The history of the Haudenosaunee, or history of the Iroquois, goes back to the formation of the league around 1450. Since then the Haudenosaunee and their history have played an important role in the histories of the United States and Canada.
Historiography Knowledge of Haudenosaunee 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 of written sources over oral tradition as contributing to a racialized, prejudiced perspective about the Haudenosaunee through the 19th century. The historiography of the Haudenosaunee peoples is a topic of much debate, especially regarding the American colonial period. French Jesuit accounts of the Haudenosaunee portrayed them as savages lacking government, law, letters, and religion. But the Jesuits made considerable effort to study their languages and cultures, and some came to respect them. A source of confusion for European sources, coming from a patriarchal society, was the matrilineal kinship system of Haudenosaunee society and the related power of women. The Canadian historian D. Peter MacLeod wrote about the Canadian Haudenosaunee and the French in the time of the Seven Years' War:
Most critically, the importance of clan mothers, who possessed considerable economic and political power within Canadian Iroquois communities, was blithely overlooked by patriarchal European scribes. Those references that do exist, show clan mothers meeting in council with their male counterparts to take decisions regarding war and peace and joining in delegations to confront the Onontio [the Haudenosaunee term for the French governor-general] and the French leadership in Montreal, but only hint at the real influence wielded by these women. Jesuit missionaries wrote historical accounts of their experiences, even if they did not fully understand what they were seeing. One Jesuit account in 1641 reported on how a Neutral Nations war party of about 2,000 warriors attacked an enemy village (of Mascouten) in southern Michigan, taking 170 women and children captive. Historians interpret such attacks to have been part of a "Mourning War", a type of warfare among the Haudenosaunee and other nations where small raiding parties would attack enemy villages and bring back people they captured, in order to cope with a sudden grief or loss within their own group, which would lead to a ceremony to replace their lost loved ones, called the "requickening". Archaeological evidence suggests conflict between the Mascoutens and Neutrals existed for two centuries prior to the mid-1600s. Eighteenth-century English historiography focuses on the diplomatic relations with the Haudenosaunee, supplemented by such images as John Verelst's Four Mohawk Kings, and publications such as the Anglo-Iroquoian treaty proceedings printed by Benjamin Franklin. A persistent 19th and 20th century narrative casts the Haudenosaunee as "an expansive military and political power ... [who] subjugated their enemies by violent force and for almost two centuries acted as the fulcrum in the balance of power in colonial North America". Historian Scott Stevens noted that the Haudenosaunee themselves began to influence the writing of their history in the 19th century, including Joseph Brant (Mohawk), and David Cusick (Tuscarora, c.1780–1840). John Arthur Gibson (Seneca, 1850–1912) was an important figure of his generation in recounting versions of Haudenosaunee history in epics on the Peacemaker. Notable women historians among the Haudenosaunee emerged in the following decades, including Laura "Minnie" Kellogg (Oneida, 1880–1949) and Alice Lee Jemison (Seneca, 1901–1964).
Formation of the League
The Haudenosaunee League was established prior to European contact, with the banding together of five of the many Iroquoian peoples who had emerged south of the Great Lakes. Many archaeologists and anthropologists believe that the League was formed about 1450, though arguments have been made for an earlier date. One theory argues that the League formed shortly after a solar eclipse on August 31, 1142, an event thought to be expressed in oral tradition about the League's origins. Some sources link an early origin of the Haudenosaunee confederacy to the adoption of corn as a staple crop. Archaeologist Dean Snow argues that the archaeological evidence does not support a date earlier than 1450. He has said that recent claims for a much earlier date "may be for contemporary political purposes". Other scholars note that anthropological researchers consulted only male informants, thus losing the half of the historical story told in the distinct oral traditions of women. For this reason, origin tales tend to emphasize the two men Deganawidah and Hiawatha, while the woman Jigonsaseh, who plays a prominent role in the female tradition, remains largely unknown. The founders of League are traditionally held to be Dekanawida the Great Peacemaker, Hiawatha, and Jigonhsasee the Mother of Nations, whose home acted as a sort of United Nations. They brought the Peacemaker's Great Law of Peace to the squabbling Iroquoian nations who were fighting, raiding, and feuding with each other and with other tribes, both Algonkian and Iroquoian. Five nations originally joined in the League, giving rise to the many historic references to "Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee". With the addition of the southern Tuscarora in the 18th century, these original five tribes still compose the Haudenosaunee in the early 21st century: the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca. According to legend, an evil Onondaga chieftain named Tadodaho was the last converted to the ways of peace by The Great Peacemaker and Hiawatha. He was offered the position as the titular chair of the League's Council, representing the unity of all nations of the League. This is said to have occurred at Onondaga Lake near present-day Syracuse, New York. The title Tadodaho is still used for the League's chair, the fiftieth chief who sits with the Onondaga in council.
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