Continued from last week

Maintenance

In 1870, the Parliament of Canada had passed its first major Indian legislation, and the chiefs of the Ojibway and Haudenosaunee communities of southern Ontario and Quebec met at the Grand River Territory to consider the provisions of the law. The Six Nations opened the meeting with a short condolence, and proceeded to a reading of the Wampum Belts of the Confederacy. The Covenant Chain and the Two Row Wampum are recorded as entwined:

The wampum having two men standing one at each end represents the first meeting or treaty with the British Government. They stand on their own rules, which they laid down; the British Government gave a check wampum to confirm what the Six Nations had done in their rules and declarations. The marks worked on the wampum shows the British and Six Nations had united by Treaty. They were each to have their own way; not hurting their customs or rules or regulations. If the Indian had his bark canoe, let him have it, let the British have his large vessels. The British gives the wampum to confirm the rules and regulation of the Confederacy.

(Minutes, Council, Willow Grove, 1870)

In the 1880’s and 1890’s, when the government of Canada was moving more openly to impose the elected system of government through the “Indian Advancement Act”, the petitions from Haudenosaunee communities made both direct and indirect references to the separation of government and laws symbolized by the Two Row Wampum.

In 1890, the Chiefs of the Six Nations at the Grand River Territory wrote to the Governor General “according to our ancient Treaties as Brothers”:

…we tell you that we are disappointed because there never was yet any Treaty made between you and us, the Five Nations Indians, that you would force any kind of your laws that we did not like. And now in some cases we see you are doing so.

We have kept patience for a long time, knowing the Treaty of which our forefathers and you forefathers made in the year 1758 being durable to us. But in the way you have treated us thinking for us to ask you if the sun and moon has gone out of your sight. But we see the sun and moon as when our forefathers and your forefathers made the agreement. The treaty whenever you or us the Indian see anything wrong or dissatisfaction, we are to renew brighten and strengthen the ancient Covenant.

The Kaswentha, The Two-Row Wampum

And we want to be always free and satisfied to be governed by our own laws and customs, for we have laws of our own. And those that are in favor of your laws and customs we have nothing to do with suppose they are to be governed by it…

Wampum belt treaty having two rows parallel and represents the two Governments, namely the Five Nations and the British Government will exist and shall not interfere with each other. Of which the British made an illustration that the British will abide in their vessel, that is their government. While the Five Nations will also abide in their birch bark canoe, meaning their government.

In 1960, a delegation from the Grand River Territory attempted to explain the Two Row Wampum to the Parliamentary Committee on Indian Affairs:

Mr. Small: under what treaty do you deal with the United States as a sovereign body?

Mr. Erwin Logan: It is the Two Row Wampum Belt.

Mr. Small: They do not recognize you as a sovereign body, do they?

Mr. Erwin Logan: Yes, they do. I refer to the first treaty that was made with our forefathers. Have you ever seen the Two Row Wampum Belt?

Mr. Small: No

Mr. Erwin Logan: On that belt there are two rows of oars, and they run parallel; they never cross. That means that you are to stay in your boat—and that I shall stay in mine. That was the first treaty your government ever made with us.

Senator Honer: What was the date?

Mr. Erwin Logan: The date was 1664. Are you ashamed of your forefathers that you will not recognize their treaty?

Senator Honer: That was handled with the United States of America…

(Joint House Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, June 22, 1960, p. 1184)

Senator Homer’s remarks displayed his ignorance—after all, the United States of America did not come into existence until more than a century after 1664—but they are consistent with later policy of the Government of Canada, which claimed in the 1970’s that it had no responsibility for treaties signed in locations outside Canada’s present borders. That this would make almost any international treaty impossible seems to have been overlooked by the people who came up with this rationalization.

In the early 1600’s, up the rivers of trade, now called the Hudson River and the Mohawk River, came the Dutch from New Amsterdam. The Dutch created trade and political relationships with the peoples of those rivers and the eastern seacoast, and later extended relations to the Mohawks. The Dutch picked their way through unknown politics on their way upstream, but the commercial relations placed important tools in Mohawk hands, and these tools soon spread to the rest of the Confederacy.

At the same time, French outposts were being established on the St. Lawrence River, the northern extremity of the Confederacy’s territory. At Quebec and Tadoussac, the French were creating alliances with the Montagnais, Abenaki and Algonquin nations, and through them with the Wyandots or Hurons. By 1609, Champlain had made a fateful choice by joining an expedition against the Mohawks and using his harquebus to kill (according to his report) three chiefs. Some writers suggest that this war party was the factor that set off a century and a half of war between the Haudenosaunee and the French.

It was not so much the firearms that transformed Haudenosaunee society. Other technology had a far more important impact. The steel axe and hatchet meant that clearing forest was no longer done by girdling trees. Metal hoes and plows transformed gardening. By the latter half of the seventeenth century, the coming of the draft farm animals and the plow meant that the men would take over parts of the women’s role in the fields, and also that single-family farms would become viable. The social and economics changed brought about by European technology were among the issues addressed by Skaniadariio, or Handsome Lake, in the Kaiwiio, at the end of the eighteenth century. The changes were often, swift, frequently divisive.

The treaty made at Fort Albany, now Albany, New York on September 24, 1664, is the earliest on record between the Haudenosaunee and the British. The Dutch had given up their claims to New Netherlands, which the King of Great Britain placed under his brother the Duke of York. The Duke named the colony “New York”, and the Treaty intended to replace the Dutch relationship with the Haudenosaunee (which had existed for at least a generation and possibly as far back as 1613) with a British relationship. The location of the treaty was important: Albany lay at the boundary between Mohawk territory and the lands claimed by the colony. It was the logical “fire place” for that council and future councils -- more than a century of them.

The treaty provided that the English “for the future” would provide “the Indian Princes above named and their subjects” with the same wares and commodities as they had had from the Dutch. The free trade provided for in this agreement is a precursor of the trade provisions impacts like the 1794 Jay Treaty.