Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 21, 2006

Iroquois women at work grinding corn or dried berries – 1664

The economy of the Iroquois originally focused on communal production and combined elements of both agricultural and hunter-gatherer systems. The Iroquois peoples were predominately agricultural, harvesting the Three Sisters commonly grown by American Indian groups: maize, beans, and squash. The Iroquois developed a system of economics very different from the now-dominant Western variety. This system consisted of several unique components including communal land ownership, division of labor by gender, and trade based on gift-giving. Contact with Europeans in the early 1600s had a profound impact on the economy of the Iroquois. At first they became important trading partners, but the expansion of European settlement upset the balance of the Iroquois economy. By 1800 the Iroquois had been confined to reservations, and they had to adapt their traditional economic system. In the 20th century, some of the Iroquois groups took advantage of their independent status on the reservation and started Indian casinos. Other Iroquois have incorporated themselves directly into the outside economies off of the reservation. (more...)

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