![]() Although the five nations each had a different number of sachems on the council, each nation had only one vote. Sachems served for life, or until their clan matron decided to remove them from office. Sachems were always men, but they were chosen by the clan matrons, the elder women who headed each clan. Every year, the 50 sachems (peace chiefs) who made up the Great Council of the Confederacy met at the Onondaga council house to discuss and vote on matters of the Confederacy. The Mohawk, as the most eastern tribe, became the Keepers of the Eastern Door the Seneca, as the westernmost tribe, were designated the Keepers of the Western Door, and the Onondaga, in the center, became the Keepers of the Council Fire. Finally, Thadodaho agreed and the Onondaga became the third nation in the Confederacy. Hiawatha and Deganawida knew the Confederacy would not succeed without the support of Thadodaho, so they set about persuading him to join. ![]() Together they convinced the Mohawk to be the first nation to join the Iroquois Confederacy. There he met Deganawida, who was either a Mohawk or a Huron, and the two of them discovered a great sympathy toward each other. In despair, Hiawatha left the Onondagas and wandered to the outskirts of a Mohawk village. According to legend, all three of his daughters died of illness or injuries thought to be caused by the evil wishes of his opponents, particularly an Onondaga chief named Thadodaho, who was very powerful and very antagonistic. An Onondaga named Hiawatha (not the same Hiawatha as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem) began preaching peace among the Iroquois nations but found little support and even active resistance. Eventually, two men joined together to create the Iroquois Confederacy. The Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Cayuga were constantly at war with one another over hunting and fishing grounds, honor and revenge, and, later, trapping grounds for the fur trade, in the early part of their history. The Iroquois continued in that tradition well into the 19th century, and even today the basic structure of their life remains the same, though on a much more limited scale. The Owasco were settled agriculturalists and supplemented their diet through hunting and fishing. The Iroquois call themselves Houdenosaunee, or "People of the Longhouse." The Iroquois are most likely descended from the Owasco peoples, who lived in the Great Lakes area as long as 1,000 years ago. The name was given them either by the Ojibwa (or Chippewa), in which case it means "poisonous snakes," or by the Algonquin, meaning "bad or terrifying man." Both the Ojibwa and Algonquin were enemies of the Iroquois. "Iroquois" is the name adopted by the French for the people they encountered in the Great Lakes region. Other Iroquoian peoples include the Huron, Erie, and Wyandotte. For our purposes, we will only consider those tribes who are members of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy (or League of the Iroquois): the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Cayuga, and Tuscarora. The Iroquoian peoples are a group of tribes from the Great Lakes area who speak dialects of the Iroquoian family of Native North American languages and have similar lifestyles. and Canada) LANGUAGE: English various Iroquois dialects RELIGION: Traditional tribal religions RELATED ARTICLES: Vol. Publications relating to the Eaton site have also been scanned and uploaded as have many artifact photos.LOCATION: United States ( New York, Wisconsin) Canada (Quebec, Ontario) POPULATION: over 125,000 (U.S. Five Access tables (Tables 1-4 and Extras) give artifact counts by unit and level. Both these images and the yearly excavation reports are grouped together under collections for each excavation year (i.e. Rob Peltier uploaded approximately 250 digital images of floor plans of excavation units. An excavation report was written after each field school and these have been uploaded to this project. ![]() This project contains data recovered as a result of 17 summer field schools directed by William Engelbrecht. ![]() The Archaeological Conservancy now owns most of the site. ![]() Eaton is one of a number of large Iroquoian village sites found in this region dating from the 15th through the mid-17th century. The major portions of three longhouses and a palisade pertaining to the Iroquoian component were recorded on the site. The bulk of material recovered from the site is from an Iroquoian village dating to the mid-sixteenth century. It is a multi-component site that was occupied intermittently from late Paleo-Indian times through the early 19th century when it contained a cabin on what was then the Buffalo Creek Reservation. This project contains data from 17 seasons of excavation from the Eaton Site in West Seneca, NY just south of the city of Buffalo. ![]()
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