Iroquois prosperous settlements in the 19th century, supporting themselves via farming and the sale of sleds, snowshoes, boats, and baskets. In 1884, about 100 Canadian Iroquois were hired by the British government to serve as river pilots and boatmen for the relief expedition for the besieged General Charles Gordon in Khartoum in the Sudan, taking the force commanded by Field Marshal Wolsely up the Nile from Cairo to Khartoum. On their way back to Canada, the Canadian Iroquois river pilots and boatmen stopped in London, where they were personally thanked by Queen Victoria for their services to Queen and Country. In
Iroquois of 1812, they had lost control of considerable property. The League has since been compared to a modern-day example of anarcho-communism or libertarian socialism. Knowledge of Iroquois history stems from Haudenosaunee oral tradition, archaeological evidence, accounts from Jesuit missionaries, and subsequent European historians. Historian Scott Stevens credits the early modern European value for the written word over oral tradition and cultures as contributing to a prejudiced, racialized element within writings about the Iroquois that continued into the 19th century. The historiography of the Iroquois peoples is a topic of much debate, especially regarding the American colonial period. Jesuit accounts of