1. Native Roots of American
Identity
US Culture and the Iroquois

2. Founding Fathers: Choosing to be
Romans
• Regular ongoing contact between
Haudenosaunee and Colonists (Grinde)
– Protecting Private Property was Founding
Father’s big concern
• Two antithetical strands of American
culture (Venables):
– 1)Emphasis on private, rather than communal,
property
– 2)Liberty became identified with the noble
image of the Indian

3. Concept of Liberty
• Covenant Chain
– Agreement between
Iroquois and Colonist
• “We the People” not a
hierarchical concept
• American Revolution
destroyed connection

4. Americans as Indians
• Benjamin Franklin wrote extensively about
the Haudenosaunee Longhouse system
• Mohawk “Kings” in England
• “Sons of Liberty” dumped tea in Boston
Harbor dressed as Mohawks

5. Cultural Conflict
• ”Given the conflicting impulses of life
and liberty on the one hand and property
on the other, it is not surprising that at
one moment the Founding Fathers could
extol the virtues of the savage state--life
and liberty--and at the next moment
move to establish an executive branch;
checks; balances; and separations of
powers which would insure the survival
of property--prosperity.”(93)
• Quotes pp 98-99

6. Freedom
• Indian woman on top
of the capital
• Boston Tea Party
– Dressing as Mohawks

7. Freedom at the US Capitol

8. Museum of the American Indian

14. Columbus Landing

15. DeSoto Discovers Florida

16. Baptism of Pocahontas

17. Pilgrims Embarking to America

18. http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/rotunda
/frieze/index.cfm

21. Old Supreme Court

28. Women as the Center of
Community Life
Iroquois influence on the Women’s
movement in the US

29. Iroquois Influence on Women’s
Movement in the US
• Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898)
– With Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.
Anthony, Gage forms the “triumvirate” of leaders
– Author with Anthony of History of Woman
Suffrage
– Forgotten by the end of the 19th century
• Why?

30. Women and Property
• First Women’s
Convention in Seneca
Falls, NY 1848
– Iroquois territory
• Women, African
Americans and
Indians as Property
– Women’s suffering
tied to property
– Blackstone’s Code

31. Gage’s Activism
• Wrote on Iroquois,
matrilineal clan,
misdeeds of white,
etc.
• Women’s liberty
based in liberty of all
people
• Mother-in-law of L.
Frank Baum

32. Sally Roesch Wagner
• "It comes as no surprise then, that when reformers
like Matilda Joslyn Gage looked outside of their
culture for a model upon which to base their vision
of an egalitarian world, they quickly found their well-
known Indian neighbors."[121]
• Gage Foundation in Fayetteville, NY
– http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/gage/mjg.html
– New vision of feminism
– Sisters In Spirit

33. Women Providers
• Haudenosaunee women were farmers
– Scandalous for Europeans
– Tilled all crops in “slash & burn” fields
– Extensive knowledge of plants, wild and domestic

34. Three Sisters
• Corn, Beans and Squash
• Hilled agriculture
(Mesoamerican)
• Nitrogen exchange
between corn and beans
• Deep hoe techniques
came with Europeans

35. Communal Property
• Longhouse originally a
clan residence
– Overseen (“owned”)
by Clan Mother
– Fields tended by clan
women

36. Mary Jemison
• 1750’s “abducted” by
the Seneca
• Lived with them for
the rest of her life
• Died a clan mother
• “Captivity Narratives”

37. Balance of Life
• Women responsible for life “in” the earth
(agriculture)
• Men responsible for life “on” the earth
(hunting)
• Connected to sexual roles
• Allotment Act (1870’s) shifted balance to
women in the home and men in the fields

38. Succotash
• Corn Soup
• Mixture of corn, beans and venison (now “salt
pork”)
• Washed corn, white corn, flint corn, Indian
corn
– Cooked several days in wood ash

39. Haudenosaunee Women and Politics
• Clan Mothers choose male clan “chiefs”
– Iroquois word is “good mind”
– Chiefs are “horned” given deer antler “gustoweh,”
head-dress
– If they misbehave they can be “dehorned” by the
clan mother

40. Role of Haudenosaunee Women
• Direct the men from behind
• Chiefs council with clan mothers
• All decisions are made only by consensus
• Women make the decision to go to war
– They are responsible for children who will suffer

41. Clan Chiefs & Mothers
Oversee ceremonies
In Longhouse no distinction between
“religious” “political” “economic” “familial”
Make certain the cycles of life continue to the
Seventh Generation
Decisions made now effect people long into
the future

42. European Fiction of Control
• Men in control of their homes used force (rape and
violence)
– Legacy of a patrilineal system of inheritance and property
rights
• Men in clan house had to behave, used force in
hunting and diplomacy
– Legacy of matrilineal system of communal property
• Distinctive “religious” views of Mother

43. What is Haudenousaunee “religion?”
• Connection and exchanges with a living earth
• Duties and responsibilities of women and men
to Creation
• Continuing the ceremonial cycle of
Thanksgivings

44. Haudenosaunee and the US
Sullivan-Clinton Campaign

45. Washington to Major General John
Sullivan, 31 May 1779
“The expedition you are appointed to
command is to be directed against the hostile
tribes of the Six Nations of Indians [i.e., the
Haudenosaunee] with their associates and
adherents. The immediate objects are total
destruction and devastation of their
settlements and the capture of as many
prisoners of every sex and age as possible. It
will be essential to ruin their crops in the
ground and prevent their planting more.”

46. U.S. Attack of Iroquois

47. Consequences of the
Sullivan Campaign
• Land laid to waste
• 160,000 bushels of corn destroyed
• 43 Haudenosaunee towns burned
• Winter of 1779-80 was very hard
– Starvation and homelessness
• Honnahdahguyuss
– ”Destroyer of Villages”

48. Onondaga Return Home
• Hear a voice in the woods
• 17 year locust
– First appearance
– Gift of Creator
• Onondaga the only people of the
Haudenosaunee to eat Locust
– Tell story of the Sullivan Campaign to their
children

49. 17 Year Locust

50. 13th Hierophany of Locust

51. Contentious Views of Creation
• Haudenosaunee • Americans
– Immanence of the – Transcendence of the
Sacred Sacred (otiosus)
– Earth as an animate – Earth as an inanimate
being thing
– People co-habit with – People alone are above
other beings other beings
– Emphasis on Creation – Emphasis on the End of
Time

52. GEORGE WASHINGTON’S
WAMPUM BELT AND THE
CANANDAIGUA TREATY
11 November 1794
Commemorated every year on
November 11

53. George Washington Wampum Belt

54. Haudenosaunee in Washington D.C.
28 February 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EFxf8cKWqU&list=UUwBBPL-YamTkGjvpR4NtBBw&index=1&feature=plcp