Iroquois Council

An Indigenous leader speaks to a tribal council in this engraved illustration to the third volume of Joseph-François Lafitau’s Mœurs Des Sauvages Ameriquains: Comparées aux Mœurs des Premiers Temps (Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times), published in 1724. Lafitau, a Jesuit missionary from France, lived in North America at the Caughnawaga settlement of Mohawk Iroquois at Sault Saint Louis from 1712 to 1717. Considered an early cultural anthropologist, Lafitau attempted to objectively describe Iroquois culture based on his personal observations.