CHAPTER 1The Natural and Built Environment of the Haudenosaunee Homeland
As he returned home from a winter hunt, Sickaris encountered three Dutchmen in the eastern Mohawk community of Oneckehonka. Sickaris eagerly offered to serve as a guide, porter, and host to the Dutchmen if they accompanied him to his village at Canagere, which was about a half-day walk west. In exchange for his services and generosity, the Dutchmen presented Sickaris with a knife and two awls. They also gave a knife and scissors to “the chief” in whose longhouse they currently sheltered. Sickaris followed a well-worn footpath to Canagere along the southern bank of the partially frozen Mohawk River, through the two small villages of Canowarode and Schatsyerosy, and over large tracts of flatland. When the group reached their destination in the early evening, the Dutchmen counted only a few men among the old women and children in an undefended village. With Tonnosatton and Toniwerot, the village leaders, absent on hunting expeditions, Sickaris served as the host for the European visitors for four days. Although the Dutchmen commented on Sickaris's hospitality, noting they “ate beaver's meat here everyday,” Sickaris's female relations controlled the access of strangers to their longhouse and prepared the food the visitors consumed.1
The three Dutch travelers, Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, Jeronimus la Croex, and Willem Tomassen began a six-week expedition in December 1634 that took them nearly one hundred miles west of the Dutch post at Fort Orange and into the homelands of The People of the Longhouse, or Haudenosaunee. Martin Gerritsen, the commander at Fort Orange, wanted to uncover the reasons for a decline in the fur trade with the easternmost nations, the “Maquasen” (Mohawk) and “Sinnekens” (Oneida). New Netherland's economic survival depended on furs trapped in lands west of the Hudson and Champlain Rivers making their way to Dutch markets at Fort Orange. The Dutch feared that peace and trade between eastern Haudenosaunee peoples and Native nations in the western Great Lakes allied with New France would divert furs intended for Fort Orange to the Saint Lawrence River Valley. While on his journey, van den Bogaert kept a daily journal of the Indigenous peoples and places he visited, including settlement patterns, subsistence strategies, cultural ceremonies, and environmental features viewed through the eyes of a European colonizer.2
All along their trip into and out of Mohawk and Oneida homelands, the Dutch travelers depended entirely on the geographic knowledge and hospitality of Haudenosaunee guides and hosts. While traveling from the westernmost Mohawk community of Tenotoge to the Oneida village of Onneyuttehage, Mohawk guides paused to shelter overnight in small huts, or hunter's cabins, strategically located approximately seven miles from one another along the Mohawk River. Small huts also dotted the landscape between the eastern Mohawk community of Oneckehonka and Fort Orange to provide overnight shelter when men and women traveled back and forth to Dutch traders. At each village, the Dutchmen recruited Mohawk volunteers to accompany them, to show them the correct path, and to carry their goods. Although van den Bogaert claimed Sickaris eagerly volunteered his services, he complained repeatedly of his slow progress as the winter season dampened Mohawk enthusiasm to serve as guides and porters. Within fifteen miles of returning to Fort Orange, van den Bogaert and his Dutch companions still required the help of Mohawk guides when they “came upon a wrong path that was the most traveled, but because the Indians knew the paths better than we,” the travelers made a safe return to the fort.3
As van den Bogaert documented his brief time among eastern Haudenosaunee communities during the early decades of sustained European contact, his journal provides a window into Haudenosaunee spatial relations with Indigenous neighbors. While at Onneyuttehage, for example, van den Bogaert asked a principal leader, Arenias, for information regarding the location and names of other villages. Jeronimus la Croex made a map from the corn kernels and stones that Arenias and a companion placed on the ground to represent the various communities. Arenias explained that the land far to the north (north of Lake Ontario) was prized beaver-hunting territory. But, Arenias added, Oneida hunters dared not to trespass in the country of other nations, whom he described as “people with horns.” Although Arenias's warning dissuaded the Dutchmen from traveling farther afield, it also highlighted a significant feature of Haudenosaunee spatial relations with outsiders. To gain access to valuable hunting territories, village leaders actively engaged in diplomatic negotiations with western and northern neighbors. Peace allowed groups to travel, hunt, and trade in another's territory without fear of violent attack. In addition, Arenias and his companion provided cartographic intelligence that underscored the important role environmental knowledge played in Haudenosaunee mobility and seasonal subsistence practices. Throughout their journey, van den Bogaert and his colleagues witnessed the many ways eastern Haudenosaunee peoples built, manipulated, and exploited nearby and distant geographic spaces for shelter and subsistence as well as for economic and diplomatic advantages.4
Although la Croex's map of Arenias's settlement information does not survive in the documentary record, other cartographic representations detail Haudenosaunee spatial relations, reveal geographic and environmental knowledge, and highlight features of cultural significance. In the late 1690s, Robert Livingston, a fur trader and secretary for the Albany Commissioners of Indian Affairs, obtained an Onondaga-produced map of the eastern Great Lakes. The map encompassed an area of approximately 150,000 square miles from the Connecticut Valley and Québec in the east, to Lake Erie in the west, and the Susquehanna River in the south (figure 1.1). The Onondaga cartographers did not include place names on the map, nor did they draw important spaces to the same scale that Europeans used or understood. Rather, Indigenous cartography documented a lived experience of engagement with the natural world. Indigenous cartographers represented rivers as straight or gently curved lines that fed into a larger branch system at similar angles and often symmetrically. They depicted lakes as oval, or tadpole-shaped with smooth coastlines. Water routes followed rivers safe for canoe travel, rather than lakes, and footpaths covered the easiest portages between rivers or through the openings left by dried-up water systems. Footpaths also avoided the more dangerous and time-consuming passages along steep ravines and other treacherous terrain. Europeans viewed the predominance of lakes, rivers, and the portages connecting different water routes as evidence of the critical role water systems played in Haudenosaunee subsistence practices, communication, diplomacy, warfare, transportation, and trade.5
FIGURE 1.1. Drafft of this Countrey (1697). North is to the right. Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC03107.02046. Used with permission.
Although the Onondaga-produced map exposes a breadth and depth of geographic knowledge that spanned thousands of square miles, the map also reveals features of Haudenosaunee cultural significance. The emphasis on water sources, for example, underscores the central role of water in Indigenous epistemologies, cultural practices, and connections to the land. Water, and its other-than human inhabitants, holds a prominent position in Haudenosaunee origin stories and the formation of Turtle Island. Rivers also serve as the arteries of life for human and other-than human beings as they sustain the fish, offer irrigation, and replenish soils for agricultural production. Moreover, water routes and footpaths formed the infrastructure that connected people, communities, ideas, and material goods. The continual use of footpaths and water routes, as represented on the map, highlighted Haudenosaunee mobility and reinforced connections and relationships to homelands and neighbors.6
Other forms of Haudenosaunee mapmaking articulate spatial relations and cultural traditions that European-style maps fail to capture. Wampum belts made from quahog or whelk shells, for example, recorded Haudenosaunee Traditional Knowledge and diplomatic agreements between nations and with outsiders. Before contact with Europeans, the Peacemaker established the Great Law that brought peace and unity among the Five Nations of the Iroquois League, or The People of the Longhouse. In following the Great Law, Haudenosaunee peoples perform ceremonies to console grief and clear the eyes, ears, and throats of speakers and listeners before discussing important business. Wampum, in the form of strings or belts, plays a critical role in assuaging grief, restoring the Good Mind, and maintaining peace and unity among the member nations of the League. When the Peacemaker established the Great Law, his helper, Hiawatha, recorded the relationships of member nations in a wampum belt that also serves as a map of Haudenosaunee homelands. This belt, known as the Hiawatha Belt, designates the five confederate nations in a west-to-east configuration of a longhouse (figure 1.2). Like a longhouse, the ends provide the only entrance into this community. As a result, the nations at the west and east ends were the “doorkeepers” of the League: responsible for protecting against external enemies and escorting potential friends into the interior of the League's figurative longhouse.7
The Hiawatha Belt illustrates each nation as a square of white beads, the color symbol of peace, life, and positive well-being, over a backdrop of darker purple beads that denote violence, warfare, and general mourning. The central nation is in the shape of a tree and represents the Tree of Peace where all matters are discussed and implements of war are buried. In the spatial relations of the Belt, the white lines that connect the different nations illustrate the overland and water routes between nations and convey their peace, friendship, and alliance. The white lines that extend east and west beyond the Belt's edges represent mobility beyond Haudenosaunee homelands as well as peaceful paths and flexibility to bring Indigenous neighbors into and out of Haudenosaunee territory. In contrast, the purple background reflects the continued danger and potential violence beyond the spatial limits of these League nations. The Hiawatha Belt also captures the Great Law principle of the “Dish with One Spoon,” whereby League nations shared the bounty that the land provided, through hunting and agriculture, with friends and neighbors along the white paths that connected neighbors. As a result, the Hiawatha Belt provides a visual representation of the Great Law of Peace and Haudenosaunee spatial relations that encompasses more than diplomatic and military alliances.8
FIGURE 1.2. Hiawatha Belt. © Onondaga Nation, https://www.onondaganation.org/culture/wampum/. Used with permission from the Onondaga Nation.
Although The People of the Longhouse occupied vastly different ecosystems whereby specific topography and climate influenced village location and diet, the water routes and valleys of the Mohawk and Seneca River systems were central to every nation's settlement pattern and subsistence strategy. Haudenosaunee peoples located their villages among this extensive water system that connected their homelands, particularly along the Mohawk and Seneca Rivers, the Finger Lakes that bear their nation's names, and north of Lake Ontario (figure 1.3). The People of the Longhouse observed loosely defined boundaries between their homelands that underscored their reciprocal relationships with each other and with the land. The sharing of the land and its bounty with neighbors also embodied this Dish with One Spoon principle and provided strength through diplomacy and reciprocal obligations. In the process of establishing the Great Law, the Peacemaker confirmed the names for each nation based on their land of origin, or “the land they belonged to.” The Haudenosaunee share in the philosophy of many Indigenous Knowledge Holders that The People belong to the land, rather than the land belonging to the people. Consequently, environmental features of the landscape and a nation's place in the land are key determinants in Haudenosaunee identity. In addition, land provided connections to ancestors and sustained all human and other-than human kin. Interactions with land also precipitated the exchange of gifts and obligations of reciprocity between humans and the land, humans and other-than human kin, and humans with each other.9
FIGURE 1.3. Haudenosaunee homelands and approximate village locations (ca. 1630). Bill Nelson.
For the Mohawk, the Keepers of the Eastern Door, their identity as The People of the Flint highlights the geological features of the land to which they belong. Mohawk families located most of their villages atop high hills overlooking steep ravines above the Mohawk River. Their homeland extended from the west near West Canada Creek downriver approximately three to four days by foot. The Mohawk River had carved out abundant flat lands in valleys while the annual spring snow melts that fed it replenished silty loam terrain along its banks and provided excellent fertility for crops. The ninety-foot cataract at Cohoes, near the confluence with the Hudson River and an additional two to three days downriver from eastern Mohawk settlements, prevented many migratory fish from making their way upstream. This natural feature increased Mohawk reliance on the agricultural production of women. Numerous oaks, black walnut, and fir trees grew inland from the river and together the water and surrounding forest attracted diverse animal resources. Men hunted and fished throughout the Mohawk River Valley, as well as the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers to the south, and north throughout the Adirondack Mountains and the Hudson, Lake Champlain, and Saint Lawrence watersheds. In addition to their subsistence value, these water arteries provided access to Dutch manufactured goods at Fort Orange at the mouth of the Mohawk River, to French traders and Indigenous kin along the Saint Lawrence River to the north, and to a multitude of Chesapeake traders and Native communities along the Susquehanna River to the south.10
The Oneida, The People of the Standing Stone, located their villages about four days west of Mohawk communities, in a landscape intermixed with numerous flatlands, high hills, and woodlands, and multiple water routes that connected to distant northern and southern spaces. Archaeological evidence demonstrates remarkable consistency in the physiographical location of approximately thirty known Oneida sites among the numerous uplands and intervening steep gullies of the Mohawk-Seneca River corridor, with streams running through them. This high and rugged terrain simplified village fortifications yet provided access to fertile valleys for agricultural production. Oneida woodlands contained diverse hardwoods like oak, chestnut, walnut, and maple, as well as planted plum and apple trees, and provided a habitat for numerous animal resources that supplemented agricultural production. Men also exploited the rich fishing and hunting environments beyond this territory, especially around Oneida Lake, the Onondaga River, and Lake Ontario, as well as the Unadilla River to the south, and the Black River to the north. Oneida families remained in these naturally defensible highlands at the headwaters of Oriskany and Oneida Creeks until the mid-eighteenth century, when they established a village in the valley closer to Oneida Lake. Although European visitors consistently reported only a single Oneida village, the archaeological record reveals multiple coexisting early- and mid-seventeenth century Oneida sites. In addition, their seventeenth-century population required more than one village.11
For Onondaga peoples, the topography of their homeland underscores their identity as The People of the Hills. A steep slope, running east-west, divides the landscape into two distinct topographical regimes of the Erie-Ontario Plain to the north and the Alleghany Plateau to the south. In the Erie-Ontario Plain, the land is low and swampy, with sandy soil. Here the rivers drain northward, flowing into the Oswego River and emptying into Lake Ontario. South of the slope, the terrain is more rugged, featuring rolling hills, plateaus, and deep valleys. Most of the rivers drain south into the Susquehanna watershed. Onondaga men and women located the villages of the Central Fire of the Iroquois Confederacy in the more rugged terrain south of the slope, where the natural topography of plateaus and deep valleys aided village defense and the well-drained landscape provided fertile bottomlands essential for agricultural production. Archaeological evidence from the time periods of circa AD pre-1525, AD 1525 to 1609, and AD post-1609 trace the gradual relocation of Onondaga villages in a south-to-north direction along Limestone Creek, then an east-to-west movement into Butternut Creek and finally into the Onondaga Creek Valley. Small sites located near Cazenovia Lake to the east and several fishing stations along the Oswego and Salmon Rivers to the north represent a few exceptions. Onondaga men also traveled north of Lake Ontario, as well as south down the Chenango River to the Susquehanna River for fall hunts and spring fishing and for commercial exchanges.12
The Cayuga, The People of the Marshy Area, located their villages about a two- to three-day's walk west of Onondaga villages. Cayuga peoples occupied two distinct village clusters that predated European contact. The western sequence, located on the west side of Cayuga Lake, migrated from north to south between Cayuga and Seneca Lakes from AD 1450 into the late 1500s, whereas the eastern sequence remained on the east side of Cayuga Lake. After the late 1500s, the two disparate lineages joined together as one sequence on the east side of Cayuga Lake. By the seventeenth century, Cayuga families had located their towns in the defensible high hills between Cayuga and Owasco Lakes. Archaeological evidence reveals Cayuga villages at the Cayuga outlet, downstream along the Seneca River, as well as in environmentally temperate locations farther south on the east side of Cayuga Lake. The abundance of deer and elk, among other animals in the region, as well as fish in Cayuga and Owasco Lakes, and in the Seneca River, attracted Cayuga men to the area. The Chemung and Susquehanna Rivers to the south and the northern shore of Lake Ontario offered men additional seasonal fishing and hunting environments. Women also planted and managed extensive medicinal farms and fruit orchards in the valleys east of Cayuga Lake.13
About fifty miles west of Cayuga villages, Seneca peoples protected the western door of the Longhouse. Their identity as The People of the Great Hills highlights the topography of the 150-square-mile area of their main village locations about twenty miles south of Lake Ontario. Archaeologists have uncovered more than twenty-five Seneca villages dated from circa AD 1525 to 1687. About half of the sites were large, covering at least eight acres. Seneca men also constructed smaller “satellite” villages linked to each of their larger towns. The larger villages, with their associated hamlets, divided into two distinct geographic groups. The western sequence occupied the Spring Brook watershed, while the eastern sequence migrated from the Honeoye Creek Valley eastward into the Mud Creek Valley. Both sequences followed a northward migration. Men fished and hunted around Seneca Lake, throughout the Genesee River Valley, south along the Chemung River, southwest along the Alleghany River and into the Ohio country, west around the Niagara peninsula, and north of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.14
Within these diverse natural environments, the documentary and archaeological records demonstrate consistency across space and time in Haudenosaunee housing construction and community arrangement. Jesuit missionaries, travelers, and military officers provided detailed descriptions of Indigenous longhouses and villages. These sources highlight uniformity in the width and height of the longhouse as between twenty and twenty-five feet. The length varied greatly, from twenty feet to more than two hundred feet, depending on the purpose of the structure and size of the matrilineal family it housed. The matrilineal family included the matriarch and her husband, her adult daughters and their families, and any unmarried sons. Most archaeologists agree that the basic form and function of contact-era Haudenosaunee households had developed by AD 1350. To build these longhouses, men buried sapling posts, with a diameter between two and four inches, deep enough into the ground to ensure stability of the tall structure. They tied the saplings together across the top, creating an arched roof. Sheets of elm, cedar, or ash bark covered the large rectangular frame. The vertical ends of the longhouse provided communal storage space, especially for food, as well as the only access through narrow doors. Men could extend, or shorten, the longhouse at these storage ends if population changes warranted structural modifications.15
Inside the longhouse, numerous fire pits ran along a central aisle, up to twelve feet wide. The two families on opposite sides of the aisle shared a common fire and the hearth was the focal point of Haudenosaunee daily activities concerning food preparation and consumption. Although multiple families lived within the same longhouse, nuclear-family compartments provided space for individual activity, or a microhousehold, within the larger household. Men built some longhouses without sleeping platforms or dividing walls to provide the community with extra storage space. Archaeological evidence of interior post molds outlining individual apartment space distinguishes these different structures. Above the hearth, movable pieces of bark allowed smoke to escape and let in sunlight during the warmer months. The large upright posts along the central aisle that supported the roof doubled as food-drying racks, particularly for corn and fish. Within the family living quarters, raised platforms served as beds and offered escape from pests, such as rats and fleas. Residents stacked firewood under these bedding areas and constructed platforms overhead for additional food and personal storage space.16
Archaeological evidence from Northern Iroquoian communities with similar settlement patterns to The People of the Longhouse indicates the number of families sheltered under one roof. An excavation of a mid-fourteenth-century Huron-Petun village, the Nodwell site, for example, exposed a Northern Iroquoian village that employed 68 percent of its total floor space for residential use, the remainder for storage. This precontact village had longhouses of comparable size to the historic Haudenosaunee, around ninety feet in length. Well-preserved fire pits running through the center aisle of the longhouse revealed an average of three hearths per ninety-foot longhouse. Therefore, six nuclear families occupied each longhouse in a family apartment space of approximately twenty feet in length and extending from the exterior wall to the center aisle. European visitors, specifically diplomatic and military envoys most interested in military alliances, often calculated the total village population based upon four-to-five family members per estimates of fighting-age men, or “warriors.”17
Palisades protecting a village of longhouses fascinated both European visitors and later archaeologists. Europeans commonly referred to these fortified villages as “castles.” Defensive structures varied from village to village, but similarities arise in their basic construction. An example of two common types of stockades demonstrates the enormous demands placed on the local environment and human laborers. Stockade posts surrounding the village were either twenty inches in diameter and sixteen feet in height, or between three and five inches in diameter but twenty to thirty feet tall. The defensive perimeter offered only one or two narrow entry points into the community. A single-stockade contained one or the other of these post dimensions, while double- or triple-stockades contained both types. Archaeological remains that have exposed more than three lines of defensive posts indicates that residents rebuilt existing structures. Community members could further strengthen palisades with tree trunks placed at the base or by weaving branches in between the posts. In addition to defensive purposes, palisades protected the community from environmental elements, like heavy snow drifts and damaging winds.18
Given the height and width of palisade posts, a village needed at least seven acres of woodlot for a single-stockade and nearly fifteen acres for a double-stockade. To clear this amount of wood, construct a defensive perimeter of several hundred paces, and maintain the structure placed tremendous labor demands on the inhabitants and the nearby environment. During his 1634 visit, van den Bogaert walked the perimeter of the double stockade surrounding the Oneida castle's sixty-six houses and counted “767 steps in circumference.” In addition, he described the remains of a triple palisade at a Mohawk community as “so thick that it was unbelievable that Indians could do it.” More important, van den Bogaert's account of the surrounding natural environment as a “sparsely wooded region,” offers one explanation for why Mohawk men did not repair or maintain the defensive structure.19
Haudenosaunee men, however, did not fortify all their villages, nor did they surround the entire community when they constructed palisades. On the contrary, when choosing a village site, residents carefully examined the natural defenses of a particular topography, and women prioritized sites near productive, Honeoye silt-loam soils, with easy access to water routes for subsistence, communication, trade, and travel. Men repeatedly built villages atop high hills or on peninsulas surrounded by ravines. This planned choice greatly reduced, and sometimes eliminated, the need to construct a stockade. For example, in fourteen excavated Seneca villages with occupation dates between 1525 and 1687 and larger than five acres, the natural topography protected three or even all four sides of eleven of those villages. Historians and archaeologists have routinely interpreted the defensive environment of a village location as evidence of persistent violence. But the lack of defensive structures also indicated peaceful relations with neighbors based on economic, diplomatic, and kinship connections.20
The leading men and women of the community determined the layout of longhouses as compact or dispersed depending on village security needs. Archaeological evidence demonstrates that men often built longhouses close to one another and arranged them in rows with streets running through the town. In times of heightened violence, narrow palisade entrance points restricted access into the community and narrow pathways in the form of streets between longhouses slowed movement within the village and provided an additional layer of protection. Longhouses built near one another also obstructed a full-scale view of the community, making it more difficult for potential invaders to achieve a quick victory. This village design allowed residents to insulate important community leaders and symbolic structures.21
In addition to the defensive benefits of a compact community layout, the structural design of the longhouse further protected residents. The ends of the longhouse offered the only access into the living quarters. Like palisade gates and narrow streets, longhouse entryways constrained the path of human movement. The first entry point into the longhouse was the storage space that also provided insulation against the winter elements. A person then needed to pass through a second entry point to gain access to the longhouse living quarters. These design features throttled movement into the longhouse as any invading force needed to pass through two restricted points. Once inside the longhouse, individual living compartments provided additional hiding spaces. These features worked together to maximize protections for women, children, and the elderly, especially during seasonal subsistence cycles that pulled men away from the main community for months at a time.22
Although many villages utilized the natural defenses of the surrounding topography, staggering daily wood demands stripped the nearby environment. Longhouses and any palisades required continuous repair as wood frames and bark coverings deteriorated. The large weight-bearing posts inside the longhouse simplified replacement of smaller, exterior posts that decayed more rapidly because of their exposure to environmental elements. In addition, rotting wood and long-term occupation eventually brought unwanted pests, especially fleas and rats. Most important, residents needed a constant fuel supply to heat their homes and to prepare food. These environmental factors forced periodic village relocations, ideally every ten to twenty years. Normal village relocation developed in stages and reflected a gradual transfer of people and goods to a new settlement. Once women chose a new location, men began the difficult task of clearing land for cultivation. Men also constructed new longhouses before abandoning a village. As a result, relocation could take years to complete as people sometimes lived in one village but grew crops in another, traveling back and forth from the old to the new.23
Throughout the diverse natural environments of Haudenosaunee homelands, men and women practiced mixed subsistence strategies that emphasized seasonal exploitation of multiple aspects of local and distant ecosystems and combined hunting, fishing, gathering wild flora, and agricultural production. A Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address identifies aspects of the land, environment, and natural world that sustain The People of the Longhouse and offers gratitude for the sacrifices of other-than human kin. In addition, the Thanksgiving Address underscores the connections and reciprocal relationships between humans and other-than humans to each other and to the land. The Haudenosaunee new moon and ceremonial calendar also highlights the annual and mixed subsistence cycle. Between spring and autumn, for example, ceremonies and new moon names reference subsistence activities such as fishing in April and planting in May, to harvesting in October and hunting in November. Other spring and summer new moons note specific wild resources gathered, like maple sugar in March, strawberries in June, and blueberries in July.24
With a growing season that reliably exceeded 120 days without a killing frost, the Haudenosaunee subsistence economy revolved around the production of domesticated crops, especially maize. Haudenosaunee agricultural practices started when women chose land for cultivation. Men prepared the new fields over a few seasons by first girdling the trees after women tapped the spring sap. The following year, they burned the trees and the remaining underbrush. After clearing a new field, horticultural work turned to women, while men turned to village construction and repair projects, interspersed with hunting or fishing. Communities relied on multiple cultivated fields to sustain large populations. Women located communal fields at various distances from the community and tried to conceal them from enemies.25
The agricultural cycle began in the spring when women, working in groups directed by a senior matron and assisted by children and the elderly, planted the “three sisters” of maize, beans, and squash together in the same field. Haudenosaunee women cultivated more than fifteen varieties of maize, sixty types of beans, and eight kinds of squash. The People of the Longhouse trace this agricultural complement to their Origin Story of the descent of Sky Woman to Turtle Island. Sky Woman planted this triad of crops, along with strawberries and tobacco, on the grave of her daughter, who died during childbirth. With Sky Woman's act and the grave of her daughter providing the space and nourishment for Haudenosaunee agricultural subsistence, Haudenosaunee women became intimately and intricately connected to the land as well as to the creation and survival of The People. Women planted the corn in intervals of about three feet, with raised earth around each planting. Within each mound, women also planted beans and squash. The beans grew up the stalk of corn, while the squash spread over the exposed ground. The “three sisters” thus worked together to grow, replenish nutrients, retain soil moisture, and deter weed growth. In addition, women planted smaller family gardens closer to home that included common agricultural products and, later, European varieties such as peas, cucumbers, watermelons, and muskmelons, to name only a few. Women tended the crops throughout the spring and summer, rotating from one agricultural field to another. After the fall harvest, they dried the produce for winter storage. Until spring, the community subsisted on a diet of corn soup seasoned with fruits and vegetables and the occasional fish or meat.26
Europeans routinely disparaged Indigenous agricultural fields for their disorganized appearance and overgrown weeds as women continuously grew multiple crops without tilling the land. These practices, however, produced high crop yields that successfully fed Indigenous communities with minimal effort and reduced the loss of nutrients in the soil. Declining soil productivity, therefore, was not a major factor in forcing village relocation. More important, Indigenous women's agricultural practices produced higher crop yields than their colonial male counterparts who plowed the soil. The size and productivity of Haudenosaunee fields and harvests astonished Europeans who observed corn stalks more than sixteen feet in height and produced cobs nearly eighteen inches in length. The volume of planted and harvested maize, combined with its high caloric value and the ability to dry and store it for consumption throughout the seasonal cycle, made this crop the most important food source in the Haudenosaunee diet. Communities often stored a one- to two-year surplus of maize to protect against an environmental disaster or enemy invasion.27
After the harvest, the main hunting season began in October and lasted until midwinter when deep snows hindered mobility. Except for the occasional bear confined in a small wooden structure until fat enough to consume, Haudenosaunee men and women raised no domesticated animals to supplement their diet. The archaeological evidence suggests a heavy dependence on hunting white-tailed deer, bear, beaver, elk, turkey, and a variety of other small, fur-bearing mammals. Men and older boys traveled a few days from the main village to favored hunting camps and fishing stations where they might remain for several weeks or months. A few women accompanied the hunters to prepare food, fetch water and firewood, and retrieve the kill. At times, entire families relocated, particularly during periods of environmental distress. Most women and children, however, remained in the village or visited their own resource acquisition sites to gather seasonal roots and nuts for food and oil, particularly from the numerous beech, hickory, walnut, and oak trees. Nuts gathered throughout the autumn season, until snows concealed them, provided essential fats and protein in lean winter months.28
During the spring and fall, men and older boys followed the seasonal migrations of birds and waterfowl to trap geese, ducks, passenger pigeons, and robins, as well as the birds’ eggs. Spring also initiated the long fishing season when men, occasionally joined by their families, headed for favored camps. The Mohawk and Seneca River corridors, the Finger Lakes, and Lake Ontario provided a nearly year-round supply of fish, and men targeted the most productive sites. Onondaga fishers, for example, developed numerous stations along key rifts of the Seneca-Oneida-Oswego River system. Archaeologists and historians have mapped at least ten Onondaga fishing stations between Cross Lake, in the west, and Chittenango Creek, in the east. In the summer of 1654, as Father Simon le Moine traveled along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario to visit the main Onondaga community south of Onondaga Lake, he repeatedly encountered small hamlets and villages. Fishers eagerly awaited the annual spring runs of salmon and eel, but they also caught bass, brill, bullhead, carp, catfish, herring, perch, pike, smelt, sturgeon, trout, whitefish, crayfish, clams, and turtles’ eggs. Men fished during all hours of the day and night, using spears, harpoons, and hooks, and lighting fires in the bottoms of canoes at night. Men also constructed w-shaped stone weirs that trapped fish at both converging points: eels swimming downriver and salmon swimming upriver.29
One prolific Onondaga fishing station, Otihatangué, on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Salmon River, highlighted the importance and diversity of fish in the Haudenosaunee diet. In 1655, Jesuit missionaries Joseph Chaumont and Claude Dablon described the seasonal variety of fish: “In the spring, as soon as the snows melt, it is full of gold colored fish; next come carp, and finally … a flat fish, half a foot long, and a very fine flavor. Then comes the brill; and, at the end of May, when strawberries are ripe, sturgeon are killed with hatchets. All the rest of the year until winter, the salmon furnishes food to the village …. [T]oward the end of winter, [the natives] break the ice and catch fish, or, rather, draw them up by the bucketful.”30
Given the missionaries’ favorable assessment of Otihatangué, the French attempted to establish a permanent colony in 1656. The French, however, quickly renamed the landing “La Grande Famine” after starving colonists found no relief from their hunger. According to Europeans, fish sometimes failed to appear at the fishing camps and were often absent at the mouth of the Salmon River. But the rivers were not “altogether destitute of fish,” as French officer Baron de Lahontan described them during a 1690s visit. Rather, the spawning runs had already moved upriver. The struggles that some European newcomers experienced underscored the extensive ecosystem knowledge of Haudenosaunee fishers who closely followed seasonal migrations and spawning runs and manipulated water routes to maximize their catch.31
As men left for their fishing stations, women turned to the nearby forest to gather ripening fruits and medicinal plants. Wild strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, huckleberries, gooseberries, black berries, cranberries, and grapes, as well as wild and cultivated cherry, pear, plum, peach, and apple trees provided annual supplies of fresh and dried fruits. Women dried the fruits on rocks and mats, or by the heat next to the hearth, and stored them for winter consumption. Archaeological evidence demonstrates that women and children also traveled to favored warm-weather camps for seasonal resource acquisition. The Piestrak and Spaulding Lake archaeological sites, for example, were contemporaneous Seneca seasonal camps located near one another and in use circa AD 1450. Although the two camps served different functions, the numerous fruit and agricultural produce remains of maize and beans reflect seasonal and repeated occupation, a large female presence, with children in tow, and underscore the gendered mobility required in mixed subsistence practices. Women, children, and family groups visited these camps annually, beginning in early spring, and returned to collect and process available fruits and nuts after the agricultural harvest. The sites also served as storage facilities for produce women transported to the main community when needed.32
When women repeatedly visited seasonal resource acquisition camps, they confirmed their deep environmental and ecological knowledge of their homeland. Corey Village, for example, embodies the knowledge and connection of Cayuga women to their land. Located along Paines Creek above the eastern shore of Cayuga Lake, Corey Village occupies a microzone of temperatures warmer than surrounding areas. The space is also one of the few in the area with exceptional Honeoye silt-loam soil for agricultural production. As a result, women successfully managed a 1,500 peach-tree orchard in a northern climate. Most important, Cayuga women reaffirmed their spiritual connection to the land when they harvested and processed numerous medicinal herbs, taking from and giving back in their reciprocal relationship with the land. Sporadic and seasonal occupation of distant resource acquisition camps could last from only a few years, to as long as the nearby larger community remained occupied. Resource acquisition camps also offered shelter if an enemy invasion or fire destroyed the main community. The seasonal subsistence cycle repeated when women returned their efforts to the spring planting of agricultural fields.33
Just as Haudenosaunee mixed subsistence economies fully exploited local environments, these strategies also guarded against a complete dependence on either hunting or agriculture. A variety of environmental crises, such as droughts, floods, and early or late frosts, as well as epidemic diseases and enemy invasions, each had the potential to reduce significantly, or even to eliminate, agricultural output for the entire season. During periods of unfavorable environmental conditions, villages relied on their stored surplus of dried agricultural produce and modified their subsistence emphasis. Women, for example, shifted their focus away from large fields of maize, beans, and squash and turned their agricultural labor to gathering wild flora. Crop failures also prompted families to disperse earlier in the season to favored hunting or fishing stations. Severe droughts, however, dried up lakes and ponds and further exacerbated pressures on local wildlife. Although this secondary subsistence system placed greater demands on local wildlife, subsistence patterns returned to normal when environmental conditions recovered. As a result, animal populations quickly rebounded from intense or sustained hunting following one to two years of reduced hunting. In extreme subsistence crises, communities also turned to neighboring villages for relief. Following the Great Law principle of the Dish with One Spoon, The People of the Longhouse shared their food resources with friends and neighbors in need. Throughout the seventeenth century, the documentary record of diplomats, traders, military officials, and missionaries, both visiting and captive, demonstrates that years of famine were few and far between.34
Long-standing settlement patterns and subsistence strategies—as revealed through oral tradition, cultural practices like the Dish with One Spoon, Indigenous maps, and archaeology as well as through the eyes of European colonizers—underscore the centrality of Haudenosaunee connections to the land, mobility, the intimate knowledge of men and women about environmental spaces and ecosystems, the reciprocal responsibilities and obligations between human and other-than human kin, and spatial relations with neighbors. In addition, extensive longhouses filled with matrilineal kin and large agricultural fields managed by senior matrons highlight the critical role of women to produce, nurture, and sustain life for The People of the Longhouse. These long-standing practices allowed flexibility to make decisions based on current and changing community needs and environmental realities. As Haudenosaunee men and women confronted new challenges in the early decades of sustained European contact, they relied on their long-standing cultural practices of reciprocity and flexibility to adapt and find creative ways to strengthen and enhance their lives.