planets.
4 On the coast of North America, European explorers and settlers were fascinated by the
Indians' (3) traditions and by their insistence on personal liberty and social equality.
According to Cadwallader Colden, a political leader in colonial New York, people in Indian
villages were not divided into upper and lower classes, (4)as they were in Europe. Every
member of a village was considered equal to everyone else; no one had the right to deprive
others of their freedom. Colden was an adopted member of the Mohawk nation*.
god o
5 The Mohawks belonged to an alliance of five (later six) nations bound together by a
common Iroquois* language. (They were known to the American colonists of the 1700s as the
Iroquois Confederacy. Each member nation governed itself, but they acted together in time of
war and met to discuss issues that concerned them all. (5)This military and political alliance
made the Iroquois the most powerful Indians in eastern America.
6
The Iroquoia C
