The earliest written accounting of the Iroquois Country in Upstate New York was chronicled by Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert during his 2-month 1634-35 exploration of the New York State backcountry.................An employee of the Dutch East India Company, Bogaert was sent on his mission out of Ft. Orange(current day Albany, NY) to shore up the Dutch relationship with the Mohawk Indians(the eastern anchor of the 5 nation Iroquois Confederation) so as to keep the French from making inroads into the fur trade that would threaten the viability of the Dutch Ft. Orange trading Post...................Here is what Bogaert recorded about the Natural History of the upstate NY region in the early 17th Century in his journal entitled: A JOURNEY INTO MOHAWK AND ONEIDA COUNTRY 1634-35........

December 1634-January 1635

-Mohawks hunting for black bear and deer..........pumpkins are grown and eaten...............bear skins are used for bedding...............beans are also a food staple.......turkeys are also hunted.............beaver skins for trading with English(and French) in exchange for guns, knives, household goods

-Oak, Walnut and pine trees are abundant...................cougar skins are also used for bedding

-The Indians sometimes keep a tamed black bear inside their walled castles.......corn and beans are stockpiled for the winter..........tamed bears were common in Indian villages..........orphned cubs would be kept for 2 to3 years and then eaten during a celebratory feast

-bear meat, strawberries, blueberries, sunflower seeds and chestnuts in abundance

-oak and birch very much in abundance in the woods

-black bear and elk abundant in the woods

-otters and beavers abundant

-800 salmon caught in one day a tributary to the Hudson River

-The natives enjoy eating bear meat mixed with beans

-The Indians want to go bear hunting

-snowshoe hare cooked with chestnuts a tasty dish

-The Pine Bush Northwest of Ft. Orange(Schenectady, NY) consist of flatlands with White pine, pitch pine and oaks(the word schenectady comes from the Mohawk "skahnetati" which means "beyond the pines"

-As bich trees were not abundant in this region, Mohawk bands built canoes of white and red elm

-cornbread was a staple of the Iroquois tribes

-hunting was a yearround activity of the tribes with the whitetail deer a foundation staple.late Fall and early Winter were the key times of year the deer were hunted for food and hides

The Iroquois tribes relied on hunting more than the Huron people of the Great Lakes Region.......Estimates that corn accounted for 65% of the daily caloric intake of Huron people with Iroqois people probably closer to 50%.

-Euopean smallpox, measles, tyfus, influenza, whooping cough and other pathogens were deadly to all Indian peoples of this Continent with estimates of 90% of pre-contact populations exterminated by these diseases by the middle to late 1600's(East of the Mississippi)

-Bears were very important to Iroquois for food, clothing...........looked at with high esteem by people............figured prominently in their spiritual stories

-Atlantic Salmon were known to frequent the Oswego and Oneida rivers as well as numerous tributaries to the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario

-The Iroquois word for wolf is "Oquho".............also held in high esteem by the tribes............the Iroquois had three clans...............the wolf, turtle and bear clans

-The mohawk started trading furs for guns around 1640

-corn, beans and squash(the 3 sisters) were the vegetable staples of all Eastern Indians

-sunflowers, tobacco were also cultivated along with pumkins

-chestnuts(now extinct to chestnut blight at turn of 20th century) and blueberries were also important foods

-In addition to the powerful Mohawks, the other tribes in the Iroquois Federation were the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Senecas(Tuscaroras of the Southeast also allied with this Federation)--Ben Franklin and other "Founders" were said to have incorporated some of the Iroquois concil practices(members of each tribe attending Councils similar to house of Reps and Senators)

-seranda is iroquois word for the Pine Marten...senotowanne is elk........aque is deer.............schawariwane is turkey............sateeni is domestic dog..............