Before Europeans arrived, on what they would name 'North American soil'
Five Nations came together and formed a confederacy.
They were guided by the will of the people and they created a constitution
with 117 articles that guaranteed the rights of the people,
and the responsibilities of their leaders.
That constitution, the Great Law of Peace, still guides those people to this day.
So who are they?
Well, those Europeans we mentioned would call them Iroquois, but that's not really their name.
They are the Haudenosaunee: "People of the Longhouse"
We don't know exactly when they formed their confederacy
only that it certainly came before the arrival of Europeans, perhaps by as much as a millennium.
We also know the name of one of its founders:
Hiawatha.
[Intro music]
When Big Huge Games told us that they planned to add Hiawatha as a Great Leader in their game, DomiNations,
we got pretty excited!
The confederacy he formed is an incredible piece of history of governance,
one that has survived for centuries and played an acknowledged role in shaping the U.S. constitution.
And when we asked Big Huge Games if they would be interested in sponsoring 2 episodes
about Hiawatha's role forming the Haudenosauneeian confederacy
they got pretty excited!
So here we go! But first, a disclaimer:
Much of the evidence of the Haudenosaunee confederacy's foundation
has been handed down through the oral tradition.
And where history privileges the written word, a culture that keeps its history through sacred stories
will often be left out of the prevailing narrative.
Or worse, told that they have no history at all.
The Haudenosaunee very much have a history.
And it's a living history, characterized by a variety of perspective and expression.
Our goal here isn't to mandate one principal story that must be believed above all others
but to relate one story of Hiawatha as a lens to learn
about the living, real and vital Haudenosaunee confederacy.
Our story begins in Onondaga territory, in a time when people who had once been brothers
warred with each other.
A chief named Tadodaho led the Onondaga into battle after battle.
He was ferocious, to the point of viciousness.
And although he won many battles, his victories never brought peace
and his lust for violence only grew stronger.
The lesser chiefs of his tribe lived in fear of him
and Tadodaho treated them like scum whose only purpose was to praise and obey him.
But one of them did not.
His name was Hiawatha.
Hiawatha was grieving. His wife had been taken from him by raiders long ago.
Two of his daughters had died of illness that couldn't be cured.
And then his third daughter, whom he cherished and tried to protect, died in a tragic accident.
Hiawatha found himself looking back on a lifetime of war with regret.
This sorrow he felt must surely be shared by everybody who had lost a child or a loved one.
War seemed to him like the worst cause of this grief
since unlike illness or misfortune, war could be avoided.
At least, he believed it could be.
He called a council of all the Onondaga chiefs, including Tadodaho, to propose a peace.
According to stories he'd heard, their brother tribe, the Mohawk, had embraced a peaceful way of life
and were no longer waging war on anyone.
Hiawatha said, "if we unite with them, we can protect each other."
"We'll have no more need of war."
Tadodaho hated that idea.
War was his identity; it was the foundation of his power.
Everyone who looked up to him did so because they feared his strength.
He told Hiawatha that if he liked this Mohawk peace so much, maybe he should go live with them.
And the remaining chiefs, cowed by Tadodaho, didn't disagree.
So, Hiawatha left. He traveled to the current home of the Mohawks
and sought the man he'd heard stories about.
The man who had convinced them to give up their warring ways and embrace peace.
His grandmother had given him a different name, but now everybody called him: the Peacemaker.
Hiawatha waited patiently outside the walls of the Mohawk village
where the Peacemaker lived, until the Peacemaker came to him.
When they met, Hiawatha gave him a string of shining purple and white beads called wampum.
The white ones represented peace, he said, and the dark ones represented war.
So he had created a string with white beads on either side of the dark beads
to show his desire for peace to overcome war.
The Peacemaker had never before seen wampum used to convey a message
and he liked this stranger immediately.
The Peacemaker welcomed Hiawatha into his longhouse.
When he heard what Hiawatha had proposed among the Onondaga, his face lit up.
But as they talked, it became clear that he didn't want just the Onondaga and the Mohawk to be allies.
He believed all people could live together in peace as the Creator intended.
Of course, he and Hiawatha agreed that the easiest place to start
would be with the Five Nations who already shared similar languages.
The Onondaga, the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Cayuga and the Seneca.
Going back to Tadodaho would be pointless; Hiawatha knew he would never listen
because he never listened to anything but power.
They needed allies.
They would need to recruit the other nations first. But how?
The other nations didn't know him - they wouldn't listen to him.
They needed somebody who could reach out to the chiefs of every nation.
They needed someone whom the warriors wouldn't attack on sight.
They needed Jigonsaseh.
She had become something of a legend among the warriors.
Her longhouse stood at a crossroads and many warriors sought refuge with her on their marches.
She was a Seneca woman
but she allowed anyone to stay in her longhouse as long as they agreed to keep her peace.
Often, when warriors of different nations came to her on the same day
she would feed them dinner from the same soup bowl.
Tradition dictated that anybody who shared food became kin and they were forbidden to fight each other.
Thus, in her own way, Jigonsaseh had been forging small alliances across the Five Nations for years.
They visited Jigonsaseh at her longhouse
and the Peacemaker explained that he wanted to build one just like it.
One that brought together all Five Nations under one great law of peace.
Women like her would be the backbone of this new peace
because women were keepers of the Earth and leaders of the clans.
Clan mothers would be empowered to choose the chiefs,
to remove them if they failed in their responsibilities,
to call councils and to review new laws.
He asked Jigonsaseh to be his messenger to the women's councils in all the nations
and to bring his message of righteousness, health and power.
And she replied, "That is indeed a good message."
"I take hold of it; I embrace it."
Together, she and Hiawatha journeyed to the nearby tribe of the Oneida
as envoys of the Peacemaker's message.
The Oneida were the little brothers of the Mohawk
so they were more inclined than anyone else to accept the peace which the Mohawk now embraced.
Those who knew Jigonsaseh trusted her, and welcomed her and Hiawatha among them
as speakers who relayed the Peacemaker's message.
Then the great debate began.
The Oneida had suffered plenty from the war
but could they really afford to put aside their weapons and trust peace to protect them?
The elders argued that peace had been the way of their people since the land had been given to them.
That was the past though, and now they had many warriors who lived to fight,
and enemies who wanted to destroy them.
Arguments were levied on both sides and the discussion raged for a full year.
But the Peacemaker was insistent.
War was an aberration, a betrayal of the wishes of the Creator and of the interests of the people.
If they wanted to be strong - truly strong - they would have to lead the way with their own choices.
They MUST choose peace.
They owed it to all of the casualties of war whose bones lay in the ground
whose futures had been cut short.
They owed it to themselves to make a new future.
They could live without fear if they learned to put hatred aside
and unite with a new strength of purpose.
Once they embraced peace, others would follow
and they would all gather strength like a ball in the snow.
His passion impressed the Oneida and his arguments won them over.
Finally, they agreed.
The first treaty of the Great Law of Peace had been formed.
Inspired by their success, Hiawatha wanted to return to the Onondaga
with this message and the news that two tribes had now embraced it.
Tadodaho enjoyed his power, but surely he couldn't stand against two tribes united in peace.
The Peacemaker was willing but Jigonsaseh had her doubts.
She had heard terrible stories about Tadodaho:
his cruelty in war
and his violence toward the women of his own house
"He has an evil heart," she said.
"Men like him could never be brought to peace."
The Peacemaker replied:
"It is exactly men like him that I must speak to."
So together, they journeyed back to the Onondaga
where Hiawatha called together a council.
Tadohado sat across from the Peacemaker
and did not listen.
Once again, he told them that he had no interest in peace
and he wouldn't tolerate any further negotiations.
If the Mohawk and the Oneida wanted to embrace this Great Law of Peace, fine for them.
That just meant they would leave him alone so he had fewer enemies to defeat
and he had every intention of continuing to make war on his enemies.
Hiawatha left this council in low spirits
but the Peacemaker's hopes remained bright.
He told Hiawatha to keep thinking about how to bring Tadodaho around to the idea of peace.
And in the meantime, the three of them would set out for the lands of the next tribe on their list: the Cayuga.
Just as the Oneida were the little brothers of the Mohawk,
the Cayuga were the little brothers of the Onondaga.
They had suffered greatly from Tadodaho who treated them poorly but demanded that they fight in his wars.
They could never refuse for fear that Tadodaho would turn his much larger force against them.
To them, an alliance with the Mohawk and the Oneida sounded like the perfect way forward.
The chiefs readily agreed
and joined the Great Law of Peace.
Now they had taken an ally from under Tadodaho's control.
They had diminished him.
Perhaps they could remove him from power entirely
but that wasn't what the Peacemaker wanted.
He needed the people to unite, to choose peace, and to come together like a family.
In a family, no one was beyond saving.
Luckily, Hiawatha now had a plan.
Join us next week as the Peacemaker and his speakers return to confront Tadodaho
and bring the last of the Five Nations together, under the Great Law of Peace.
[Outro music plays in the background]
Thank you again to DomiNations for sponsoring Extra History and making these episodes possible.
To play DomiNations, go to your Google Play or iOS app store, or click the link in the description.
It's free! Give it a look.
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