Cayuga Iroquois

This essay analyzes the colonial era documentary record for corroboration of Haudenosaunee
(Iroquois) oral tradition regarding the kaswentha (as currently understood and represented in
the form of a Two-Row wampum belt). Eighteen different recitations of the tradition appear
in documentary sources from 1656 to 1755. These findings demonstrate substantial convergence
and complementarity between two perspectives on the past and suggest that the comparison
and integration of indigenous oral tradition and documentary research may yield a
more robust understanding of the past than would be the case of either undertaken alone.

to be presented at NYSAA 99th Annual Meeting, Watertown,  NY

This paper examines faunal exploitation at the Klinko Site, a prehistoric Cayuga village located near Interlaken, Seneca County, on the southwestern side of Cayuga Lake. The range of species, relative abundances, and taphonomic data were examined to determine patterns of faunal use at the site, seasonality, and disposal of faunal remains. While many characteristics of the faunal assemblage were typical for Cayuga and other Iroquoian sites of the time, other aspects such as a large number of frog and toad remains and evidence for canid ceremonialism were seen. The significance of these finds are discussed, and the Klinko assemblage is compared with other contemporary Cayuga sites on the eastern side of the lake. This work will form the basis for much large faunal study of the Cayuga, with the goal of creating a faunal sequence for each of the Six Nations in New York State, and from which additional comparisons and observations can be made to fully understand faunal exploitation from the prehistoric to the Contact periods.

Since 1980, the Cayuga Nation has worked through various U.S. politico-legal mechanisms to establish sovereignty over land taken from them by European settlers and their descendants in what is today New York State beginning in the 1700s. When, in 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review a lower court's dismissal of their case, the Cayugas began purchasing land they claim from local (non-Cayuga) property owners. Relatedly, they petitioned the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to place the land that they collectively own into federal trust, which would exempt them from various taxes. These efforts have engendered strong opposition from elements of the non-Native population, particularly the organization Upstate Citizens for Equality (UCE). This article interrogates the discourse URL: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rtep

This article examines social pluralism within politically autonomous 17th-century Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) communities. Haudenosaunee groups are known to have incorporated significant numbers of outsiders by processes of individual and group adoption. This article assesses the dynamics of social difference by looking at atypical practices in satellite communities in Seneca, Cayuga, and Mohawk territories. While previous scholars equated such practices with the presence of outsiders, atypical practices and the identities and labor relations associated with them are worth considering in a more fluid sense. Who would have continued, discontinued, or adopted practices that stood out from those of the majority? What sort of social roles or inequities went along with these sorts of distinctions? Documentary and archaeological data from these satellite communities suggest that social difference was pronounced in mortuary ritual, but muted in domestic settings, and that these differences were unlikely to reflect substantial social inequality.

Recent anthropological work demonstrates rising concern for understanding group-level autonomy, particularly the maintenance of opposition to expanding states and economic systems. Archaeologists are well poised to contribute to this effort, especially when aided by renewed attention to Eric Wolf’s concept of process.  Wolf’s concept can be applied to indigenous-driven, broad-scale processes of intercommunity connection to help
understand the generation and maintenance of autonomy in the face of colonial encroachment. Archaeologically informed reexamination of the relationships between the principal Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) homeland towns and satellite communities during 1600–1775 provides a case study. In many parts of the Iroquois homeland, large towns were surrounded by nearby small satellite villages; Iroquois people also founded communities distant from the homeland, moving into what is now Ontario, Quebec, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Both nearby and distant Iroquois satellites manifested incorporation of outside groups and colonization of new territories—Native-led processes that helped maintain Iroquois autonomy.

During the early contact period in Northeastern North America, Native groups traded with both other Native groups and a variety of Europeans. Early trade began on a small scale with all parties eager to gain goods. Investigations at Carman, a Cayuga Iroquoian (Haudenosaunee) site occupied in the late 1500s, produced a quantity of shell beads, along with a small number of metal items refashioned from European copper and brass fragments. This paper is an analysis of the worked and unworked shell from the site. The majority of shell beads found at Carman are discoidal, likely used for personal ornamentation, and the standardized shapes of these beads hint at manufacture using shell column blanks traded west from the Atlantic coast. In addition, the large quantity of shell material (more than 50 beads and 675 g of unworked shell) found at this domestic site, along with apparent bead blanks, suggests that shell bead manufacture occurred at Carman. The shell and shell bead data situate the Cayuga within local and regional trade networks. This analysis also sheds light on changing processes of trade, manufacture, and adornment in the early contact period.

This essay analyzes the colonial era documentary record for corroboration of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) oral tradition regarding the kaswentha (as currently understood and represented in the form of a Two-Row wampum belt). Eighteen different recitations of the tradition appear in documentary sources from 1656 to 1755. These findings demonstrate substantial convergence and complementarity between two perspectives on the past and suggest that the comparison and integration of indigenous oral tradition and documentary research may yield a more robust understanding of the past than would be the case of either undertaken alone.