It was the Mohawks of the Iroquois Confederacy who adopted and raised David's and my sixth great-grandmother, Sarah Kast, when she was a small girl.
The Iroquois Confederacy was first composed of five native nations, and in the 1700's a sixth, the Tuskarora Nation joined them, and they became known as The Six Nations.
Back in the 1700's our sixth great grandmother's parents had a farm close to the Mohawk Indian Castle, and they came to know her, and to like her very much. Usually some white people sent their eldest sons to live with the native people to learn their language and ways, but in the case of Sarah Kast, the native people chose her. She lived with them for years and became one of their matriarchs. Matriarchs were wise and always consulted.
Finally she married an Irishman named Captain Timothy McGinnis of the Indian Department, and raised her own family. The Indian Department were the forces of physically strong and fit white men who knew native ways of living, language and fighting, and fought along with the native fighters who were on the British side during the American Revolutionary War. The white men in the Indian Department dressed like natives as such clothing was more fit for the forest and fighting than the red cloth clothing that the British army wore. They also didn't fight in the British formal way of moving forward in serried ranks. They fought more like guerrilla fighters.
When she was a grandmother, and as old as I am now, Sarah went back on foot, through the snow, in the dead of winter, with only her son George to accompany her, to her Mohawk nation. She went to try to save them from a terrible fate which met other natives who didn't have her advice and didn't leave. It was near the end of the American Revolutionary War. She and her family had already had to flee to Canada with only the clothes on their backs, from the American Revolutionaries, because they were supporters of the British government which was the lawful government at the time. Members of her family were killed by their rebel neighbours, all their property and their trading post was seized, and their house burned with one of Sarah's sons inside. A young granddaughter died in prison from the bad treatment, and a son-in-law escaping from rebel prison in Albany.
It was winter when Sarah and her son George left from the safety of Canada and arrived again in New York State area where the war was still going on.It was all virgin forest then, that they had to cross, from Canada to the Mohawk Castle. There were lakes and rivers and streams to be crossed. It was a long way. When they arrived, Sarah, a respected matriarch of the nation, was greeted with joy, and a great meeting was called to hear what she had to say and to decide what to do. Wampum belts had been received from an American rebel general which promised and threatened if the natives didn't join them and forsake the British. Sarah said they were evil things and buried the wampum. As a result of her visit the people came to Canada, where their ancestors still live, and where they were at least safe from the burning of their homes and the slaughter that happened to other native peoples who didn't leave.
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When Ben, the children and I lived in Ontario we used to know some of these people's descendants. Once we were invited to a great Corn Festival in a natural theatre with half log seats in half circles surrounding a natural stage in a forest. There we saw a sacred dramatic re-enactment of the arrival of their great Teacher Deganawidah, whom they say came across the great "Handsome Lake" now known as Lake Ontario, in a white stone canoe, to teach them about how to attain Peace. At the time he came they were suffering from constant war amongthe nations.
It was from the Iroquois Confederacy that the founders of the United States borrowed, to establish some of their Constitution. Facearmy asked about this and about the great Tree. I would like to share with all of you how in the famous Iroquois Confederacy we find the perfection of the principle of Peace and also a prophecy of the Great Peace that will come in our own future.
The vast portion of the continent under Iroquois Confederacy power, was a thousand miles in length, and was surely not held by force alone, for never were there more than 15,000 members, counting men, women and children among the Six Nations.
This is taken from a book called "White Roots of Peace":
"It was held by statesmanship, by a profound understanding of the principles of peace itself. They knew that any real peace must be based on justice and a healthy reasonableness. They knew also that peace will endure only if men recognize the sovereignty of a common law and are prepared to back that law with force -- not chiefly for the purpose of punishing those who have disturbed the peace, but rather for the purpose of preventing such disturbance by letting all men know, in *advance* of any contingency, that the law will certainly prevail.
"Behind their statesmanship lay a will to peace among the people, without which all the wisdom of their chiefs gathered in the Great Council at Onondaga would have been futile. It was in the handling of this problem, how to maintain a popular will to peace, that the Iroquois made their greatest contribution to government -- a contribution that it may be profitable for us to examine today, since now there is no greater problem confronting global statesmanship than that of maintaining this popular will to peace despite increasing tensions in an ever-more-narrowly-jostling world society. . . . [note the book I am quoting said this in the 1950-60's.]
"They were better in practice than in theory. Their religion was sounder than their theology, their political institutions maturer than their political science. The only science in which they excelled was that of human relationships.
"Peace was not, as they conceived it, a negative thing, the mere absence of war or an interval between wars, to be recognized only as the stepchild of the law --as unfortunately has been the case with most Western peoples, among whom the laws of peace, in the internationsl field, have been recognized by jurists as an afterthought to the laws of war.
"To the Iroquois, peace *was* the law. They used the same word for both. Peace(the Law) was righteousness in action, the practice of justice between individuals and nations. If they ever recognized it as a mystic presence.... they found it not in some imagined retreat from the world, but in human institutions, especially in a good government. Their own Confederacy, which they named the Great Peace, was sacred. The chiefs who administered the League were their priests.
"In their thoughts, peace was so inseparable from the life of man that they had no separate term by which to denominate it. It was thought of and spoken of in terms of its component elements: as Health (soundness of body and sanity of mind), Law (justice codified to meet particular cases), and Authority (which gives confidence that justice will prevail).
"Peace was a way of life, characterized by wisdom and graciousness.
"Their symbol for this Peace was a Tree, and the Tree had roots in the earth.... "The Great White Pine which 'pierces the sky' and 'reaches the sun,' lifted the thoughts of the Iroquois to the meanings of peace -- the Good News which they believed the Great Spirit....had sent Deganawidah (the promulgator of the League) to impart to them"
"In general, the Tree, signified the Law, that is, the constitution, which expressed the terms of their union. But there were other important elements in the symbol.
"The Branches signified shelter, the protection and security that people found in union under the shadow of the Law.
"The Roots, which stretched to the four quarters of the earth, signified the extensions of the Law, the Peace, to embrace all mankind. Other nations, not yet members of the League, would see these roots as they grew outward, and if they were people of goodwill would desire to follow them to their source and take shelter with others under the Tree.
"The Eagle That Sees Afar, which Deganawidah placed on the very summit of the Tree, signified watchfulness. 'And the meaning of placing the Eagle on the top of the Tree,' said Deganawidah,' is to watch the Roots which extend to the North and to the South and to the East and to the West, and the Eagle will discover ifany evil is approaching your confederacy, and will scream and give the alarm andcome to the front.'
"'The Eagle,' said Deganawidah, 'shall have your power.' It was a reminder to his people that the best political contrivance that the wit of man can devise isimpotent to keep the peace unless a watchful people stands always on guard to defend it.
"Then Deganawidah uprooted the Tree, and under it disclosed a Cavern through which ran a stream of water, passing out of sight into unknown regions under the earth. Into this current he cast the weapons of war, the hatchets and war-clubs, saying, 'We here rid the earth of these things of an Evil Mind.'
"Then, replacing the tree, 'Thus,' he said, 'shall the Great Peace be established and hostilities shall no longer be known between the Five Nations, but peace to the United People.'"
Part 2 will follow.
