Breaking of the Great League of Peace and Power
The Iroquoians were a dominant linguistic group of Native inhabitants of the St. Lawrence valley and the Great Lakes region. Five nations of the Iroquoian-speaking group created the Great League of Peace and Power. This group inhabited the lands between Lake Ontario and the Hudson River. Their settlement comprises from Canada to current day New York. These Five Nations consisted of the Onondaga, Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida, and Cayuga tribes. When the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora joined the Iroquois Confederacy in 1722, they became known as the Six Nations. The Six Nations were not powerful enough to withstand the stronghold of the American Revolutionary War. The Iroquois were forced to divide
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This was a time of incessant warfare among the Iroquois (Richter, 1992). This league had no intentions or desires to wage wars. Their main and sole purpose was to preserve peace. Religious practices were very important to them. They operated more on religious practices versus political ones. Peace war their state of mind. The Six Nations’ alliance extended across their combined territory. The Great Council, restored peace, on whom a mourning war might be waged. Mourning War assured the spiritual power of the clan would be preserved. The Europeans and the Iroquois caused drastic changes within the Iroquois society and their methodology of warfare (Snow, 1996). Even though their alliance extended across their combined territory, their alliance wasn’t unified toward its neighbors. This caused their Iroquoians to become fierce enemies to the people outside their …show more content…
At first, the Iroquois tried to remain neutral and stay out of the war. As time went on, the Six Nations became concerned about their land claims and white encroachment on their lands. The Iroquois liked having access to European goods and the outcome of the war would affect their access to these goods. Seneca Chief Cornplanter and his half-brother, the religious leader Handsome lake, wanted to remain neutral. Joseph Brant, a Mohawk leader, wanted to side with the British. The Six Nations officially ended its policy of neutrality which resulted in the consequent split of the Iroquois Confederacy in the war. Choosing sides was more of a choice for survival. It is still unclear why each of the tribes picked the sides that they did. The slip and the involvement brought the split of the Great League of Peace and Power. “The Revolutionary War and its outcomes laid the foundation for the destruction of the Native American tribes east of the Mississippi” (Neimeyer,