The Haudenosaunee Confederacy

The Haudenosaunee describe the Confederacy as founded by the Peacemaker, sent by the Creator to spread the good mind. Traveling from community to community with Aionwatha, he persuaded the chiefs of each nation to join the Great League of Peace. He asked the Clan Mothers to present their chiefs and placed deer antlers on their heads as symbols of authority. He planted a Tree of Peace — a white pine whose Great White Roots extend in the four directions to welcome any nation that accepts the Great Peace — and asked the people to bury their weapons beneath it. He bound one arrow from each nation together to show their united strength, and recorded each law of the Great Peace in strings of wampum.

The date of these events is unknown. Scholars have proposed dates ranging from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, drawing on archaeology, astronomy, and oral history; the Haudenosaunee themselves describe the Confederacy as existing since time immemorial.

Each nation keeps its own council and manages its internal affairs, while the Grand Council deals with matters affecting the Confederacy as a whole. Within the metaphorical longhouse, the Mohawk, Seneca, and Onondaga sit as Elder Brothers and the Cayuga and Oneida as Younger Brothers, with the Onondaga as Keepers of the Fire. Chiefs are selected by Clan Mothers, who also hold them to their moral obligations and can remove them — a formal political role for women that European observers found striking.

In the colonial era the Confederacy was a major power, controlling most of upstate New York and parts of northern Pennsylvania and balancing between the French and British empires; it allied with Britain in the French and Indian War. The American Revolution split it: the Oneida and many Tuscarora supported the Americans, while most of the other nations fought with Britain. After the war, much Haudenosaunee land was lost. The Confederacy has continued to govern and to assert its sovereignty into the present; it describes itself as still enjoying the support of the Six Nations as their representative government, even though an elective system was established in 1924.

Some writers have argued that the Great Law influenced the framers of the U.S. Constitution. Historians debate how direct any such influence was, and the claim should be treated as contested.