Great Peacemaker

[6] Arthur C. Parker's book The Constitution of the Five Nations describes how the Great Peacemaker travelled to different settlements to spread his message of peace.

At one settlement, when asked who he was, the Great Peacemaker answered, "I am the man who is called on earth by the name of Dekanahwideh, and I have just come from the west and am now going east for the purpose of propagating peace so that the shedding of human blood might cease among you."

The Great Peacemaker's follower Hiawatha, an Onondaga renowned for his oratory, helped him achieve his vision of bringing the tribes together in peace.

According to the archaeologist Dean Snow, the Great Peacemaker converted Hiawatha in the territory of the Onondaga; he traveled alone to visit the Mohawk tribe who lived near what is now Cohoes, New York.

[full citation needed] Other traditional accounts hold that the Great Peacemaker consulted with Jigonhsasee about which tribal leaders to approach and she facilitated that meeting to create the confederacy.

[6] According to some legends, initially the Mohawk rejected the message of the Great Peacemaker, so he decided to perform a feat to demonstrate his purity and spiritual power.

[5] The tribes gathered at Onondaga Lake, where they planted a Tree of Peace and proclaimed the Great Binding Law of the Iroquois Confederacy.

As recorded by later scholars, one account relates there was a violent conflict among the Seneca, who were the last Iroquois nation to join the confederacy as a founding member.

Since 1902 scholars have studied the possibility that this event was a solar eclipse, as William Canfield suggested in his Legends of the Iroquois; told by "the Cornplanter" .

Scholars referring to an eclipse have included (chronologically): Paul A. W. Wallace,[10] Elizabeth Tooker,[11] Bruce E. Johansen,[12][13] Dean R. Snow,[14] Barbara A. Mann and Jerry L. Fields,[15] William N. Fenton,[16] David Henige,[17] Gary Warrick,[2] and Neta Crawford.

Early anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan attributed the regional dominance achieved by the Iroquois to their superior organization and coordination compared to other tribes; George Hunt also thought there was a factor of economic determinism, with their need for furs for the European trade and their superior geographic position controlling most of central and western New York.