Among the Haudenosaunee the Great Law of Peace is the oral constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy. The law was written on wampum belts, conceived by Dekanawidah, known as the Great Peacemaker, and his spokesman Hiawatha. The original five member nations ratified this constitution near modern-day Victor, New York, with the sixth nation being added in 1722.
John Abeel III, known as Gaiänt'wakê or Kaiiontwa'kon in the Seneca language and thus generally known as Cornplanter, was a Dutch-Seneca war chief and diplomat of the Wolf clan. As a chief warrior, Cornplanter fought in the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War. In both wars, the Seneca and three other Iroquois nations were allied with the British. After the war Cornplanter led negotiations with the United States and was a signatory of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784). He helped gain Iroquois neutrality during the Northwest Indian War.
Bruce Graham Trigger was a Canadian archaeologist, anthropologist, and ethnohistorian. He appointed the James McGill Professor at McGill University in 2001.
Arthur Caswell Parker was an American archaeologist, historian, folklorist, museologist and noted authority on American Indian culture. Of Seneca and Scots-English descent, he was director of the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences from 1924 to 1945, when he developed its holdings and research into numerous disciplines for the Genesee Region. He was an honorary trustee of the New York State Historical Association. In 1935 he was elected first president of the Society for American Archaeology.
William N. Fenton was an American scholar and writer known for his extensive studies of Iroquois history and culture. He started his studies of the Iroquois in the 1930s and published a number of significant works over the following decades. His final work was published in 2002. During his career, Fenton was director of the New York State Museum and a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York.
Tah-won-ne-ahs or Thaonawyuthe, known in English as either Governor Blacksnake or Chainbreaker, was a Seneca war chief and leader. Along with other Iroquois war chiefs, he led warriors to fight on the side of the British during the American Revolutionary War from 1777 to 1783. He was prominent for his role at the Battle of Oriskany, in which the Loyalist and allied forces ambushed a force of rebels. After the war he supported his maternal uncle Handsome Lake, as a prominent religious leader. Governor Blacksnake allied with the United States in the War of 1812 and later encouraged some accommodation to European-American settlers, allowing missionaries and teachers on the Seneca reservation.
Mary Clark Thompson, born Mary Lee Clark, was a noted philanthropist and wife of banker Frederick Ferris Thompson.
John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt was a linguist and ethnographer who specialized in Iroquoian and other Native American languages. Hewitt was born on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation near Lewiston, New York. His mother was of Tuscarora, French, Oneida, and Scottish descent, his father of English and Scottish, but raised in a Tuscarora family. His parents raised him speaking the English language, but when he left the reservation to attend schools in Wilson and Lockport, he learned to speak the Tuscarora language from other students who spoke the language.
Shikellamy, also known as Swatana, was an Oneida chief and overseer for the Iroquois confederacy. In his position as chief and overseer, Shikellamy served as a supervisor for the Six Nations, overseeing the Shawnee and Lenape tribes in central Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna River and protecting the southern border of the Iroquois Confederacy. While his birth date is not known, his first recorded historical appearance was in Philadelphia in 1728. In 1728 he was living in a Shawnee village in Pennsylvania near modern Milton, and moved in 1742 to the village of Shamokin, modern day Sunbury, at the confluence of the West and North Branches of the Susquehanna. Shikellamy was an important figure in the early history of the Province of Pennsylvania and served as a go-between for the colonial government in Philadelphia and the Iroquois chiefs in Onondaga. He welcomed Conrad Weiser to Shamokin and served as Weiser's guide on his journeys into the frontier of Pennsylvania and New York.
Richard Stockton MacNeish, known to many as "Scotty", was an American archaeologist. His fieldwork revolutionized the understanding of the development of agriculture in the New World and the prehistory of several regions of Canada, the United States and Central and South America. He pioneered new methods in fieldwork and materials analysis and brought attention to the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration. His legacy has influenced generations of archaeologists.
Jesse J. Cornplanter was an actor, artist, author, craftsman, Seneca Faithkeeper and World War I decorated veteran. The last male descendant of Cornplanter, an important 18th-century Haudenosaunee leader and war chief, his Seneca name was Hayonhwonhish. He illustrated several books about Seneca and Iroquois life. Jesse Cornplanter wrote and illustrated Legends of the Longhouse (1938), which records many Iroquois traditional stories. Cornplanter was also the first Native American to play a lead in a feature film titled Hiawatha, which was released in 1913 and a year before the notable Western The Squaw Man.
David Boyle was a Canadian blacksmith, teacher, archaeologist, musicologist, and historian.
Dennis Cusick was a Tuscarora painter from New York and one of the founders of the Iroquois Realist Style of painting.
Sanford Plummer (Ga-yo-gwa-doke) (1905–1974) (Seneca) was a Native American narrative watercolor painter from New York state. He painted works portraying traditional life and culture of the Seneca and people of other Iroquois nations. His works are held by the Iroquois Indian Museum, as well as Buffalo Museum of Science, Rochester Museum and Science Center, and the Newark Museum.
The Seneca Nation of Indians is a federally recognized Seneca tribe based in western New York. They are one of three federally recognized Seneca entities in the United States, the others being the Tonawanda Band of Seneca and the Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma. Some Seneca also live with other Iroquois peoples on the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario.
George D. Heron was president of the Seneca Nation of Indians from 1958 to 1960 and again from 1962 to 1964. In addition to his cultural and community work, he is known as a leader of the Seneca opposition to Kinzua Dam, and for his work organizing the tribal resettlement.
Hiawatha is a 1913 American silent drama film directed by Edgar Lewis and based upon Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855). The film stars Jesse Cornplanter of the Seneca people and Soon-goot, a 17-year-old unknown actress. The movie is the first feature film to use a cast of Native Americans.
Walter K. Long was an artist, historian, museum director, inventor and teacher who was notable for being a contributor to the Mount Rushmore monument.
Simeon Gibson was a member of the Cayuga tribe and the Onondaga Longhouse on the Six Nations Reserve. Gibson (Iroquois) worked closely with Iroquois researchers, including Horatio Hale, David Boyle, Mark Raymond Harrington, A.C. Parker, and John Napoleon Brinton (J.N.B.) Hewitt. Gibson worked with these researchers to interpret his father Chief Gibson’s two records of the Daganawi:dah legend.
