The Iroquois Confederacy Predates Europeans by 350 Years!!!!

As we delve further into our First Peoples studies, I have come to the realization that we are still putting the pieces together in constructing Native American history.  We have been introduced to the concept of reflexivity, and how important it is to our research.  Why is this? Well, we know that much of what we already learned about Indigenous Peoples was filtered through the colonial lens.  This information typically starts with Christopher Columbus and ends with treaties and reservations…and emphasizes the accomplishments of our white forefathers.  Well what about the history before the European invasion? More emphasis should be placed on the Indigenous People’s history. We need to know everything about Indian culture and sovereignty before 1492. The catch being, that much of Native American history is oral, so we have been spoon fed exactly what European scholars have been teaching us in their writings for centuries.  That is why I am intrigued by this essay written by Bruce E. Johansen, which documents “one of the world’s oldest democracies, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy” (Para 1).

Barbara Mann and Jerry Fields, both from Toledo University, have determined that the “Iroquois Confederacy’s body of law” (para 2) was finally ratified by all of the five nations on August 31, 1142, which is over 300 years before 1451, as previously thought.  This new finding ranks this democracy with Iceland and Switzerland as the “oldest continuously functioning democracy on earth” (para 4).

Wait a minute, how can we be sure that this is not some arbitrary study borne out of scholarly opinion?

           Mann is a doctoral student in American Studies, while Fields is an astronomer.  Together they studied Seneca “oral accounts and precise solar data” (para 4), knowing "that the Senecas adopted the Iroquois Great Law of Peace shortly after a total eclipse of the sun" (para 5).  Most historians place this in the year 1451, when another solar eclipse occurred, however, its shadow fell over Pennsylvania, not New York.  The claim of the eclipse in 1142 also coincides with family lineages, oral accounts and archaeological evidence.  In 1948, Historian Paul Wallace proposed 1451 as the date, based on solar eclipse data in the pre-colonial contact era.  This particular date was most likely chosen because it fit within the time period just before the realm of European contact, so it would coincide with the "discovery of America,"  and "the academic politics of the late 1940's" (para 6).  Mann hilariously sums it up, stating "As late as 1949, white scholars were still trying to insist that Europeans . . . had invented wampum -- a back-bone artifact of the League!" (para 6).  I believe this exemplifies the dominant colonial cultural theme, and the need to rewrite history!

Johansen, Bruce E. "Dating the Iriquois Confederacy." Akewsasne Notes Series, Fall, 1995. Print. 

http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/DatingIC.html