Abstract
The core homeland of the Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois, stretches east to west across what is now upstate New York State (Fig.2.1). Haudenosaunee (“Ho-deh-no-show’-knee”) means “People of the Longhouse” (Powless 2000:14). “Iroquois” was originally a pejorative used by Algonquian Indian enemies of the Haudenosaunee meaning “real adders” – that is, really nasty killers (Hewitt 1969a:I, 617).
You who are wise must know, that different Nations have different Conceptions.
Canasatego
A Haudenosaunee Spokesman addressing English Colonial Officials in 1744 Recorded by Benjamin Franklin1
The way a society divides up the land says a great deal about the way the society divides up itself.
Lois Levitan, Center for the Environment, Cornell University, 1998
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Notes
- 1.
Benjamin Franklin, “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America [1783],” (1987: 970).
- 2.
The idea that the word “Iroquois” has its origin in the language of Basque fishermen off Canada is put forward by P. Bakker, “A Basque Etymology for the Word ‘Iroquois’” in Man in the Northeast Volume 40 (1990), 89–93. This author is not convinced.
- 3.
The white roots refer to the teachings that reach out in all four directions from the Tree of Peace, planted by the Peacemaker as a symbol of the Confederacy.
- 4.
- 5.
Placing the hapless husband’s belongings outside the door is an image based on personal conversations, usually spiked with humor, with Onondaga female elders, which began for this author in the spring of 1971 and continues till today. These oral traditions are supported by Morgan 1965: 66 and Brown 1990: 186–187.
- 6.
“Wampum” is a colonial English word from the Algonquin word “wam-pum-peh-ak” meaning a white string of shell beads which are animate – that is, shell beads that are alive and thus have a living, ongoing spiritual power. White beads were most often made from periwinkle shells. Wampum also includes purple shell beads, primarily made from quahog shells (Hewitt 1969b: II, 904–909; and Beauchamp 1901: 327, 333, and 338).
- 7.
In 1743, John Bartram observed a hunter thanking the spirit of a bear he had killed (Bartram 1966: 25).
- 8.
I would like to thank Chief Irving Powless, Jr. (Onondaga), and Oren Lyons (Onondaga) for their insights into the complex nature of the Clearings and the Woods and for all the other insights they have generously shared with me since 1971. I am also grateful to Rick Hill (Tuscarora) for his insights regarding the Clearings and the Woods that he shared with me in 1998 and 1999.
- 9.
- 10.
Although written for high school students, an excellent summary of the balance between the Clearings and the Woods is related by Hazel W. Hertzberg, in a chapter she entitles “Patterns of Space: Forest and Clearing” in her The Great Tree and the Longhouse: The Culture of the Iroquois (1966: 23–34).
- 11.
Each Haudenosaunee nation in the Confederacy has a different language, and so the English word “chief” serves as a convenient term. In Mohawk, for example, the word for chief is “royaner” and in Seneca “hotiyanesho ” (Fenton 1978: 314).
- 12.
During the French and Indian War, during which this game was played, Mohawk Haudenosaunee who had been converted to Catholicism in the 1600s had moved back to the St. Lawrence Valley and fought on the side of the French, while their Mohawk brethren in the Mohawk Valley – some of whom were Protestants, while most were traditional – fought on the side of the British.
- 13.
Eight examples of the “Edge of the Woods” protocol from 1535 to 1794 are in William Beauchamp, Civil, Religious and Mourning Councils and Ceremonies of Adoption of the New York Indians (1907: 421–422). The “Edge of the Woods” also translates in English as the “Edge of the Forest” (Woodbury 2003: 432 and 128).
- 14.
A lone female messenger, carrying food, was sent out from an Oneida town when Mohawks brought Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert to them in 1634 (van den Bogaert 1988: 12). A group came out from Onondaga to meet Abraham Schuyler and five other white emissaries in 1709 (Wraxall 1968: 70).
- 15.
A Seneca version of the Thanksgiving Address is Clayton Logan (2000: 7–11).
- 16.
The Mohawk leader Joseph Brant described the Woods in 1789, noting that “Our Ancestors made no Distinction in a Nation [did not define boundaries of lands according to one of the Confederacy’s individual nations]; they held their Lands in common” (Brant 1861: 340).
- 17.
- 18.
This philosophical issue pervaded European thought when the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) struck Europe in the late 1340s, helping to undermine the Catholic Church and encouraging the Renaissance and, later, the Protestant Reformation. The same philosophical issue was raised by the European Jews persecuted by the Nazis. See Norman Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made (2001); and Arno J. Mayeer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final Solution in History (1988). The impact of diseases throughout the world’s cultural landscapes is in William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (1976).
- 19.
Warren Johnson noted in his journal that the Haudenosaunee had “the French Disease,” meaning syphilis, but also that the Haudenosaunee “cure the French Disease well, by herbs; they have got it, & other Disorders, very much among them” (Johnson 1921–1965: XIII, 194–195).
- 20.
In 1823, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the right of discovery to be valid with regard to U.S. land claims (Marshall 1973). In 2005, the allegedly liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg specifically upheld the right of discovery in an Oneida Haudenosaunee case. U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, City of Sherrill, New York v. Oneida Nation of New York et al., March 29, 2005 (544 U.S. 2005), 3 fn 1.
- 21.
For example, Aaron Hill (Kanonaron), a Mohawk leader, declared in 1783 that “The Indians were a free People Subject to no Power on Earth, that they were the faithful Allies of the King of England, but not his Subjects” (Aaron Hill at Fort Niagara, May 18, 1783, in Maclean 1783B. 103: 177).
- 22.
The spiritual messages given to Handsome Lake are widely known to non-Indians in various English translations as the “Code of Handsome Lake.” But would one translate the “Ten Commandments” as the “Ten Commandments of Moses”? This subtle use of words is important to the contemporary Haudenosaunee. They are confident that Handsome Lake was inspired by spiritual forces. From the Haudenosaunee point of view, the Code was “taught by” Handsome Lake, but the Code is not really “of” or “by” him. According to Handsome Lake’s own statements, he was simply the transmitter of the spiritual messages he received. “The Gai Wiio” or “The Good Word” is preferred.
- 23.
For example, see Wallace (2003: 57–67). A stark example of this viewpoint is that of Barbara Alice Mann, who asserts that the prohibition of abortions in the teachings of Handsome Lake was “one of its main woman-crushing innovations” (Mann 2000: 262). Previously, women did perform abortions using a now-unknown herb. However, in terms of “balance,” the fact was that the Haudenosaunee population was in decline, and a “rebalance” of the population meant that more children were necessary.
- 24.
The most flagrant recent example is the Supreme Court Case City of Sherill, New York v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York et al., decided on March 29, 2005. This decision violated the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua in several ways, not the least of which was the assertion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing the majority opinion, that the United States claims over the Haudenosaunee were based on the “doctrine of discovery,” an entirely fictitious legal claim begun by Columbus in 1492, perpetuated by the monarchs of Europe including the rulers of Great Britain, and continued by the U.S. government as the heir to British claims. City of Sherill, New York v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York et al., No. 03-855, 544 U.S. March 29, 2005, page 3 at footnote 1.
- 25.
Bihartz (1995) notes that under the influence of the Quakers, some Senecas seceded from the Confederacy in 1848 to form the “Seneca Nation.” Guided by white ideals, these Senecas promptly disenfranchised the women, who did not regain any voting rights until 1964 (Bihartz 1995: 109–110).
- 26.
This is the author’s estimate. Population figures are especially elusive because in the United States people have the right to “self-identify” themselves as Indians on census forms without providing any proof whatsoever. There is also the issue of generations of intermarriage among many Haudenosaunee people, so that a strong identity with their Haudenosaunee heritage has all but evaporated and may exist only to claim university scholarships or other “minority” programs.
- 27.
In 1981, this author prepared an initial report on the history of the site for the State of New York’s Department of Parks and Recreation.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my friend Chief Irving Powless, Jr. (Onondaga Nation), for all the insights he has shared since we met in 1971. Without his patient guidance, this chapter and indeed my entire career since 1971 would not have taken the path that it has. I would also like to thank my friend of three decades, John Kahionhes Fadden (Mohawk Nation), for his wonderful and perceptive portrayals of three significant spiritual and physical insights of the Haudenosaunee worldview.
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Venables, R.W. (2010). The Clearings and The Woods: The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Landscape – Gendered and Balanced. In: Baugher, S., Spencer-Wood, S. (eds) Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_2
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