Iroquois Traditions

Tom brought up the question of why the Iroquois followed a matriarchy. I could not find anything that specifically explained the reasoning behind this, but I found something that may help us determine why. The Iroquois were an agricultural people, so the women often worked in the fields. "Men usually left the village in the fall for the annual hunt and returned about midwinter. . . Other than clearing fields and building villages, the primary occupation of the men was warfare"
We can possibly infer that the men were rarely around to rule over the women since they were always off at war or hunting. Therefore, the women must have had to take over the traditional male roles. Our culture saw this during WWII when the women had to go outside the home and find employment because the men were off at war.