History of the Haudenosaunee

Economics and the Haudenosaunee

The Hau de no sau nee, People of the Longhouse, who are known to many Europeans as the Six nations Iroquois, have inhabited their territories since time immemorial. During the time prior to the coming of the Europeans, it is said that ours were a happy and prosperous people. Our lands provided abundantly for our needs. Our people lived long, healthy, and productive lives. Before the Europeans came, we were an affluent people, rich in the gifts of our country. We were a strong people in both our minds and bodies.

Throughout most of that time, we lived in peace.

Prior to the arrival of the colonists, we were a people who lived by hunting and gathering, and practiced a form of agriculture which was not labor intensive. The economy of the people was an extremely healthful Way of Life, and our peoples were very healthy -- among the finest athletes in the world. There were some, in those times, who lived to be 120 years and more, and our runners were unexcelled for speed and endurance.

Among our people we refer to our culture as "OngweHonwekah." This refers to a Way of Life that is peculiar to the Hau de no sau nee. It is virtually impossible for us to recount, specifically, the history of "Hau de no sau nee economics." As will become evident, our economy, that way in which our people manage their resources, and the relationship of that management to the total organization of our society, are processes completely bound together. The distribution of goods, in our traditional society, was accomplished through institutions which are not readily identified as economic institutions by other societies. The Hau de no sau nee do not have specific economic institutions. Rather, what European people identify as institutions of one classification or another serve many different purposes among the Hau de no sau nee.

We were a people of a great forest. That forest was a source of great wealth. It was a place in which was to be found huge hardwoods and an almost unimaginable abundance and variety of nuts, berries, roots, and herbs. In addition to these, the rivers teemed with fish and the forest and its meadows abounded with game. It was, in fact, a kind of Utopia, a place where no one went hungry, a place where the people were happy and healthy.

Our traditions were such that we were careful not to allow our populations to rise in numbers that would overtax the other forms of life. We practiced strict forms of conservation. Our culture is based on a principle that directs us to constantly think about the welfare of seven generations into the future. Our belief in this principle acts as a restraint to the development of practices which would cause suffering in the future. To this end, our people took only as many animals as were needed to meet our needs. Not until the arrival of the colonists did the wholesale slaughter of animals occur.

We feel that many people will be confused when we say that ours is a Way of Life, that our economy cannot be separated from the many aspects of our culture. Our economy is unlike that of Western peoples. We believe that all things in the world were created by what the English language forces us to call "Spiritual Beings," including one that we call the Great Creator. All things in this world belong to the Creator and the spirits of the world. We also believe that we are required to honor these beings, in respect of the gift of Life.

In accordance with our ways, we are required to hold many kinds of feasts and ceremonies which can best be described as "give-aways." It is said that among our people, our leaders, those whom the Anglo people insist on calling "chiefs," are the poorest of us. By the laws of our culture, our leaders are both political and spiritual leaders. They are leaders of many ceremonies which require the distribution of great wealth. As spiritual/political leaders, they provide a kind of economic conduit. To become a political leader, a person is required to be a spiritual leader, and to become a spiritual leader a person must be extraordinarily generous in terms of material goods.

Our leaders, in fact, are leaders of categories of large extended families. Those large extended families function as economic units in a Way of Life which has as its base the Domestic Mode of Production. Before the colonists came, we had our own means of production and distribution adequate to meet all the peoples' needs. We would have been unable to exist as nations were it not so.

Our basic economic unit is the family. The means of distribution, aside from simple trade, consists of a kind of spiritual tradition manifested in the functions of the religious/civic leaders in a highly complex religious, governmental, and social structure.

The Hau de no sau nee have no concept of private property. This concept would be a contradiction to a people who believe that the Earth belongs to the Creator. Property is an idea by which people can be excluded from having access to lands, or other means of producing a livelihood. That idea would destroy our culture, which requires that every individual live in service to the Spiritual Ways and the People. That idea (property) would produce slavery. The acceptance of the idea of property would produce leaders whose functions would favor excluding people from access to property, and they would cease to perform their functions as leaders of our societies and distributors of goods.

Before the colonists came, we had no consciousness about a concept of commodities. Everything, even the things we make, belong to the Creators of Life and are to be returned ceremonially, and in reality, to the owners. Our people live a simple life, one unencumbered by the need of endless material commodities. The fact that their needs are few means that all the peoples' needs are easily met. It is also true that our means of distribution is an eminently fair process, one in which all of the people share in all the material wealth all of the time.

Our Domestic Mode of Production has a number of definitions which are culturally specific. Our peoples' economy requires a community of people and is not intended to define an economy based on the self-sufficient nuclear family. Some modern economists estimate that in most parts of the world, the isolated nuclear family cannot produce enough to survive in a Domestic Mode of Production. In any case, that particular mode of subsistence, by our cultural definition, is not an economy at all.

Ours was a wealthy society. No one suffered from want. All had the right to food, clothing, and shelter. All shared in the bounty of the spiritual ceremonies and the Natural World. No one stood in any material relationship of power over anyone else. No one could deny anyone access to the things they needed. All in all, before the colonists came, ours was a beautiful and rewarding Way of Life.

The colonists arrived with many institutions and strategies designed to destroy the Way of Life of the People of the Longhouse. In 1609, Samuel deChamplain led a French military expedition that attacked a party of Mohawk people on the lake now named "Lake Champlain." Champlain arrived in search of wealth and was specifically interested in generating some kind of trade in beaver pelts with the Algonquin people of the area. He demonstrated his firearms to them, letting them see, for the first time, the power of guns.

Champlain, accompanied by his newly-found business partners, marched into the center of Mohawk territory. This war party encountered a party of about 200 Mohawks. The first volley of gunfire killed three men, and the second created such confusion that the Mohawks retreated, leaving twelve men who were taken captive.

The period of warfare which followed this incident has come to be known as the "Beaver Wars." The introduction of trade in beaver pelts inevitably triggered a long series of colonial wars. It represented the escalation of disputes among neighbors into a full-scale struggle for survival in the forests of the Native people of North America.

The European penetration affected every facet of the Native Way of Life from the very moment of contact. The natural economies, cultures, politics, and military affairs became totally altered. Nations learned that to be without firearms meant physical annihilation. To be without access to beaver pelts mean no means to buy firearms.

The trade in beaver pelts, and the now necessary weaponry, introduced factors never before encountered by the Native people. Trade meant that long routes over which goods were to be transported had to be secured. The only way that was possible was for the entire area to be in friendly hands. Any potential disruptor of the trade routes must either be pacified or eliminated.

With the introduction of firearms, war became a deadly business. It was made more deadly because the European strategy of economic penetration was to stimulate warfare among the Native nations over which would have the goods for trade. Out of necessity, to protect themselves from annihilation, the People of the Longhouse entered the beaver trade. The pelts were used to buy more firearms and goods that made it possible for more men to trap more beaver more efficiently. The marketplaces of France, Holland, and England were eager for the "New World" merchandise.

Shortly after the encounter on Lake Champlain, the Hau de no sau nee began trading with Holland, which had established posts along the Hudson River. A large part of the trade involved firearms. French historians recount that the People of the Longhouse were very skillful at the strategies of battle, and within a short time, the Algonquin people were defeated. Their defeat was aided by the fact that the French had not taken seriously their pledges of aid to the Algonquin.

So intense became the need for European goods, especially firearms, that by 1640 the beaver were becoming scarce in the Hau de no sau nee territories. Pressure from the newly created European frontiers was steadily increasing. Warfare was also common between the various colonizers. The Hau de no sau nee were well aware of what was occurring to the East. The Dutch, shortly after their arrival, began a series of genocidal wars that ended in the utter annihilation of the Native peoples of the Lower Hudson River Valley. In New England, the Pequot nation was nearly obliterated by the Puritan and English colonists there.

Knowledge of these massacres greatly influenced Hau de no sau nee defense policy. To the East were the Dutch and English, whose presence was necessary as a source of firearms. Yet, they represented a constant potential of movement of their frontiers westward into the Longhouse. To the North was the colony of France, which was supplying arms to the Western Native nations. France also threatened to gain a monopoly over the beaver trade which was increasingly centered to the north and west of Lakes Erie and Ontario.

France made repeated attempts to send missionaries, especially Jesuits, among the nations of the Hau de no sau nee. These missions were the major tool of propaganda for the European nations. Missionaries then, as today, are expected to carry more than the message of Christianity. They serve as lay ambassadors of their culture, splitting off individuals from families, families from villages, villages from nations, one by one. Some priests even served as the leaders of troops going into battle.

The missionaries made persistent attacks on the economic structures of the People of the Longhouse. They specifically attacked the spiritual ceremonies as "pagan," and thereby sought to end the practice of give-aways and public feasts. In addition, they sought to break the power of the clans by causing division which would split the people into nuclear households.

European churches, especially in colonial practice, take on their feudal roles as economic institutions. Among natural world people, they are the most dangerous agents of destruction. They invariably seek to destroy the spiritual/economic bonds of the people to the forests, land and animals. They spread both ideologies and technologies which make people slaves to the extractive system which defines colonialism.

In 1704, the first Anglican missionaries were sent, by England, to the Mohawks living along the Mohawk River. In 1710, a delegation of Mohawk chiefs received an invitation to visit England. They returned bearing four bibles, a prayer book and a communion plate for the Anglican chapel, gifts from Queen Anne. But the missionaries also brought behind them a long, long tail. To house themselves they needed a mission, to protect the mission they needed a fort, and to propagate the faith, they needed a school. Missionaries spread more than the word of God. The British Empire was fast entering the Hau de no sau nee territories, and there was more to come.

The warlike European kingdoms were constantly fighting among themselves. There were three wars during the 18th Century just between France and England: Queen Anne's War (1701 to 1713,) King George's War (1744 to 1748), and the "French and Indian War," known to the European world as the "War of the Spanish Succession," (1754 to 1763). It is clear from the records of the time that the People of the Longhouse remained neutral throughout these conflicts. Although individuals on the road to assimilation, such as the Anglicized Mohawks, who had been coerced into roles as British peasants, could be counted on to aid the colonizers.

If France was unsuccessful in her attempts at military penetration of the territory of the Longhouse, England was far more successful in her social and religious colonization of the Eastern part of our territories. William Johnson was an Irish immigrant who became famous for his influence over certain Mohawks. As an agent of the British Crown, he maintained an embassy as an operational base close to the Mohawk country. He took several Native women as concubines and had several children by them, none of which he ever recognized as heirs. His position was known as "British Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Department." He is widely credited, by European historians, as a successful manipulator of events and developments on the frontier during his tenure. In today's context, Johnson would be working as an ambassador to a Third World country, executing simultaneously diplomatic, military, intelligence, and foreign aid operations.

During his tenure he engineered the establishment of a beachhead from which immigrants could move Westward to broaden the colony. Mohawk lands along the Susquehanna and Mohawk Rivers were increasingly encroached upon by British settlers, including Johnson himself. By the Spring of 1765, the carefully managed Longhouse environment was in trouble as ignorant and destructive peasant settlers almost eradicated the deer herds.

There was so much trouble with the peasant settlers that the Mohawks, who had so generously allowed them to share their lands, were actually considering moving Westward into Oneida territories to gain some more peace. By the Spring of 1765, many Mohawks had already been displaced and were living as refugees among the other nations.

William Johnson was a master public relations man for the King. He would, on the one hand, apologize for the behavior of the frontiersmen and urge the Mohawks to be patient, and on the other hand encourage more settlers to move into the Mohawk lands. He would make a great show of protecting Hau de no sau nee interests, and in that way encourage the People of the Longhouse to seek a resolution at the bargaining table where they invariably ended up trading land to gain a temporary peace.

Throughout this period many other Native peoples had been moving into our territories to gain some respite from the colonial onslaught. Far to the South, in the colonized area known as the Carolinas, the Tuscarora were faced with imminent destruction. In their drive to gain some more land and economic advantage, English colonizers were using the same techniques which were being employed in the Northeast. In 1713, the dispossessed Tuscaroras withdrew from their homelands and sought protection in the territories of the Hau de no sau nee. They were not the only people who were displaced. Delawares, Tuteloes, Shawnees and others fled to the Hau de no sau nee lands seeking peace.

Peace, however, was not to be. At the approach of the American revolution, the Hau de no sau nee did everything possible to remain neutral. With the decline of France, and the increasing decline in the importance of trade, the settler bourgeoisie of the Anglo colonies cast an increasingly envious eye on the lands of the Longhouse. Still our military power was formidable, and our resolve was to remain neutral.

The policy of England, however, was to involve the Hau de no sau nee in the war. To accomplish this goal, they resorted to bribery, trickery, false propaganda, and the emotional appeal. The Hau de no sau nee continued its policy of neutrality throughout. Both the colonists and the "Loyalists" entered our territories in search of mercenaries. The loyalist strategy was the more successful. They were able to draw out some of our people into a battle with the revolting colonists.

The Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war, made no provision, at least in writing, for the Native nations, which the British Crown had solemnly promised to protect. Thus the representatives of the People of the Longhouse held an international treaty meeting with the new federation called the United States of America in September of 1784. The U.S. demanded huge cessions of territory, especially from the Senecas. The warriors who had been delegated to the meeting eventually signed the treaty. However, they had not been authorized to commit the Hau de no sau nee without consulting them. For a time, the terms of the treaty were not known, as the U.S. would not provide the Hau de no sau nee with a copy of the document. As many Native people knew, to their regrets, signing a treaty and the ratification of a treaty are two separate acts, each necessary before a treaty becomes valid. Although the U.S. Congress ratified the treaty, the legislative council of the Hau de no sau nee met at Buffalo Creek and renounced the agreement.

Somehow the United States takes the position that the Hau de no sau nee ceased to exist by the year 1784, although the Longhouse has continued to this day. There is ample evidence that all the nations continued to participate in the matters of the Great Council, the legislative body of the Confederacy. None of the nations of the league has ever declared themselves separate from the Confederation. The Oneidas, whose reputed allegiance to the United States was based on the existence of Oneida mercenaries, continued to send their delegates to the council, and the Tuscarora remain firmly attached to the League. The Onondagas, Senecas, Cayugas and Mohawks continue to hold their positions within the League.

Although the Hau de no sau nee have been severely disrupted by the Westward expansion of the United States, the subsequent surrounding of their lands, and the attempts to devour its people, the Six Nations Confederacy continues to function. Indeed, today its strength continues to be increasing.

By pretending that the Hau de no sau nee government no longer exists, both the U.S. and Britain illegally took Hau de no sau nee territories by simply saying the territories belong to them. To this day, Canada, the former colony of England, has never made a treaty for the lands in the St. Lawrence River Valley. But the truth continues to remain and plague officials yet today. The Hau de no sau nee territories are not and have never been part of the U.S. or Canada. The citizens of the Hau de no sau nee are a separate people, distinct from either Canada or the United States. Because of this, the Hau de no sau nee refuses to recognize a border drawn by a foreign people through our lands.

The policy of the dispossession of North American Native peoples, first by the European kingdoms, and later by the settler regimes, began with the first contact. ispossession took a number of approaches: the so-called "just warfare" was a strategy by which Native nations were deemed to have offended the Crown and their elimination by fire and sword was justified. That was followed by the Treaty Period in which Native nations were "induced" to sell their lands and move westward. The Treaty Period was in full swing at the beginning of the 19th Century. By 1815, the governor of New York was agitating for the removal of all Native people from the state for "their own good."

While the infamous Trail of Tears was removing Native peoples from the Southeast to Oklahoma, New York State was lobbying for a treaty in 1838 which was intended to remove the Hau de no sau nee, who were on lands that the state wanted, away to an area of Kansas. The principal victims were to be the Senecas.

Like the Termination Policy a century later, the Removal Policy was eventually abandoned due in part to the bad press received during the Cherokee Removal in 1832. During the process of the Cherokee removal, thousands of Cherokee men, women, children and elders were subjected to conditions which caused them to die of exposure, starvation and neglect.

In 1871, the U.S. Congress passed an Act which included a clause that treaties would no longer be made with "Indian Nations." It was at this time that official United States policy toward Native people began to shift to a new strategy. Reports to Congress began to urge that the Native people be assimilated into U.S. society as quickly as possible. The policy of fire and sword, simply began to become less popular among an increasingly significant percentage of the United States population. The principle hindrance to the assimilation of the Native people, according to its most vocal adherents, was the Indian land base. The Native land base was held in common and this was perceived as an uncivilized and unAmerican practice. The assimilationists urged that, if every Indian family owned its own farmstead, they could more readily acquire "civilized" traits. Thus the Dawes Act of 1886 ordered the Native nations stripped of their land base, resulting in the transfer of millions of acres to European hands.

There was consistent pressure in the New York Legislature to "civilize" the Hau de no sau nee. To accomplish this, all vestiges of Hau de no sau nee nationality needed to be destroyed. This is the 19th Century origin of the policy to "educate" the Indian to be culturally European. It was thought that when the Indian was successfully Europeanized, he would no longer be distinct and separate, and that there would no longer be an indigenous people with their own customs and economy. At that point, the Indian could be simply declared to have assimilated into the United States or Canadian society. The net effect would dispense with the entire concept of Native nations, and that would extinguish the claims of those nations to their lands. The report of the Whipple Committee to the New York Legislature in 1888 was clear: "Exterminate the Tribe."

In 1924, the Canadian government "abolished" Hau de no sau nee government at the Grand River territory. The Oneida and Akwesasne territories were invaded and occupied by Canadian troops in order to establish neo-colonial "elective systems" in the name of democracy. Also in 1924, the United States government passed legislation declaring all American Indians to be United States citizens. The 1924 Citizenship Act was an attempt to deny the existence of Native nations, and the rights of these Native nations to their lands. The denial of the existence of Native nations is a way of legitimizing the colonists' claims to the lands. This concept is furthered by the imposition of non-Native forms of government. This also serves to fulfill the colonizer's need to destroy any semblance of sovereignty. The actual process for taking lands can be accomplished when the Native nation no longer exists in its original context -- when it is less of a nation.

With all semblance of a Native nation's original context destroyed, Canada and the United States can rationalize that integration has occurred. With this rationale in hand, both governments have set out to enact their final solutions to the "Indian Problem."

The Hau de no sau nee vigorously objected to the Citizenship Act and maintains to this day that the People of the Longhouse are not citizens of Canada or the United States, but are citizens of their own nations of the League.

The Terminations Act of the 1950s were efforts to simply declare that the Native nations no longer exist and to appropriate their lands. The acts were so disastrous that they caused something of a national scandal. "St. Regis," the European name for Akwesasne, was one of our territories targeted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as "ready for integration."

The BIA based its recommendation on the fact that many Mohawks had acquired at least some of the material conditions which made their community outwardly indistinguishable from the white communities. In fact, however, Akwesasne was, and is, very different from the small towns in the area surrounding it.

Termination submerged as an official policy in the late 1960s. But Termination is simply a means to an end. The objective is the economic exploitation of a people and their lands. The taking of lands and the denial and destruction of Native nations are concrete and undeniable elements in the colonization process as it is applied to Native people surrounded by a settler state. Tools to accomplish this end include guns, disease, revised histories, repressive missionaries, indoctrinating teachers, and these things are often cloaked in codes of law. In the Twentieth Century, the taking of land and the destruction of the culture and Native economy serve to force the Native people into roles as industrial workers, just as in the 19th Century the same processes forced Native people in the U.S. and Canada into roles as landless peasants.

Economics and the Haudenosaunee

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