Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

Continued from last week.

Some very early documents indicate that the visitors would come along the path, singing their songs of peace, and carrying their pipe with them. Later councils, too, could begin with the arrival of the guests, singing songs of peace and condolence.

This makes sense. You would want to warn people that you were coming, and a song is a powerful way to do so. It broadcasts your peaceful intentions (because stealing silently up to the village could easily be misinterpreted). Where the messengers are single runners, they would approach the village with specific cries: a runner with news of death would come crying, “Kwe! Kwe! Kwe!” to warn the people of his arrival.

Coming with a song is also sacred: just as the Peacemaker taught Hayowentha and the other people the Song of Peace as they walked to Onondaga to meet Thadadahoh, so, too, nations could repeat that power and prudence in their later councils.

The Council of September 15, 1685 provides an example of how song was mixed with speech to assist in putting the ideas across. Since one of the concerns of the Council was always to open the senses, to make the channels of communication as effective as possible, the use of a song “to drive it into you” was one way to do so. The British record is not detailed, but it reports that the Mohawk speaker, Canondondawe, stated:

Oh brethren, Corlaer and Governor of the Virginia, where will I look for the peace covenant, where else will I find it but on our path, and but there will this path lead but to this house which is a house of peace and welfare and started a song and sang completely the covenant song… Let us observe and keep to what has been commanded so sharply to us. Let me drive it into you with a song. Open now your ears, and he sang a song of admonishment, and one belt of wampum to the Governor and one belt to the Governor of Virginia, concluding all the proposals with a song and said that they were done for this time. (Livingston Indian Records, 1666-1723, p. 89)

Coming with a song was part of the diplomacy of Northeastern North America: on May 10, 1765, when the British met with the Shawnees and Delaware, the record shows that:

The Shawanese came over the River with the English Prisoners, beating a Drum & Singing their Peace Song, agreeable to the Ancient Customs of their Nation, which they continued ‘till they entered the Council Room.

(Sir William Johnson Papers, XL727)

In actual practice, the visitors would stop and wait at a place some distance from the real edge of the woods, often several kilometers away. The Three Bare Words of greeting would take place there, a condolence without wampum as a preliminary welcome. The people of the village take the visitors gently by the hand, removing any grief or bad thoughts from their minds, comforting them, removing the thorns of the road from their feet and the dust and fatigue of the trail from their bodies. One purpose of the meeting at the woods edge is a welcome. Another equally valid purpose is to ensure that bad, confused or grieving thoughts are not taken into the community in a way that will disturb the people and their peace of mind.

The earliest written record of Europeans being received in this way is Jacques Cartier’s visit to Hochelaga in October 1535:

The City of Hochelaga is six miles from the riverside, and the road thither is as well-beaten and frequented as can be, leading through as fine a country as can be seen, full of fine Oaks as any in France, the whole ground being strewn over with fine acorns.

When we had gone four of five miles we were met by one of the great lords of the city, accomplished by a great many natives, who made us understand by signs that we must stop at a place where they had made a large fire, which we did accordingly. When we had rested there some time, the chief made a long discourse in token of welcome a friendship showing a joyful countenance and every mark of goodwill.

(The Iroquois Book of Rites, Horatio Hale, 1883, Iroquois Publications, Ohsweken, 1989, p. 346)

The visitors are given food and a place to rest for the night. And that is the end of the first day of the meeting.

At least, that is the end of the formal part of the first day. In reality, it is likely that the visitors and their hosts would have informal meetings and discussions – “behind the bushes” – to understand the issues, ascertain the facts, and prepare for the next day.

The first principle governing the Council is that people’s minds must be clear and good. To ensure this, one would not rush tired people into council. Since there was always time in this world (in those days, at least) to do things right, the visitors would be required to have a good nights sleep. The other necessity and tradition is that visitors must be fed.

Many hundreds of years ago, an old man, a stranger wearing worn and torn and dirty clothes, came to a Mohawk village. He went to the door of the Turtle Clan longhouse and asked for shelter and help. He was sick and hungry. The matron of the longhouse seeing he was so dirty and ill sent him away. The same happened at the longhouse of the Wolf Clan.

The Matron of the Bear Clan invited the old man into the longhouse, and the people fed him, and gave him a place to sleep. When he awoke, he told the young woman about certain plants in the woods that would cure his sickness, and he told them how to harvest the plants and prepare the medicine. They found the plants and did as he had asked, and the old man recovered. Shortly afterward, he became ill again, with a different sickness. Again he told the people how to prepare a remedy with plants, and again he was cured. He became ill several times after that, and each time he recovered after the people gave him the medicine he described.

One day, when the Bear Clan people came to the place where the old man slept, they found instead of a ragged and worn elder a young and beautiful man. He said, “I am a messenger from the Creator. My work had been to teach you medicines that will preserve you from disease. Since your Bear Clan people were the only ones who would care for me, only you have learned what I have brought.”

Ever since that time, it has been the people of the Bear Clan who have been the custodians of medicine knowledge.

Ever since that time, it had been the way of all Haudenosaunee never to turn away a stranger from the door, for one never knows who that stranger may be.

The earliest well-documented treaty council between the Haudenosaunee and a European nation was the council with the French at Three Rivers in 1645. The Jesuit Relations provide a relatively detailed record, one, which shows both that the French did not yet fully understand or accept the process and that the Haudenosaunee were clear and confident in a well-established practice. The French description includes elements, which we can recognize today as the thanksgiving, the condolence, the parts of the council that lead to decisions. To the French at the time, it was new, strange and picturesque. But within twenty years, the French were conducting council according to those rules.