American Indian Culture and Research Journal

On May 31, 1796 a deputation from the Seven Nations of Canada signed a treaty with the United States of America, ceding all Mohawk claims to lands within the State of New York, excepting a six square mile tract at Akwesasne, a square mile on the Salmon River, a square mile on the Grass River, and a meadow along the Grass River. The "Seven Nations" also received payment ot £1,230 6s. 8d., plus an annuity of £213 6s. 8d. This payment and annuity were to be shared by the Akwesasne and Kahnawake settlements. The Seven Nations Treaty continues to provide a source of conflict and misunderstanding within the Mohawk settlements of Kahnawake and Akwesasne and between the Mohawk Nation and the State of New York. The most dramatic manifestation of this conflict was the 1974 reoccupation of some Adirondak land by a group of Mohawk from Kahnawake, Akwesasne, Deseronto and Kanesatake. This occupation resulted in a confrontation between the Mohawk and authorities from New York State and eventually in the establishment of the Ganienkeh settlement near Plattsburgh, New York (Akwesasne Notes 1975:17; 1976:32). The issue that remains at the heart of these misunderstandings is the legality and applicability of the Seven Nations of Canada Treaty to the Mohawk. In order to clarify the terms of this question, it is first necessary to identify the "Seven Nations of Canada" and to provide some cultural and historic context for understanding this alliance and the treaty of 1796. Such an understanding demands: (1) identifying the bounds of Mohawk territory; (2) locating the Mohawk settlements within this territory and defining their relationship to each other from the time of contact until the mid-nineteenth century; (3) examining the general Iroquois tendency towards expansion and alliance with "satellite nations," [sic] and (4) examining the details of the Seven Nations Treaty in light of these cultural and historic details.

It is said that during the American War of Independence the roll-call wampum, the sacred beads that designated where the representatives of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy grouped themselves about the council fires, was buried for safekeeping. After the war it was unearthed and reused when Sir Frederick Haldimand, the Governor of Quebec, granted members of the tribes an extensive tract of land on the banks of the Grand River in Ontario, Canada. Today the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford in Ontario is the largest of the Iroquois reservations and the only one that includes groups from all the Six Nations. These Indians are descendants of those who, as a result of their siding with the British at the time of the revolution, were forced to take refuge in Canada and were given in 1784 the Grand River lands. The arrangement which the Canadians call the Haldimand Deed is to this day regarded as a legitimate treaty by the Iroquois. The Iroquoian-speaking Peoples of the Northeast lived in a large expanse of territory stretching from Lake Nipissing in the present province of Ontario southward to the Susquehanna region of Pennsylvania. Their domain extended from the Adirondacks to the shores of Lake Erie. Some scattered bands had even pushed farther westward along the Ohio River and settled there.

It would seem that there is another piece of the jigsaw puzzle of early colonial American History that has been omitted from the puzzle because it is American Indian. This paper deals with a combination of the influence of the Iroquois Great Law of Peace on American government and consideration of its possible influence on Russian government. From the standpoint of historiography we are uncertain whether what follows is revisionist, revision of the revision, or a subsequent one. But it is usually acknowledged that the first major modern democracy was accomplished in North America with the American Revolution and the events leading to the Constitution of 1787. This historical assumption is rarely disputed, but the date of an accomplished democracy might be. There is, for example, persuasive evidence that North American democracy began between 300 to 500 years earlier with the Iroquois Law of the Great Peace and that this form of representative democracy influenced the formation of the colonial struggle to inaugurate the first modern constitutional democracy in the world-that of the United States Constitution of 1787. There have been other well-known democracies, such as the Greek city-state, but these ancient forms were direct democracies needing the whole body of eligible citizens to participate.

A Cross-Disciplinary Note on Charles Eastman (Santee Sioux) William Oandasan Bo Scholer's article "Images and Counter-Images: Ohiyesa, Standing Bear and American Literature" appeared in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal. To this article Raymond Wilson has voiced objections, including a misquote from his dissertation on Charles Eastman, a misinterpretation of a passage in Eastman's From the Deep Woods to Civilization, and errors In certain citations in Scholer's article. Indeed there are incorrectly cited passages but the responsibility for this is not so apparent, since they could be found in the author's oversight, typographical errors by his secretary or the manuscript's typographer, or the neglect of the editors, readers or proof-readers; and at a second glance the inaccuracies are not severe or misleading, though they do reduce the article's thoroughness somewhat. The objections to misinterpretation and misquotation however open the way to a brief but significant discussion on a cross-disciplinary approach to research. Wilson asserts that Scholer is in error when writing that Eastman "states that Jesus must have been an Indian" (p. 51) because he did not state this in From the Deep Woods to Civilization (p. 143); and Wilson also asserts he "never stated" in his dissertation, as Scholer II indicates," that Elaine Eastman conducted most of Eastman's writing. Wilson further elaborates: I did state that she served as his editorial assistant, a fact Ohiyesa [Eastman] recognized. The original ideas were his. Mr. Scholer makes it sound that I did not recognize this, but I certainly do. In other words, the ideas were Ohiyesa's, and his wife polished his writings for publication. Furthermore, he did not stop writing after 1921 [when the Eastmans had separated]; however, he was unable to publish anything after that date.