The Great League of Peace and Power
The Iroquois were perhaps the most influential group of natives in Colonial America. Although they were referred to as the Iroquois by the French, they called themselves the Haudenosaunee, which translates as “people of the long house.” The Iroquois, inhabiting present day upstate New York, are thought to be the first people to practice any form of democracy in North America. They did this by creating the Great League of Peace and Power, a political union formed by the five original Iroquois Nations of Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, for the purpose of ending the centuries long pattern of inter-tribal warfare among their nations. This warfare consisted of a series of ongoing “mourning wars”, in which families of those killed in battle expressed their grief by taking captives to replace those that were taken from them. These families would then, at their own discretion, adopt or torture and kill the captives. The establishment of the Grand Council, to which each of the Five Nations sent representatives for deliberations, enabled the Great League of Peace and Power to achieve harmony among the Iroquois.
The Iroquois Confederacy
The Iroquois Confederacy was established in the 17th century as a reaction to the European migration into North America. Although the terms Great League of Peace and Power and the Iroquois Confederacy are often used interchangeably, they actually served two different purposes. The Great League was designed to promote peace among the Iroquois, while the Confederacy, which was expanded with the addition of the Tuscaroras in 1722, focused on relations with colonists and natives not included among the member nations.
The Algonquians
The Algonquian speaking natives such as the Hurons, who were hostile to the Iroquois, had aligned themselves with the French. Threatened by the French and the Algonquians from the North and West, the Iroquois Confederacy turned to the English and in 1677 they negotiated an alliance, known as the Covenant Chain, with the British colonies. And although the Iroquois Confederacy did negotiate a treaty with the French during the Grand Settlement of 1701, it was through the Covenant Chain that they supported the British, with some hesitation, during the first three French and Indian Wars (1677 – 1748). But the Iroquois, specifically the Mohawks, still suffering from heavy losses taken during King George’s War (1740 – 1748), and with yet another war on the horizon, declared the Covenant Chain to be broken in 1753.
The French and Indian War
With the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754, the Iroquois again found themselves to be caught in a crossfire between the two European empires. In 1755, once again contemplating the consequences of a French/Algonquian victory, the Iroquois Confederacy renewed the Covenant Chain with the British. Although the Grand Council initially decided that the Six Nations would remain neutral during the French & Indian War, they ultimately sided with the British because of the concern that the Algonquian Shawnees and Delawares residing in the Iroquois controlled Ohio Country were attempting to create a confederacy with the Miamis and Munsees, who were also Algonquian and already allied with the French. The Iroquois were well aware that a French/Algonquian victory would have not only caused the loss of the Ohio Country, but that it would have also threatened the very existence of their traditional Iroquois homelands. The eventual British victory though, only delayed the inevitable decline of the Iroquois.
