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| Iroquois Great Law of Peace | |
|---|---|
| Name | Great Law of Peace |
| Caption | Hiawatha and the Peacemaker with wampum belt (traditional depiction) |
| Written | oral tradition; later wampum belts and 17th–18th century records |
| Origin | Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, later Tuscarora) |
| Language | Seneca, Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, Tuscarora |
Iroquois Great Law of Peace The Great Law of Peace is the foundational constitution of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, forming a complex oral, ceremonial, and political system that united the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and later Tuscarora nations. It is embedded in traditions involving figures such as the Peacemaker and Hiawatha and has been recorded in wampum belts, missionary accounts, and colonial treaties. Scholars and Indigenous leaders debate its origins, transmission, and influence on colonial actors including delegates to the Constitutional Convention and figures involved in colonial diplomacy.
Oral histories credit the Peacemaker and Hiawatha as central founders, linking the Law to specific locales like Ganondagan, Onondaga Lake, and Cayuga sites, and to clans such as the Wolf, Turtle, and Bear; these traditions appear alongside accounts from Jesuit missionaries, Samuel de Champlain, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Roger Sherman in colonial records. Archaeologists and ethnohistorians compare these narratives with archaeological sites like Kirkland Lake, Fort Hunter, Cahokia, Poverty Point, and the Iroquoian village at Chenango and with diplomatic incidents including the Two Row Wampum and the Great Treaty of 1701 (Great Peace of Montreal). Anthropologists such as Lewis Henry Morgan, Frances Densmore, Calvin Martin, William N. Fenton, Barbara Mann, and Elizabeth Tooker have debated chronologies using sources including the Jesuit Relations, John Norton (Teyoninhokarawen), Governor Edmund Andros, Sir William Johnson, and colonial correspondence involving Lord Amherst and General John Sullivan.
The Law articulates principles embodied by clan mothers, sachems, condolence ceremonies, and wampum belts like the Hiawatha Belt, emphasizing peace, equity, clan lineage, and duties of leaders; commentators link these elements to legal philosophies evident in writings by Montesquieu, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and debates in the Federal Convention. Its articles address succession, checks on power, female authority, collective decision-making, the role of oratory, and restorative practices, themes explored in comparative studies by Elazar, Jack Weatherford, Nancy Shoemaker, Peter Silver, and Gordon M. Day. The Law’s metaphors—trees, roots, and the longhouse—parallel imagery in texts by Chief Red Jacket, Skenandoa, Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), Ely S. Parker, and Molly Brant, and are discussed in legal analyses by Philip J. Deloria, J. R. Miller, Donald L. Fixico, and Kerry A. Trask.
Governance under the Law establishes a federation of nations with roles for clan mothers who nominate sachems, a council of representatives meeting at Onondaga, and protocols for war and peace; these structures were observed during interactions with New France, William Johnson (military leader), Sir William Johnson, Sir Guy Carleton, John Bradstreet, Braddock Expedition, Fort Duquesne, Fort Frontenac, and during campaigns such as the Sullivan Expedition. European observers including Benjamin Franklin, John Marshall, and Joseph C. Lincoln recorded elements of the Great Law as analogous to confederated councils in Iroquois League diplomacy studied in works by Bruce E. Johansen, Barbara Alice Mann, G. Peter Jemison, and M. E. Brant. The polity’s decision-making procedures influenced colonial treaties like the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768), Treaty of Canandaigua (1794), Treaty of Paris (1763), and interactions with institutions such as the Continental Congress and later the United States Senate.
Ritual enactments and wampum belts encode the Law’s clauses: belts such as the Hiawatha Belt, Two Row Wampum, and condolence belt function as mnemonic devices in ceremonies involving the Haudenosaunee Longhouse, thanksgiving addresses, and condolence rituals; ethnographers like Frances Densmore, William N. Fenton, and J. N. B. Hewitt documented these practices alongside missionary reports by Pierre-Joseph-Marie Chaumonot and Simon Le Moyne. Wampum played roles in diplomatic exchanges with figures including King George III, Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, General James Wolfe, Sir Guy Carleton, Chief Joseph Brant, and Tekarihoga and appears in museum collections cataloged by institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution, Royal Ontario Museum, American Philosophical Society, New-York Historical Society, and Canadian Museum of History.
Transmission relied on oral recitation by chiefs, clan mothers, and wampum keepers across generations, later supplemented by written transcriptions by Indigenous leaders like John Norton (Teyoninhokarawen) and European recorders such as Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, Cadwallader Colden, Henry Schoolcraft, E. F. Johnson, and Horatio Hale. Debates over codification reference texts and collections by Lewis Henry Morgan, J. N. B. Hewitt, William Fenton, Dean Snow, Herbert C. Kraft, and legal historians including Kurt Jordan and Philip J. Deloria. Colonial documentation during eras defined by actors such as Benjamin Franklin, Sir William Johnson, Lord Dunmore, General John Burgoyne, and James Fenimore Cooper provides fragmented written attestations that scholars compare to oral versions preserved by Haudenosaunee communities.
Colonial and early American leaders encountered the Confederacy’s institutions during diplomacy with emissaries like William Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, Sir William Johnson, and Guy Johnson; debates persist about the extent to which the Law informed elements of the United States Constitution and the Articles of Confederation, with proponents citing exchanges involving Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Rutledge, Roger Sherman, Gouverneur Morris, and John Adams. Historians and legal scholars such as Mỹ-Linh Trần, Donald Grinde Jr., Bruce E. Johansen, Jack N. Rakove, Gordon S. Wood, Bernard Bailyn, and Thomas Fleming have alternately emphasized direct inspiration, analogy, or coincidental parallelism, often referencing diplomatic practices like the Two Row Wampum and ceremonies recorded in the journals of Cadwallader Colden and William Penn.
Contemporary Haudenosaunee leaders, scholars, and activists including Oren Lyons, Ron Maracle, John Mohawk, Sachem Ongwehonwe (title), Kahn-Tineta Horn, Megan Bang, Taiaiake Alfred, and organizations like the Haudenosaunee Nationals, Six Nations of the Grand River, Onondaga Nation and Seneca Nation of Indians promote cultural revitalization, language programs in collaboration with institutions such as Cornell University, Syracuse University, University of Toronto, McMaster University, and policy initiatives engaging the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the Assembly of First Nations. Revival includes wampum re-education, clan mother councils, legal assertions in cases involving the Indian Claims Commission, land claims like those contested in Caledonia, Ontario, and participation in international law forums such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and litigation involving the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.