ABSTRACT
The story of the Great Peace explains the union of the original five nations of the Hodenoshone, or the Iroquois Confederacy, which became North America’s first democracy. The Iroquois League, which is now called the Six Nations, unites the Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk, Seneca peoples, as well as the Tuscarora people who joined in 1724. Their homelands stretch around the eastern Great Lake region from New York and on into Canada. The Great Peace was forged in the 1400s through the efforts of the prophet Deganaweda, a Wyandot (Huron), and his spokesperson, Hiawatha (also spelled Hiyenwatha) of the Onondaga. (Hiawatha is not to be confused with the hero of Longfellow’s epic poem, The Song of Hiawatha. Longfellow borrowed the character from Henry Row Schoolcraft’s The Hiawatha Legends who mistakenly used the name to recount the Chippewa folktale of Nanabozho.) Before the time of the Prophet of the Great Peace, the five nations had a history of blood feuds and endless warfare that had taken such a toll on the people that it was said that even the moon was afraid to travel at night. Deganaweda and Hiawatha would change everything.
