Onondaga (village)

Last updated

Onondaga was a village that served as the capital of the Iroquois League and the primary settlement of the Onondaga nation. It was the meeting place of the Iroquois Grand Council. The clan mothers named the men representing the clans at village and tribal councils and appointed the 49 sachems who met here periodically as the ruling council for the confederated Five Nations. [1]

The location of the village changed periodically. In 1600, it was located near present Cazenovia, New York. From 1609 to 1615, it was situated the site of present-day Pompey, New York. [2] After that, Onondaga was located at several sites near present Delphi Falls, New York, until 1640, when it moved to what developed as present-day Manlius, New York. [2]

In 1720, it was moved to Onondaga Creek. [2] After many Onondaga warrior bands had sided with the British in the American Revolutionary War, the Continental Army attacked the village of Onondaga in an expedition led by Col. Goose Van Schaick. In April 1779, the Onondaga of the village, mostly older men, women and children, fled as the army approached. American troops methodically destroyed the abandoned settlement, razing about 50 houses along Onondaga Creek and burning winter stores. [3]

The present meeting place of the Iroquois Grand Council is on the Onondaga Reservation in New York.

Related Research Articles

Finger Lakes Group of lakes in New York, United States

The Finger Lakes are a group of eleven long, narrow, roughly north–south lakes in an area informally called the Finger Lakes region in New York, in the United States. This region straddles the northern and transitional edge, known as the Finger Lakes Uplands and Gorges ecoregion, of the Northern Allegheny Plateau and the Ontario Lowlands ecoregion of the Great Lakes Lowlands.

Mohicans

The Mohicans are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe that was Algonquian-speaking. As part of the Eastern Algonquian family of tribes, they are related to the abutting Lenape, who occupied territory to the south as far as the Atlantic coast. The Mohicans occupied the upper tidal Hudson River Valley, including the confluence of the Mohawk River and into western New England centered on the upper Housatonic watershed. After 1680, due to conflicts with the Mohawk during the Beaver Wars, many were driven southeastward across the present-day Massachusetts western border and the Taconic Mountains to Berkshire County around Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Onondaga, New York Town in New York, United States

Onondaga is a town in Onondaga County, New York, United States. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the town had a population of 23,103. The town is named after the native Onondaga tribe, part of the Iroquois Confederacy. Onondaga is located southwest of the city of Syracuse, which it borders.

Hiawatha First Nations leader and co-founder of the Iroquois League

Hiawatha, also known as Ayenwathaaa or Aiionwatha, was a precolonial First Nations or Native American leader and co-founder of the Iroquois Confederacy. He was a leader of the Onondaga people, the Mohawk people, or both. According to some accounts, he was born an Onondaga but adopted into the Mohawks.

Joseph Brant

Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant was a Mohawk military and political leader, based in present-day New York, who was closely associated with Great Britain during and after the American Revolution. Perhaps the Native American of his generation best known to the Americans and British, he met many of the most significant Anglo-American people of the age, including both George Washington and King George III.

Onondaga may refer to:

Mohawk people Indigenous tribe of North America

The Mohawk people are the most easterly tribe of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy. They are an Iroquoian-speaking indigenous people of North America, with communities in southeastern Canada and northern New York State, primarily around Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence River. As one of the five original members of the Iroquois League, the Mohawk are known as the Keepers of the Eastern Door – the traditional guardians of the Iroquois Confederation against invasions from the east.

Sullivan Expedition Campaign during the American Revolutionary War

The 1779 Sullivan Expedition, also known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, or Sullivan Campaign was an extended systematic military campaign during the American Revolutionary War against Loyalists ("Tories") and the four Nations of the Haudenosaunee which had sided with the British. It has been described by some historians as a genocide due to the magnitude and totality of its violence towards and destruction of the Haudenosaunee.

The Seneca are a group of indigenous Iroquoian-speaking people native to North America who historically lived south of Lake Ontario. Their nation was the farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League (Haudenosaunee) in New York before the American Revolution.

Onondaga people

The Onondaga people are one of the original five constituent nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy in northeast North America. Their traditional homeland is in and around present-day Onondaga County, New York, south of Lake Ontario. They are known as Gana’dagwëni:io’geh to the other Iroquois tribes. Being centrally located, they are considered the "Keepers of the Fire" in the figurative longhouse that shelters the Five Nations. The Cayuga and Seneca have territory to their west and the Oneida and Mohawk to their east. For this reason, the League of the Iroquois historically met at the Iroquois government's capital at Onondaga, as the traditional chiefs do today.

Oneida people

.

Onondaga Lake Lake in Onondaga County, New York, USA

Onondaga Lake is a lake in Central New York, immediately northwest of and adjacent to Syracuse, New York. The southeastern end of the lake and the southwestern shore abut industrial areas and expressways; the northeastern shore and northwestern end border a series of parks and museums.

Six Nations of the Grand River Indian reserve in Ontario, Canada

Six Nations is the largest First Nations reserve in Canada. As of the end of 2017, it has a total of 27,276 members, 12,848 of whom live on the reserve. It is the only reserve in North America that has representatives of all six Iroquois nations living together. These nations are the Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca and Tuscarora. Some Lenape also live in the territory.

Cornplanter

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.

Economy of the Iroquois

The economy of the Haudenosaunee historically was based on communal production and combined elements of both horticulture and hunter-gatherer systems. Some have described the Iroquois economy as primitive communism. The tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy and other Northern Huron had their traditional territory in what is now New York State and the southern areas bordering the Great Lakes. The confederacy was originally composed of five tribes; the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca, who had created an alliance long before European contact. The Tuscarora were added as a sixth nation in the early eighteenth century after they migrated from North Carolina. The Huron peoples, located mostly in what is now Canada, were also Iroquioan-speaking and shared some culture, but were never part of the Iroquois.

The Great Peacemaker, sometimes referred to as Deganawida or Tekanawí:ta was by tradition, along with Jigonhsasee and Hiawatha, the founder of the Haudenosaunee, commonly called the Iroquois Confederacy. This is a political and cultural union of six Iroquoian-speaking Native American tribes residing in the present-day state of New York, northern Pennsylvania, and the eastern portion of the province of Ontario, Canada.

Logstown

The riverside village of Logstown, near modern-day Baden, Pennsylvania, was a significant Native American settlement in Western Pennsylvania, and the site of the 1752 signing of the treaty of friendship between the Ohio Company and the First Nations occupying the region in the years leading up to the French and Indian War—during which Logstown became nearly depopulated and abandoned. Being an unusually large settlement, and because of its strategic location, Logstown was an important factor of all parties developing the Ohio and tributary rivers.

Conrad Weiser

Conrad Weiser, born Johann Conrad Weiser, Jr., was a Pennsylvania Dutch (German) pioneer who served as an interpreter and diplomat between the Pennsylvania Colony and Native American nations. Primarily a farmer, he also worked as a tanner, and later served as a soldier and judge. He lived part of the time for six years at Ephrata Cloister, a Protestant monastic community in Lancaster County.

Iroquois Northeast Native American confederacy

The Iroquois or Haudenosaunee are a historical indigenous confederacy in northeast North America. They were known during the colonial years to the French as the Iroquois League, later as the Iroquois Confederacy and to the English as the Five Nations, comprising the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca. After 1722, they accepted the Tuscarora people from the southeast into their confederacy, as they were also Iroquoian-speaking, consequently became known as the Six Nations.

Tadodaho

Tadodaho was a Native American and sachem of the Onondaga nation before the Deganawidah and Hiawatha formed the Iroquois League. According to oral tradition, he had extraordinary characteristics and was widely feared, but he was persuaded to support the confederacy of the Five Nations.

References

  1. Nash, Gary B. Red, White and Black: The Peoples of Early North America Los Angeles 2015. Chapter 1, p. 11
  2. 1 2 3 Francis Jennings, ed., The History and culture of Iroquois diplomacy: an interdisciplinary guide to the treaties of the Six Nations and their league (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1985; ISBN   0-8156-2650-9), 221.
  3. Robert Steven Grumet, Historic Contact: Indian People and Colonists in today's northeastern United States in the Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995; ISBN   0-8061-2700-7), 393.