1.7: Chief Canaqueese, Fighter and Orator of the Haudenosaunee

Their homelands stood at a crucial chokepoint between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, placing them in a unique position to either negotiate for what they wanted...or take it by force.  These options of diplomacy or violence best describes the subject of this episode: Chief Canaqueese, a man of Mohawk and Dutch lineage who engaged in plenty of each during his lifetime.  His life of warfare, mixed with a desire to attempt to end this continual way of life, provides a vantage point through which to explore the Haudenosaunee and the power they held along the North American interior in the 1600's and 1700's.   

Key People
Chief Canaqueese, Mohawk-Dutch diplomat and fighter
Haudenosaunee, "People of the Longhouse"

Key Events
"Beaver Wars"
"Chimney Speech"
Grand Council of Montreal 

The third season of History: Beyond the Textbook focuses on the stories of individuals who shaped "America's Crucial Years" of 1783-1790, and runs from October 8-December 24. Catch up on Season One, "America's Colonial Era," and Season Two, "America's Revolution," wherever you listen to your podcasts!

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Transcript

Much has been written about Dutch settlement of, and English acquisition of, what is now New York.  If Indigenous nations factor into the story, it’s normally one of two ways: either through the anecdote of how Manhattan Island was sold” to the Dutch for the equivalent of $24, or that the Haudenosaunee were the dominant presence in upstate New York when Europeans arrived.  Never heard the phrase “Haudenosaunee” before?  You may have heard the phrase “Iroquois Confederacy,” or “Iroquois League,” or simply “Iroquois,” terminology that we will shore up very shortly.  Of the now six nations that comprise the Haudenosaunee, one is the Oneida, and I grew up near, and still live and teach, in close proximity to the lands of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin.  I grew up in an era where Act 31 mandated the teaching of Native American tribes and cultures to all Wisconsin children, and I certainly remember covering this topic.  However, the intricacies of their relations with settlers wasn’t explored as much as today, which leads me to today’s episode.  The Haudenosaunee aren’t always mentioned as much as the Algonquin of the east, or even the Sioux that form a large portion of the later American narrative, but they were a powerful people who came to dominate the region in which they lived and serve as somewhat of a “buffer” zone between English and French land claims.  Recall that the Dutch were the initial European presence in Haudenosaunee territory, and you’re beginning to understand the varying cultures that came together in the colonial era.  They fought, they traded, they learned from one another, they formed relationships with one another, one of which resulted in the subject of this episode.  Using Chief Canaqueese, a half-Mohawk, half-Dutchman, as our example, today’s episode of History: Beyond the Textbook explores the mighty Haudenousanuee...how they fought, debated, lived, and strove to dominate along North America’s Great Lakes.

Act One: The Haudenosaunee

Our story begins with a background of the greater alliance to which Chief Canoqueese belonged, the Haudenosaunee.  Depending on your source, they have gone by numerous names: the English called them the Five Nations, the French called them the Iroquois Confederacy, and the Algonquin called them the “Iroquois,” which translates to “rattlesnake” and refers to the stealth nature of their hunting and combat practices.  For the purpose of clarity, “Haudenosaunee” will be our term, which has been translated as “people of the longhouse,” because it is an Iroquoian word and more accurately reflects the nations involved in the alliance.  The homeland of the Haudenosaunee, Iroquoia, is a land that stretches roughly from the Connecticut River in the east to Lake Erie in the West.  When learning about the Haudenosaunee, the common generalization about their land is that it was and is centered in the Finger Lakes region of what is now upstate New York, and while this isn;t necessarily incorrect, it misses some of the rationale regarding why they ended up becoming such a dominant force.  Numerous additional rivers, such as the Susquehanna, Ohio, Hudson, and St. Lawrence also connected Iroquoia to surrounding lands, so trade and communication could occur.  It was via these connections that the Three Sisters of corn, beans, and squash entered Haudenosaunee lands and helped sustain and build their population.  It’s important to note that the original nations that comprised the Haudenosaunee were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and the Seneca, with the Tuscarora joining in the 1720’s.  Before we understand how these nations came together, it’s important to note that all Haudenosaunee were Iroquois, which is a cultural and linguistic group, but not all Iroquios were Haudenosaunee.  Most notably, the more northern Huron, as well as the more southern Cherokee, are also Iroquois, but were not members of this alliance.

We’ve got the geography, so it’s time to understand how the Haudenosaunee came to be.  This origin story, passed down through centuries of oral tradition, is an incredible epic that takes days to transmit in its full form.  What we’ll attempt to do here is simplify this story to shine a light on why the Haudenosaunee were viewed in more familiar terms by English settlers, and eventually, colonial leaders.  The nations that comprise the Haudenosaunee were in a state of constant warfare with no clear end in sight.  Historians have placed this time frame in the context of what were called “mourning wars,” where loved ones replaced their deceased family members with prisoners of war.  This replacement is physical and spiritual, and depending on the situation, the captive may be killed as revenge or adopted into their new family.  Such warfare gripped Iroquoia prior to the revelations of the prophet Deganawida, known as The Peacemaker, who along with Hiawatha, spread a message of peace.  An arrow was used for symbolism: Deganawida took a singular arrow and broke it in half.  He then took five arrows and bound them together and attempted the same action.  His message was simple: “One arrow is weak and thus can be broken, but five arrows are sturdy and strong.  This represents why we must unify, for if we are together as one, we can remain unbroken.”  The two brought their message to each nation, one by one.  As the story goes, the Mohawk were hesitant, but eventually accepted.  This may be related to Hiawatha’s influence, as he was connected to the Mohawk either by adoption or marriage; either way, this surely helped them get on board.  Next came the Oneida, then the Cayuga, and finally the Seneca.  The two men moved from east to west with the only hiccup coming from the centrally located Onondaga.  The hold-up was the influence of Tadohado, an alleged sorcerer who had been responsible for the deaths of Hiawatha’s wife and daughters.  The two men eventually were able to clear Tadohado’s mind so he could understand the importance of their message, and all of the pieces were finally in place.  Underneath the Tree of Great Peace in the territory of the Onondaga Nation, the Great Law of Peace and Power was officially revealed and the Grand Council was formed.  This Grand Council was initially conceived to prevent further bloodshed among these Five Nations, and each had a role to play.  As the geographic and symbolic center of the alliance, given the location of the Great Tree of Peace, the Onandoga are the “people of the mountain,” and in their role as Firekeepers they remain the center of Haudenosaunee life today.  The borders were protected by the Mohawk, the “people of the flint,” in the east, and the Seneca, the “people of the great hill,” in the west.  On each side of the Onondaga were the Oneida, “the people of the standing stone,” and the Cayuga, the “people at the landing.”  Decisions were reached via consensus, and use of force within the Haudenosaunee was generally unnecessary to compel decision-making.  There is debate regarding when this all occurred; some scholars place the date at around 1450, while others have more recently dated it at 1142 when a rare total solar eclipse engulfed the region.  Regardless of when it formally began, this type of representative democracy was well-established when European settlement began.    

The Haudenosaunee were now at peace with one another, but this certainly couldn’t be said for those who were not part of this alliance.  They felt that those who had not accepted this Great Law of Peace needed to be treated with open hostility.  Thus, the Haudenosaunee were in a near perpetual state of war, often carried out as mourning wars, at the time of increasing European contact.  The Mohawk in particular had a reputation as fierce warriors, to the point where they evoked true terror in their neighbors, the Western Abenakis.  Even the English grew to respect and fear the Mohawk, as the mere threat of their participation in any conflict would cause settlers to shudder.  And attacking their villages wasn’t as simple as attacking the Algonquin villages of the Eastern Seaboard: Haudenonsaunee villages were well fortified hilltop settlements that were traditionally impenetrable.  So you’ve got unity among these Five Nations, who happen to be geographically well-positioned to control the potential trade among the nations of the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Coast, with a system of organization that appears to be clearly defined regarding their leadership…and they were constantly at war.  Little wonder that Europeans sought to establish friendly trade relations with the Haudenosaunee, much as the Dutch negotiated such a relationship with the Mohawk at Fort Orange at the site of modern-day Albany, New York, in the early 1620’s; the English followed about one decade later at the Mohawk’s initiative, but diseases took their toll on the Haudenosaunee population.  The dual pressures of attempting to control and benefit from European trade while replenishing their population loss due to disease led to a dramatic intensification of the occurrence of mourning wars.  Because of the desire of European traders to gain access to highly lucrative beaver pelts, this lengthy conflict became known as the “Beaver Wars,” and the diplomatic efforts surrounding them form the backdrop for the emergence of today’s subject.

Act Two: Between Two Worlds

So we’re looking at this individual who is rarely mentioned in an era that receives scant attention because…why, exactly?  Well, the coasts usually receive much attention during the colonial era, but the inhabitants of the Great Lakes and the conflicts between those living in the region don’t usually enter the dominant narrative until the creation of the Northwest Territory by the Confederation Congress in 1787, although sometimes Pontiac’s War shines a light on this area.  This region was teeming with life and culture, and the individual through which we shall view it is known as Chief  Canaqueese, a man whose mother was Mohawk, but whose father was Dutch, rendering him an interesting manifestation of the mixed-race society that Samuel de Champlain hoped would come to dominate North America.  But whereas the Métis, or mixed-race populace, were generally viewed as a normal fixture of France’s colonial experience, the Dutch appear to have viewed Canaqueese and other such individuals with suspicion.  As his mother was Mohawk, and the Haudenosaunee were matrilineal with regard to Clan affiliation, Canaqueese was identified almost solely by his Mohawk lineage.  Certainly his Dutch background played a role in his ability to serve as an interpreter and understand Dutch life, but Dutch sources only refer to him as a Mohawk, so we are left to believe that he was viewed by the greater colonial world in this way.  His life tells us much about the misperceptions that Europeans had about their Indigenous neighbors, but also reveals how adept the Haudenosaunee were at diplomacy and controlling the geopolitical landscape as they saw fit.

Chief Canaqueese, or Smits Jan, as the Dutch called him, was born at some point in the 1600’s, although we’re not quite sure when.  We’ve already made his lineage clear, and he was certainly part of a larger picture wherein Dutch traders entered into relationships with Mohawk women.  They didn’t always honor the rituals required of such unions as Haudanasaunee custom dictated.  However, said offspring of mixed-race couples were a natural effect of such unions, and Canaquese was one of them.  Given that the French Jesuits were establishing a presence to bring Catholicism to North America, and that the French had always been weary of the Haudenosanuee and Mohawk in particular, its little wonder that Canaqueese is first described by the French in 1650 as “an execrable issue of sin, the monstrous offspring of a Dutch Heretic father and a Pagan woman.”  This source also mentions that Canaqueese was the leader of a Mohawk attack on the French settlement at Trois-Rivières, which was part of a continuing pattern of Mohawk attacks on New France and her Indigenous allies, so here was a man who arrived on the scene with combat experience and as a respected fighter.  Yet his work as a diplomat receives the most attention in the available sources.  It’s absolutely worth mentioning that his complex background must have led to the conclusion that he was a logical choice to deal with Europeans…even the hated French.  Most famously, Canaqueese led two separate delegations into Canada for the purpose of informing the French about whom they should be negotiating with when dealing with the Haudenosaunee.

At this moment, it’s important to understand that another Mohawk ambassador, Kiotsaeton, had led a delegation to Trois-Rivières six years earlier and met with New France’s governor, as well as the governor’s Indigenous allies.  Kiotsaeton claimed that he wanted to put an end to the continual warfare between the two sides and establish trade…to become, as he put it, “one nation.”  The Haudenosaunee may have sought to leave Canada alone with this outreach, but they also began blocking French efforts to trade south of Haudenosaunee territory.  They also intensified their push to force all French allies west of Lake Michigan into modern-day Wisconsin.  Thus, a precedent was set for their two-fold policy of negotiating with their foes while simultaneously utilizing their superior military forces.  So when Canaqueese led his missions to Canada in 1654, he made it abundantly clear that, as the guardians of the eastern door of the Haudenosuanee, they, the Mohawk, were the ones that the French should be dealing with for trading purposes, not the Onondaga.  In what became known as the “Chimney Speech,” Canaqueese implied that by continuing to bypass the eastern door and deal with the geographic center of the confederation at Onondaga, the French were in fact entering through the “roof and chimney,” and thus might get blinded by the smoke or fall straight to the bottom of the metaphorical cabin.  Better to enter through the cabin door that was geographically closest to New France: the Mohawk.  Allegedly, the Jesuit who recorded this speech ended up traveling west to deal directly with the Onondaga despite Canaqueese’s warnings: this Jesuit and his party were captured by the Mohawk.  Buoyed by their fierce reputation and assisted by their worldly leader, the Mohawk were willing to use coercive persuasion to secure European trade and control the land that facilitated said trade.

Act Three: Striving for Peace

Chief Canaqueese made a name for himself by fighting against New France and her allies while simultaneously arguing in favor of a peace that would recognize Mohawk supremacy in the lands straddling the St. Lawrence River Valley and the eastern Great Lakes region.  So, how did he follow this up and further the interests of his people, and himself?  During this peace, he continued to pursue the goal of absorbing the Huron into the Haudenosaunee sphere of influence, which was consistent with their method of using force against those who had not accepted the Great Law of Peace.  He entered the historical record again in 1656 under these auspices when he led an attack against Huron and Ottawa warriors at Lac des Deux Montagnes, or Lake of Two Mountains, on the Ottawa River in Quebec,where a Jesuit priest was shot in the back, thus breaking his spine.  French trader Nicholas Perrot recorded that this Jesuit had actually been murdered by a French participant in the Mohawk war party, but both accounts make it clear that the Mohawk-led war party was responsible for the ill-fortune of this Jesuit.  Canaqueese would fight in Canada twice more in the 1660’s, carrying on the fighting reputation he had earned decades earlier.  

We do know that in 1663, Canaqueese attempted to use his unique background for long-term Mohawk gain.  Several Dutch colonists were captured by members of the Esopus nation in June, so Canaqueese went to Fort Orange and offered to assist in securing their release.  He managed to negotiate the release…of one lone captive, rendering his diplomatic efforts a failure.  He did suggest that force could be used to free those who remained, but Dutch authorities refused.  It has been hypothesized that he hoped to use his background and knowledge of Dutch culture to build more of a bridge between himself and the powers that be at Fort Orange.  This would theoretically have given him more clout in Mohawk society, but it was not meant to be as Fort Orange had no desire to involve the Mohawk in this war.  They went on to claim that Canaqueese made his offer without consulting senior Mohawk chiefs, which may have been true given the current Mohawk involvement in additional wars.  This metis man was the only Mohawk who seemed eager to help the Dutch, and Dutch records don’t even acknowledge his true heritage.  He was certainly a true Mohawk since the Dutch, for whatever reasons they may have had, didn’t recognize him as one of their own.

Subsequent events demonstrated that even though the Haudenosaunee were subject to the Great Law of Peace and abided by the decisions of the Grand Council, unity was not always the order of the day.  The Mohawk and Onondaga differed in their views on the French, with the Mohawk taking a more militaristic stance and the Onondaga willing to be conciliatory in the name of trade.  By 1665, western members of the Haudenosaunee had even made peace with the French, but the Mohawk had not.  This led New France’s governor to lead a force against them, which was personally halted by Canaqueese and his warriors, but the subsequent peace treaty signed at Quebec was rendered useless by the Mohawk capture and killing of several Frenchmen.  The Mohawk may have been alarmed by the alliance between their Dutch trading partners and their hated French enemies, but Canaqueese acted to prevent further conflict: he intercepted the French forces bent on revenge and released the captives as a gesture of good faith.  It worked, and Mohawk country was to remain untouched…until 1666.  Officials in Albany, now under English control, arranged for Mohawk and French representatives to meet, and Canaqueese even offered to go to Québec to illustrate that there was no ill will…but really, his role would be that of a hostage.  Three months after his arrival, a good portion of Mohawk territory was burned to the ground by the French, and Canaqueese could do little about it.  He was sent home with a list of French demands, and New York’s governor even sought out a meeting with this metis middleman to discuss the current situation, but this meeting never occurred and Canaqueese ended up returning to Quebec the next year.  He was followed by additional Mohawk envoys who requested…the presence of Jesuit priests on their lands.  Members of the same order whom the Haudenosaunee had sought to banish decades earlier because they interfered with Haudenosaunee operations in their lands.  This relationship was now inverted, and it appeared as though Canaqueese had finally achieved his peace.

Act Four: A Diplomatic End

So, what else did this Mohawk and Dutch individual accomplish, and why is he worth remembering?  After serving as a messenger between Albany and New France, his name appears sparsely in official state records and he and other Mohawk would settle near Montreal after engaging in said negotiations between the two.  Two decades later, his name appears again as one of the “Christian Indians” who fought with New France against his Seneca kinsmen.  During this interim, the Haudenosaunee of the Finger Lakes region had become English allies in a variety of conflicts, solidifying their geographic borders and gaining much-desired weapons in the process.  Canaqueese wasn’t part of this alliance, and his voluntary relocation was part of a larger pattern of Haudenosaunee migration to the St. Lawrence Valley.  Due to the efforts of the French Jesuits, whose presence, recall, was requested by Canaqueese and his Mohawk envoys to Quebec in 1667, some Haudenosaunee had converted to Catholicism by the time of their resettlement. Since Canaqueese was listed among these “Christian Indians” in the 1680’s, we can absolutely assume that these Jesuits played a role in his newfound, presumably Catholic, faith.  What’s most interesting is that this conversion was a departure from both sides of his lineage: the Mohawk had spent years preventing the Jesuits from setting up shop on their lands, while the French referred to Canaqueese’s father as a “Dutch Heretic” based on the Calvinist traditions of the Netherlands.  This means that he was not only settling in a new land, but he was embracing a wholly new way of life, one he had once spent ample time resisting.

At any rate, Chief Canaqueese was listed as one of New France’s allies in the latter’s fight against the Seneca in 1687.  Five years earlier, New France’s governor had sought the assistance of what they deemed “Laurentian Iroquois,” or those living in the St. Lawrence Valley (for our purposes, we’ll distinguish those living in the traditional homelands as “Haudenosaunee,” and those who had migrated to Canada as “Laurentians”).   These individuals didn’t demonstrate much eagerness to actually engage in combat, opting instead for verbal threats with official Haudenosaunee representatives.  The 1687 campaign of which Canaqueese was a recorded participant was masterminded by Governor Denounville, who arrived in Canada two years earlier with explicit instructions to eliminate any threat of Haudenosaunee aggression, driven by the supposed Seneca-led raids on French and Algonquin settlements in the Mississippi Valley.  Over 220 of Canaqueese’s Laurentian Iroquois joined an additional 130 so-called ”Christian Indians” along with over 1,000 French-led forces to preemptively strike at the Seneca.  En route to their intended destination in Haudenosaunee territory, the French-Laurentian party encountered Haudenosaunee scouts, official Oneida and Onondaga representatives, and the residents of multiple Cayuga villages: all were imprisoned, distressing the Lauentian contingent to the point where up to 100 deserted the French before the attack began.  We have no way of knowing whether Canaqueese was one of these deserters, whether he stuck around to skirmish with the Seneca, or if he left the French in the wake of their 9-day rage-filled destruction of Seneca villages.  The fact that Canaqueese and over 200 converted Haudenosaunee were willing to ally with their former enemies against their cultural kin demonstrate the complexities of the political situation along the Great Lakes in the late 1600’s.  With his participation in this final event, Chief Canqueese disappears from the historical record. 

However, just because Canaqueese no longer shows up in the records doesn’t mean that his story is completely closed.  Keep in mind that Canaqueese’s life symbolizes not only the blending of Indigenous and European influences that were coalescing into a new society in North America, but also the struggle of those two worlds to use warfare and diplomacy to preserve what they knew and held dear.  In the wake of the French destruction of Seneca property, the Laurentians sent envoys to their former homelands to offer their condolences, and the two sides seem to have spent the better part of two years attempting to avoid fighting one another.  However, those who allied with the English and those who allied with the French spent a large portion of the next decade caught up in King William’s War, yet another in a long series of wars in which the rival English and French continued their lengthy feud.  The Laurentians and the Haudenosaunee still sought to avoid pitched battles with one another, and these efforts certainly didn’t go unnoticed.  They were able to play both England and French authorities off one another, and even declared military neutrality at the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701, a conference that involved New France and representatives of nearly 40 Indigenous nations.  The Haudenosaunee were among those represented and pledged their neutrality in future instances of war between France and England.  This didn’t mean that they would cease all involvement in warfare, as we know they were feared and respected as great warriors, but they would call the diplomatic shots and form new alliances as they saw fit.  The Haudenosaunee ‘s ability to fight, with a preference for negotiations, all conducted from a position of power, can definitely be an extension of the multi-faceted efforts of Chief Canaqueese.

Next week, on History: Beyond the Textbook, we return to New England and will focus on another conflict pitting Indigenous fighters against English enemies, and it somewhat serves as an extension of episode 1.4 that focused on Stephen Hopkins and Plymouth.  However, we won’t examine it from the lens of a combatant as we explore the life of Mary Rowlandson, a prisoner-of-war whose chronicling of her experience as a Wampanoag captive in King Philip’s War launched a new genre unique to the English colonial experience: the captivity narrative.