JJohnson
Banned
Iroquois Confederacy
The fate of the Iroquois...
Later in that same chapter...
And finally...
In this timeline, Iroquois is written differently from OTL. Nasal vowels are written like Portuguese (ẽ, õ), and the semi-open æ as ä. Long vowels are indicated by an accent mark (á) which developed from a macron first written underneath, then over, then finally shortened to what looks like an accent. Stress is written with a downward accent (à) over the vowel.
The fate of the Iroquois...
A Short History of the United States, (c) 2001
Chapter 8: Indians in the 19th century
After the Revolutionary War, the ancient central fireplace of the League was reestablished at Buffalo Creek. Captain Joseph Brant and a group of Iroquois left New York to settle in the Territory of Canada (present-day Ottawa). With the influx of settlers coming with statehood, the Iroquois were again moved northward and westward during the 1830s and 1840s, out of their original land grant on the Grand River. Brant's crossing of the river gave the original name to the area: Brant's ford. By 1847, European settlers began to settle nearby and named the village Brantford. The original Mohawk settlement was on the south edge of the present-day city at a location still favorable for launching and landing canoes. In the 1830s many of the Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca, Cayuga, and Tuscarora relocated into the Northern Indian Territory, later called Manitoulin, and Wisconsin.
Later in that same chapter...
The Indians who moved to Manitoulin were left to their devices for much of the 19th century, without as much of the European settlement until after the Civil War. The town of Monroe (OTL Sudbury, Ontario) was founded when a railroad was finally constructed by the Quebec Northern Railroad company, after a railroad employee David Van Der Kemp discovered large deposits of Nickel-Copper ore at the site. This attracted a number of Iroquois to construct railways and buildings, some of whom stayed in town for economic opportunities, abandoning their languages and ways of life for more "American" names and occupations.
And finally...
Today, there are approximately 152,943 people who claim Iroquoisan ethnicity according to the 2010 census. Of those, a majority (62%) claim to speak Iroquoian (including Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora) at home and for business a majority of the time, followed by English and French. During the 1870s, a group of twelve missionaries from New York worked to create an alphabet for the Indians, eventually translating some passages of the Bible into Mohawk, and then the other five languages, upon realizing there were, in fact, differences between them. This simple act, upon the initiative of the priest, William Berkhof, from New York, preserved the Indian languages, and gave them a literature. Literacy spread slowly until the 1860s, and by the 1880s, over 80% of the Iroquois could read and write their native language. By 1900, over 95% were literate in Iroquois. Unfortunately, due to economic opportunities in Monroe, Thunder Bay, and across the Lakes in Michigan, and south in Ottawa, English made quite a number of inroads as Iroquois moved to the cities to seek a better life. The decline in Iroquois continued until roughly 1975, when a revival in interest in Iroquois, partly helped by the Travellers' song "Mohawk Man," aided both tourism and revived cultural pride that had been swelling since World War veterans returned from Europe, having been valued code-talkers in their units. Having sunk to less than 50% usage in the 1960s, the revival was such that now, over 2/3 of Iroquois can speak their native language, aided by Iroquois-language signage and print media being widely available in Manitoulin.
In this timeline, Iroquois is written differently from OTL. Nasal vowels are written like Portuguese (ẽ, õ), and the semi-open æ as ä. Long vowels are indicated by an accent mark (á) which developed from a macron first written underneath, then over, then finally shortened to what looks like an accent. Stress is written with a downward accent (à) over the vowel.