MO1 Academic Journal Blog: Six Nations

Looking through the online resources, I was surprised to read that the Six Nations ( Mohawks, Oneida, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and later Tuscaroras ) had created the oldest living participatory democracy on Earth. (www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/) They influenced Ben Franklyn and Thomas Jefferson's views on democracy with principles such as governing "by reason and consent rather than coercion". For people coming from Europe, where kings and queens ruled and the masses had very little power, the idea of a democratic, well-balanced government, must have taken some getting used to; somehow along the way, those who learned from the Six Nations, conveniently forgot who introduced them to democracy,
As Bruce Johansen writes in Reaching the Grassroots: The Worldwide Diffusion of Iroquois Democratic Tradition, " Immigrants from Europe often have borrowed from Native peoples, embraced this knowledge as their own, and then forgotten its origins."

I was also surprised at how long ago the Six Nations had chosen a democratic rule for themselves: as far back as 1142 the Iroquois Confederacy was ratified by the Senecas, who were among the last to do so.  Europe at that time was hardly a bastion of democracy, and it took hundreds of years before Europeans came in contact with people who valued equality and respect. One of the ways the Confederacy remembered important events was through the use of Wampum belts, a process that took two or three years to complete.

I read an article that was very helpful in explaining the use and meaning of wampum belts. It was written in 1925, and reports on the Six Nations' representatives going to Washington to assert their right not to become American citizens. The article, by Howard Mc.Lellan, describes how the Wampum belts are made, (with hollowed out strips of clamshells) how the placement and color of the beads have special meaning to help the bearer recall the exact events being commemorated by the belt, and how, by their accuracy, they were a binding document for the Six Nations. Decoding the belt was time-consuming, as they were hundreds of beads and as "each Wampum piece had a meaning, every one must be counted and color and arrangement interpreted." I found it amazing that the oldest Wampum belt dated from 1550 and that it was still a record that could be interpreted in 1925, to describe historical events that had happened so long ago.

It is remarkable that the belts had survived at all in spite of the years of turmoil between the Nations and the Europeans; almost 400 years later, the belts still served their purpose as political storytellers. There is something mystical in the fact that with the Wampum belts, generations communicate with each other, the belt makers reaching out through their craft to their descendents, who extract their knowledge from the intricacies of the beads. I definitely want to learn more about the Six Nations after reading these articles, and I hope to continue blogging about them.

Thank you for reading this.