The Onondaga Valley is where the Confederacy was formed in ancient times. It is near the city of Syracuse in the U.S.A. On the crest, just south of the modern city, lie the foundations of a building 334 feet long, dated by radiocarbon to at least 1390 A.D. There is a 7,000 acre Indian reservation now below it, which is all that remains of the Onondagas' national territory.
The Onondaga were the central nation of the Iroquois League, they have always been its Firekeepers, the hosts of its Assembly. In the middle of their reservation stands a new hall, about one third the length of the ancient one on the hill, but still a large building made of logs. Here sits the oldest living parliament in the Americas, and one of the oldest in the world.
A Confederacy Ssachem named Dehatkadons, a successor of Canasatego, whose has the same build, agility and wit said when Marx and Franklin were mentioined. "Both superpowers took our ideas, but neither got them right."
The longhouse -- whether a modern one of timber, or an ancient one built of arched poles and neatly stitched bark has always been the symbol of Iroquois identity. Each of the Six Nations has its own language, its own name, and its own history, but collectively they call themselves Haudenosaunee, People of the Longhouse.
Today such buildings are purely ceremonial, but in ancient times they were the home of a senior woman - a "clan mother" - with her female kin and their husbands and children: Perhaps forty to a hundred people all told. The totemic animal of each clan was carved above the door. Inside were partitions and sleeping platforms, hearths, and storage areas for personal belongings and dried foods. Early whites saw longhouses "fifty or sixty yards long by twelve broad down the middle. A typical town might have fifty such buildings. The towns were surrounded by a ditch, rampart, and stockade so strong that the invading English called them castles.
The Iroquois conceived of their union as a great Longhouse with five, and later six, partitions. The Onondagas tended the central fire, symbol of government. The Senecas in the west and the Mohawks in the east kept the doors, which meant they bore the main responsibility for defense. The smaller Oneida snd Cayuga nations were the "younger brothers." One roof covered all.
The Iroquois pictured a Tree of Peace rising heavenward from the Longhouse, its four great white roots reaching to the corners of the earth. The League was not imposed and run by a dominant nation. Its members came together for mutual benefit and to settle ancient feuds.
Somewhere beneath the concrete and asphalt of the city of Syracuse lies the spot where the Peacemaker, a divine hero, alighted from a white stone canoe and expounded his Great Law to the warring Iroquois.
Eventually he persuaded a snake-haired Onondaga sorcerer, Tadodaho, to let go his evil ways and become the first Speaker, or presiding sachem. In that way a negative force in the world was turned to good, and all Speakers from that day to this have carried the name Tadodaho.
The Peacemaker's Great Law was an inspired blend of elective and hereditary rights, of checks and balances. He established a Confederacy Council of fifty Royaneh (sachems, or lords,) chosen by clan mothers -- the Iroquois were matrilineal and partly matriarchal. All succeeding royaneh have assumed the names of these ancient founders. When one of their number dies, the elaborate condolence rites serve to install his successor. For this reason they are also known as "condoled chiefs." The royaneh reach their decisions through a series of small caucuses ("caucuses" is an Amerindian word, by the way), until all are of one mind. Although sachems are male and elected for life, women have the right to depose them. In addition, anyone of outstanding merit may be elevated to the council as a Pine Tree Chief.
The stories of the League's beginning were passed on orally, through words, for centuries, with the guidance of wampum belts. They were finally written down only about a century ago by the Iroquois themselves. They are lengthy documents, part constitution, part mythology, in which governance is sanctioned by holy revelation.
Early in the 1900's a great grand nephew of Lewis Henry Morgan's colleague Hasanoanda, gathered and published several of these texts. "here, then," he wrote in his introduction, "we find the right of popular nomination, the right of recall and of woman suffrage, all flourishing in the old America ... centuries before it became the clamor of the new America of the white invader. Who now shall call Indians and Iroquois savages."
Part 3, the Peacemaker founding the League, The Iroquois Constitution, or Great Law will follow in the next section.
