Learning from History

Writing about placenames, I have done my best to maintain my emotional equilibrium during these troubled times. I have not wanted to comment on the horrors of greed and violence that are threatening our peace, but instead to share my love of the socially binding strength of simply studying where placenames came from. Reading Paul Krugman’s observations about what is happening in Minnesota and Robert Reich’s list of how each of us can actually do something, I was forcefully reminded that this has all happened before, that built into the soil of our geography, the people who came out of the ground here lived through this before and found their way. One of their most significant foundational stories also described a dictator, Adodaroh, surrounded by a cohort who saw everything as there for them to take and mistreat, including people – to use as they wished. The description, as much for impact in the telling, even describes the vicious leader as promoting cannibalism.

The story has been retold many times, and I will try to do honour to the tellings here.

Deganwidah was born a Wendat on the Bay of Quinte to the north of Lake Ontario. He felt he had to bring a message of peace to the warring Nations, so he crossed the waters and happened upon Aiewáhtha who was approaching his home, dragging a dead enemy. Deganwidah climbed carefully up onto the roof of Aiewáhtha’s home and peered down through the smoke hole. As Aiewáhtha prepared his cooking pot, he saw Deganwidah’s reflection in the pot full of water.

Thinking the peaceful face was his own reflection, he smiled with pleasure, and Deganwidah, sensing that he had an opportunity to approach the warrior, climbed back down and came to talk with him. After a long discussion, Deganwidah offered to conduct a condolence ceremony for Aiewáhtha’s losses. His family had been killed in the violence that surrounded them. Aiewáhtha accepted.

Deganwidah told him of his message, his wish to help stop the wars and to help the Nations unite in peace. Deganwidah explained that he had consulted Jigonsaseh, leader of the Neutral/Kahqua, a greatly respected sister Nation and part of the Iroquoian maize culture, and that she told Deganwidah that the women must be acknowledged as the farmers and that families would descend through the mother’s line and continue to live in the mother’s home. Deganwidah accepted her wisdom. He further encouraged Aiewáhtha to stop eating human flesh and to substitute deer in its place. The three of them, Jigonsaseh, Aiewáhtha, and Deganwidah, shared their vision with the people. There was a custom among the women to make sure all the warriors were fed outside of the villages, regardless of whose side they were on. The women would feed them to keep the fighting away from the villages. Jigonsaseh told the women not simply to feed them, but also to talk with the warriors, to encourage them to join Deganwidah and Aiewáhtha. Deganwidah elaborated the Great Law of Peace, including matrilineal descent, women’s collective responsibility for agricultural land, the condolence ceremonies to mourn the loss of family members and leaders as well as the political structure of the Five Nations Confederacy. Deganwidah envisioned fifty worthy men, chosen by the clan mothers, making decisions at the Council Fire, a governing body. He even gave them their names, which he decreed would return to the clan mothers when they died so that the women could give the same name to a worthy successor, as long as it was not that man’s son. The women could also recall a leader if they lost confidence in him. Their political structure contrasts sharply with the male-dominated early European democracies. It acknowledged different, equal jurisdictions of men and women. Among the important agreements formalized in the law with Wampum Belts and other symbolic items was the concept of “A Dish with One Spoon,” meaning that in times of need, resources would be shared and no people would take more from nature than could be sustained. This was a concept that was not unique to the Great Law of Peace but was evident in many treaties among other Nations. In this telling, it started in the agricultural period, the time when the women began growing corn/maize in the Three Sisters companion planting method and were able to feed the people from their crops.

The Three Sisters, maize, beans and squash

The events surrounding the establishment of the Great Law of Peace are dated to the time of a solar eclipse that Barbara Mann and Jerry Fields calculate happened on August 31, 1142. Once the warriors decided to support the Great Law of Peace, they all approached Adodaroh together peacefully and, with Aiewáhtha as the spokesperson, asked him to join them as their leader, to accept the Great Law of Peace that Deganwidah proposed. Aiewáhtha is said to have combed the snakes out of Adodaroh’s hair, untangling it, bringing him calm and reason and allowing him the space to make the decision to join—and lead—them. It is remarkable that in this foundational story, the murderous

dictator is not killed but rehabilitated.

The Great Law of Peace established a governance system that had never existed in the world, one beyond anything in European history. If we have attained what we call democracy, it was not because of European brilliance, but because it was seen among the people who thrived here. It has never been matched as a governance system, and it came out of the ground here.

Paul Krugman, Robert Reich and others have a point. Perhaps Minnesota is the crucible, perhaps we can all be a part of it as it arises, peacefully, out of the ground. Perhaps we can confront our Adodaroh – and perhaps we can learn from our Elders who came out of this ground so long ago.