Any of six North American members of the Iroquois Confederacy living mostly in southern Ontario and Quebec, Can.
, and in New York, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Oklahoma, U.S. The name Iroquois is a French derivation of Irinakhoiw, meaning "Rattlesnakes," their Algonquian enemy's epithet. They call themselves Hodenosaunee, meaning "People of the Longhouse." The Iroquois were semisedentary, practiced agriculture, palisaded their villages, and dwelled in longhouse s that lodged many families. Women worked the fields and, when they became clan elders, helped determine the makeup of village councils. Men built houses, hunted, fished, and made war. Iroquoian mythology was largely preoccupied with supernatural aggression and cruelty, sorcery, torture, and cannibalism. Their formal religion consisted of agricultural festivals. Warfare was ingrained in Iroquois society, and war captives were often tortured for days or made permanent slaves. All together the various Iroquois tribes number about 70,000 members, with the Mohawk making up more than half that figure.