, but in 1779 most were driven from their hereditary lands in retaliation for their alliance with Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War (1775 - 1783).

Publication History and Census

This map was compiled in 1851 by Iroquois expert Lewis H. Morgan and the Seneca sachem (also civil engineer and lawyer) Ely S. Parker. It is loosely based on French maps of 1720 or earlier, showing ancient trails, lakes, villages, and principal locations with their aboriginal names. The work was engraved in Albany by Richard H. Pease. It was published for Morgan's, League of the Ho-De'-No-Sau-Nee, or Iroquois (Rochester, 1851). The work, and the map were republished in 1901, wherein both the map and the illustrations were colorized. We believe that most surviving examples, including those in institutions, are actually from this latter edition, as they are all colored. Uncolored examples, as here, universally correspond with the few verified examples of the first edition. Due to inconsistent cataloging and erroneous association of the 1901 reprint with the 1851 original, it is difficult to perform a comprehensive census of institutional holdings of the separate map. We see only one example of the 1851 edition of the book in OCLC: Queens University Library, Ontario.