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Unity Through Division: A Revision Of The Haudenosaunee's Policy Of Neutrality, Haley O'Shaughnessy

Augsburg Honors Review

The Haudenosaunee people, otherwise known as the Five Nations of Iroquois, negotiated separate treaties with the English and French in 1701. Scholars asserted Haudenosaunee desires to "sit on their mats and smoke in peace," was to maintain their political sovereignty, repress internal factionalism, and "play off' the European powers for their own economic gain. Nonetheless, their implicit assumptions of the cultural and political structures of the Great League of Peace and Power and Iroquois Confederacy, particularly that all Five Nations were centralized under one "policy of neutrality," is inconsistent with the reciprocal and decentralized posture of the Haudenosaunee. By understanding …