American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In a recently published paper, Barbara A. Mann and Jerry L. Fields make a simple, but arresting, assertion: “the Haudenosaunee [Iroquois] League was founded on the pleasant afternoon of August 31, 1142.” This statement’s precision-and, even more, its methodology-would, if justified, have profound implications not only for the founding of the Iroquois League, but also for the longstanding debate about the chronology of oral tradition and the ability of oral societies to retain such details accurately over countless transmissions. My intention in this paper is to speak generally to this issue by using Mann and Fields’ extensive effort as a symptom of the larger issue. Mann and Fields arrive at their conclusion by arguing that a solar eclipse occurred at the very moment the League was formed. They then proceeded to determine which eclipse best suited this hypothesis. This paper argues that this claim is not true, or rather that there is no serious evidence that it is true, for it can hardly be asserted categorically that the Iroquois League was not founded on this day or any other day before its first mention in contemporaneous sources. In developing this argument I will consider first the ways in which Mann and Fields establish a specific eclipse date; that is, the process by which they eliminate all other possibilities. I then discuss their use of sources, which, I argue, falls well short of the critical canons that are widely accepted by historians for tying together evidence and argument. I conclude by suggesting that the particular foundation story of the Iroquois League is a story that began to evolve at some point, probably around the turn of the nineteenth century, to account for the League and to strengthen its purpose in the face of continuing white aggression.