All about the ancient tribes
Seneca clothes Seneca men wore breechcloths with leggings. Seneca women wore wraparound skirts with shorter leggings. Men did not originally wear shirts in Seneca culture, but women often wore a long tunic called a kilt or overdress. The Senecas usually wore moccasins on their feet.
The Native American women generally wore skirts and leggings. Often they wore shirts or tunics as well. In some tribes, like the Cherokee and the Apache, the women wore longer buckskin dresses.
The Seneca are also known as the “Keeper of the Western Door,” for the Seneca are the westernmost of the Six Nations. But the Seneca were also renowned for their sophisticated skills at diplomacy and oratory and their willingness to unite with the other original five nations to form the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations.
The Seneca would hunt, fish, farm and gather their food. Staples of the Seneca crop and diet were corn, beans, and squash, which are referred to as the Three Sisters and considered to be special gifts from the Creator.
Seneca is an Iroquoian language spoken by the Seneca people, one of the members of the Iroquois Five (later, Six) Nations confederacy. It is most closely related to the other Five Nations Iroquoian languages, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk (and among those, it is most closely related to Cayuga).
The Seneca Indians lived in villages of longhouses, which were large wood-frame buildings covered with sheets of elm bark. Seneca homes could be a hundred feet long, and an entire clan lived in each one–up to 60 people!
All First Nations across the country, with the exception of the Pacific Coast, made their clothing—usually tunics, leggings and moccasins —of tanned animal skin. Woodland and northern First Nations used moose, deer or caribou skin.
Mohawk men wore breechcloths with leggings. Mohawk women wore wraparound skirts with shorter leggings. Men did not originally wear shirts in Mohawk culture, but women often wore a poncho-like tunic called an overdress. Mohawk Indians usually wore moccasins on their feet.
Before the Ojibwa began to trade with Europeans and Americans, they wore clothing made from animal hides, primarily from tanned deerskin. The women wore deerskin dresses, leggings, moccasins, and petticoats made of woven nettle or thistle fibers. The men wore leggings, breechcloths, and moccasins.
The name Seneca is a boy’s name of Latin origin meaning “people of the standing rock”.
The Cayuga Nation is known as “The People of the Great Swamp”. Cayugas are one the original five members of the Haudenosaunee “The People of the Longhouse”. Many goverance principles of the Haudenosaunee were installed into the American form of governance.
They were removed to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River in the 1830s. Many Seneca and other Iroquois migrated into Canada during and after the Revolutionary War, where the Crown gave them land in compensation for what was lost in their traditional territories.
Learning the Seneca Indian Language Nya:wëh sgë:nö’ (nyah-weh-sgeh-noh) Hello.
The CIR is located along the Cattaraugus Creek, from Gowanda, New York, downstream to the shore of Lake Erie. The CIR is comprised of some 21,618 acres in Cattaraugus, Chautauqua and Erie counties.
Composed of eight clans – Turtle, Bear, Wolf, Beaver, Snipe, Heron, Deer and Hawk – the Seneca are said to have been released by the Creator from beneath a mountain and prospered as the People of the Great Hill.